Toggle Menu

Rap Sheet

Links on R&P from around the web

Baathism: An Obituary

posted on October 2, 2012

At The New Republic, Paul Berman writes about the demise of Baathism, noting that most Arab Baath rulers, who came to power in the 1960s, have been deposed or are dead. Berman wonders what the countries, like Syria, Tunisia, and Iraq, who have been ruled by Baath leaders for the last 35 years, would be like today if the Baathists had never gained power. “The political and cultural landscape of the Middle East, post-Baath, will be pockmarked by blighted zones that might otherwise have been a prosperous Iraq and Syria, if only the Baathist doctrine had not destroyed those countries,” Berman writes. 

Read at The New Republic