The "fluidity" of the enemy in the political imagination of many Americans represents one of the most incredible aspects of the war in Iraq. What began as a struggle to liberate the world from the Baathist regime—which was said to be linked to al Qaeda and on the verge of using weapons of mass destruction—then transformed into a campaign to "export" human rights to Iraq, a war against Saddam and other "bearers of death." However, following the Abu Ghraib scandal, this justification also fell apart. Recently, that Iraqi al Qaeda has been placed, with no apparent distinction, on the same level as al Qaeda operating in the region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Moreover, the further divisions between Sunnis and Shiites and their internal subdivisions elude even the most attentive Western observers. Meanwhile, Americans themselves have become unable to understand who exactly the Other, the Enemy, is. In the period immediately before the 2004 elections, 42% of respondents claimed that Iraq was responsible for the September 11 attacks, and after 2005, a series of films about the war in Iraq flopped at the box office. Based on direct observations in Iraq and through the analysis of surveys, media, and American popular culture, Steven Livingston will demonstrate how the war in Iraq has, in fact, been a series of different wars at different times with different actors, each carrying a different idea of who the Other, the Enemy, is. An idea that has never really taken shape. The American scholar's goal is to shed light on the political implications of these different readings (and experiences) of the war in Iraq.
