Orientalism and the Liberation Narrative: Western Power and Post-2003 Iraq — A Critical Reading Through Edward Said's Theory

Abstract

This study conducts a critical review of the connection of Orientalism, violence, and the post-2003 Iraq liberation narrative as is manifested through the theory of Orientalism by Edward Said. Beyond the political sphere , the analysis interrogates how the mechanisms of neo-imperialism, as Hardt and Negri theorize them, operated through economic restructuring and institutional replacement - to extend Western influence in post-invasion Iraq ,Moreover, the liberation narrative fueled deep internal conflict within Iraqi society itself, producing a cleavage reaction that ranged from accepted out of sheer necessity among communities historically marginalized under the Ba'athist regime, to outright rejection among those who saw the invasion as just the latest chapter in a long history of foreign rule, This paper will apply Said's theory and the perspective on the Other to examine how the creation of the Iraq as the Other, backward, and requiring of saving, reinforced the interventions of violence and perpetuated the cycle of violence, both physical and ideological through the analysis of media, politics discourse, and the transformation of post-2003 Iraq. In conclusion, this paper demands a reconstructing of liberation and the need to de-colonize the narratives that enable the local agency and real Iraqi self-determination.