KHALIDI

I went to hear Rashid Khalidi speak at UW last night, he gave an excellent if brief overview of the Western imperial legacy in Iraq, and discussed the ways that the U.S. occupation is playing out against that legacy in the perceptions of the Iraqi people.

Here's a profile of Khalidi from last year. I very strongly recommend his book Resurrecting Empire, from which his lecture was drawn. His book Palestinian Identity is also one of the definitive works on that subject.