I read this
for the 2014 War Challenge with a
Twist at the reading challenge blog War Through the Generations
The Occupation: War
and Resistance in Iraq – Patrick Cockburn
This account of the Bush administration’s failure in the
occupation of Iraq makes for compelling reading though the effect on the
reader’s blood pressure can hardly be wholesome.
An old hand reporting on Central Asia and the Middle East
and deeply suspicious of the powers that be, Cockburn (said coe-burn) gets
behind the headlines to describe US ignorance and ham-handedness; the
weak, divided and silly Iraqi exiles and defectors; and the escalating
viciousness and violence of Baathist dead enders, Shia militias, and Sunni
insurgents. He describes how Iraqi society was destroyed by the Iran-Iraq war
but above all by sanctions imposed after the Kuwait disaster. Because of the economic blockade, millions of Iraqis
were impoverished, having lost jobs or never been employed. So there was revolutionary rage with which
they looted and destroyed government buildings
and museums.
What can one think about an occupation run by hacks and main-chancers
whose main qualification was hefty contributions to the Republican Party when
they turn in results like this:
There was something dysfunctional
about the occupation from the beginning. It could not carry out important
projects even when its own most crucial interests were involved. A friend of
mine called Ali, long in exile but a specialist in broadcasting, was hired to
help create a pro-American satellite television station. This was very
important for the CPA, which complained continually that the al-Jezeera
satellite channel was biased against it. Ali rapidly found that his task was
made more difficult because the well-connected American company which had won
the contract to establish the television station had never done so before.
Experienced Iraqis who had previously worked in television in Baghdad could not
be hired because they had been in the top ranks of the Baath party. 'The only
person I was allowed to hire from the old Iraqi television was the man who
looked after the parking lot,' lamented Ali. Desperately though the CPA needed
the channel it was months before it got off the ground. (Though Bremer may also
have been lucky; one Iraqi friend said, 'If more Iraqis had been able to hear
his broadcasts about dissolving the army and purging the Baath party there
would have been a revolution.')
True believers in the US will find little good American
will, little stoic American effort, little American can-do in this sorry tale
of venal, bungling, and dishonorable GOP frauds on the make and White
House hacks and civilian Pentagon careerists spewing nonsense to make political
hay on the home front.
This book is a mixture of reportage, travelogue, and
telling stories like the one quoted above.
Like a lot of journalists, he likes the big
generalization, doesn’t cite sources too often, never tells his proficiency in
Arabic, and knows not much about sociology, economics or anthropology.
For all that, this is worth reading by any serious student
of what writer James Fallows calls the biggest strategic blunder "since at
least the end of World War II and perhaps a much longer period. ... Invading
Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a ‘war of
choice’ whose costs we are still paying."
not citing sources on a regular basis would drive me crazy!
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