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The Green Zone, Baghdad, 2003: in this walled-off compound of swimming pools and luxurious amenities, Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority set out to fashion a new, democratic Iraq. Staffed by idealistic aides chosen primarily for their views on issues such as abortion and capital punishment, the CPA spent the crucial first year of occupation pursuing goals that had little to do with the immediate needs of a postwar nation: flat taxes instead of electricity and deregulated health care instead of emergency medical supplies.
In this acclaimed firsthand account, the former Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post gives us an intimate portrait of life inside this Oz-like bubble, which continued unaffected by the growing mayhem outside. This is a quietly devastating tale of imperial folly, and the definitive history of those early days when things went irrevocably wrong in Iraq.
A damning indictment
| Customer Rating:  | Since I lived for a year in Baghdad's Green Zone, I felt it was necessary for me to read what happened before I got there, under L. Paul Bremer, bureaucrat extraordinaire. That is why I recently found myself reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
To say that the Bush Administration and its chosen Iraq occupation overlords made poor choices during and immediately after the invasion of that country would be an understatement so vast that I have no words to describe how big an understatement I would be making. Reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City reinforced for me many of the reasons why I heard the impact of so many mortars during my 2005-2006 sojourn to Iraq's largest city and at the time one of the most violent if not the most violent city in the world.
I met Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad in 2006, when I credentialed him for access to military bases. The man was humble, unassuming and patient with the bureaucratic process he endured, which is much more than I can say for Geraldo Rivera, who had sycophants hanging all over him and required that we open for a special session to credential him. In any case, the book itself is superly written in a professional tone.
The damning indictments of cronyism and poor decision making due to a complete lack of understanding of the culture and history of Iraq are presented artfully, without the forced overtones of sarcasm that would have appeared had I written Imperial Life in the Emerald City.
From the story of the Iraqi expatriatate who returns post invasion to open a five-star pizza shop only to find his American customers cannot leave their fortified enclave to the tale of the minor minister who is assasinated for trying to help his country without being politically involved, to the detailed descriptions of the "little America" inside a several square mile compound in downtown Baghdad, this book is well worth reading.
I do not know if L. Paul Bremer has yet publicly admitted how arrogant and stupid many of the decisions made in that first year of occupation were, but he knows it in his heart. If he doesn't that would mean the man has no heart.
Having served in Iraq, and having been to a few locales outside the "Emerald Palace" I called the Green Zone, I still hold pain in my heart for the people I met and for their suffering. Things may be turning around now in that country. But in reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City, it becomes clear that much of the violence that wracked the country and the city of Baghdad could have been avoided if things had been done differently in the beginning. We'll never know how many died because of bad decision making, but it is clear that the numbers are in the tens of thousands and possibly much higher.
If you've ever wondered what was really going on in those first days of the occupation, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Highly recommended. |
reads like a novel
| Customer Rating: | | This is an excellent book that stands out among the host of books that have been written about the Iraq war. The thing that makes it stand out is that it reads like a novel. A scary novel of course. It details the fiasco that has unfolded in Iraq due to poor planning, poor leadership, and the desire to reward loyalty over competency. |
Good Introductory Book
| Customer Rating:  | I agree with some of the reviewers below who stated that this is a good introductory book. Its well written and very easy to read. That being said, it doesn't contain nearly the level of detail as other books, written by both "sides" (i.e., Bremer's memoir or Ferguson's No End in Sight).
There's not a whole lot of analysis and it seemed that this book focused a lot more on food platters and young staffers than the more substantive issues. I mean, yes, it would have been better to have a more experienced individual in charge of reopening the Baghdad Stock Exchange. That being said, the Stock Exchange was miniscule in importance compared to the more important issues the lack of troops and the disbanding of the Iraqi army, which, in my opinion, needed more treatment.
I think it would be a mistake for us to view the problems we face as a result of the selection of young, inexperienced staffers, and to me, the book gives off that strong impression. The problems are (first) a result of not enough troops on the ground after the initial military victory (Rumsfeld) and (second) the failure to recall at least some of the Iraqi military (Jerry Bremer and Walt Slocombe). These were simply bad decisions made by 3 very experienced officials, with significant experience in both Republican and Democratic administrations. |
Who's Your Baghdaddy?
| Customer Rating: | If people were not dying in Iraqi, the follies displayed in this book could be easily dismissed as a bad joke, just more of the same old well-known superpower hubris. Or as John Le Carre put it so elegantly in the cover notes: "a Black Comedy, set in the graveyard of the neoconservatives dream."
Since it is not merely a case of hubris, all true American patriots must now be worried about the health and continued life of the American Empire. As a "closeted ex-Republican," the incompetence showcased in this book makes even my stomach turn. It is not just the incompetence; which is staggering, that bothers me, but that this book finally confirms what I already knew: that from the President on down, there is no adult supervision in an administration that sorely needs it.
Since I have worked with some of them, I have no doubt that Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Condy Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and even Dick Chaney are competent, as individuals, and when they are operating under suitable adult supervision; however, this book points to something much larger than mere hubris, or even mere incompetence, with which we are already familiar through the likes of no WMDs, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, the sub-prime lending melt-down, no follow-up plan after the invasion, the healthcare gift to the drug and insurance companies, and the "mission accomplished" grandstanding. What the details of this book suggest is that a lot more than mere world-class incompetence and hubris are "in play": Here is a witches brew of incompetence, cultural insensitivity, ideological arrogance, and a kind of "classism" that parallels and mimics exactly the image that Saddam Hussein himself projected while he was in power. Go figure?
For those of us who did not know it, the "Green Zone," is situated in one of Saddam Hussein's "Republican Palaces," outfitted with all of the opulence of a petty Third World Potentate, but with an American twist: swimming pools, food, water, fruit loops and pork hot dogs (for the Moslem servants to handle) air-lifted in daily, seven sports bars with wide-screen TVs, with most of the soldiers strutting around with 9mm Berettas strapped to their waists. The motto of this "Texas Enclave in the Desert," says it all: "Keep the air in the bubble."
This "Little Texas on the Tigris," is not just obscene, it is an utter embarrassment to a self-confident and mature democracy. It alone goes a long way towards defeating the very purpose of our being there: to bring to the Iraqi people a new sense of what a true democracy means and can be.
With the kind of behavior chronicled in this book, we Americans should not be surprised that ordinary Iraqis would want us out of there in the worse kind of way. But our culturally insensitive behavior is just the icing on the cake of this monumental tragedy for them. Their main reason for wanting us out is that after five years and over 100, 000 Iraqi deaths, even the normal amenities of clean water and sewage, electrical power, and security are still not up to the level of the Saddam Hussein era. How shameful is that? What a nightmare for both Iraq and America.
Because it is just a computer dump of a reporter's logbook, obviously put together quickly, without any in-depth analysis, I give the book four stars. |
a very decent account of the first couple years of the Iraq occupancy
| Customer Rating: | This book was on the NY Best Seller list for a while and I finally got around to buying it after the price had gone down. This is a non-fictional account of the beginning of the Iraq diplomacy by the US and the operations that ran inside the walls of the "little america" called the Green Zone.
It accounts of the living conditions, the attitudes, the progress of the consistent and willful, while also documenting the failings of many due to ineptitude of accepting middle eastern culture, lack of knowledge and common sense. Basically trying to bulldoze Iraq with Bush administration's vision and not the people of Iraq's vision.
It is quite interesting who did what and how they did it and why some were somewhat successful and why many failed to bring any stability to Iraq. Also the conditions of the living quarters of our soldiers, contractors and foreign soldiers, the condition of food, constant departmental conflicts and lack of knowledge, planning and funding seems to have set up everyone who has gone to Iraq in the first 3 years of the occupancy to fail. The feeling I got when finishing up the book was that the US government did everything to try to make the reconstruction of Iraq a miserable failure. However depressing, the book is a great first hand account of life in the Green Zone. |
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