Selected Product:
| The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq
Paperback
Edition: 1st
Author: George Packer
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: 2006-09-19
ISBN-10: 0374530556
ISBN-13: 9780374530556
List Price: $15.00
Average Customer Rating:
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Named one of the Best Books of 2005 by The New York Times, The Washington Post Book World, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The New York Times Book Review, USA Today, Time, and New York magazine. The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq. It brings to life the people and ideas that created the Bush administration’s war policy and led America to the Assassins’ Gate—the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The Assassins’ Gate also describes the place of the war in American life: the ideological battles in Washington that led to chaos in Iraq, the ordeal of a fallen soldier ’s family, and the political culture of a country too bitterly polarized to realize such a vast and morally complex undertaking. George Packer’s best-selling first-person narrative combines the scope of an epic history with the depth and intimacy of a novel, creating a masterful account of America’s most controversial foreign venture since Vietnam.
Not for me.
| Customer Rating:  | | A well written book. A little too liberal for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless. Good book to use for school papers. |
Good Sale
| Customer Rating: | | The book arrived in the estimated time and in the condition advertised by this seller. |
"Iraq was too important to be left to the partisans"
| Customer Rating: | The Iraq war enters its 5th year. Most people in the world, and many in the US, are now categorical in their denunciation of it. WMDs have proven to be a false premise and al-Quaeda is probably quite happy about the Muslim polarization it has brought on.
Packard makes a much-needed case that one can be against the administration and against the horrible mess it has made, yet still find that going to war wasn't entirely a moral deadend from day one. Saddam was a butcher and a tyrant and removing him was a good thing in itself, even if done for the wrong reasons. Only time will tell if the gains outweigh the costs - it doesn't look good right now.
He reminds us that even the good intentions of many, and a population justifiably happy to be rid of Saddam, did not mean that it was going to be easy to effect a post-Saddam transition. Iraqis were too divided, too browbeaten and too materially poor for an easy outcome. The US administration was overconfident and too determined to keep any bad news and harsh reality from the electorate even as it wasn't pragmatic enough to learn from its mistakes. Also documented is the near-criminal lack of planning and carelessness with which responsibility for post-war planning was usurped from State by the Pentagon and then not carried out.
Packard presents many points of view, from idealistic troops to soldiers suspicious and resentful of Iraqis. Don't kid yourself - if you and your buddies got shot at every day by 'civilians', your reactions towards the population might not be warm and fuzzy, even as those reactions really really need restraint. Similarly, his Iraqi subjects run the gamut from pro-democrats to Shia hardliners to Sunnis convinced that they are a majority. He mostly leaves the reader to draw her own conclusions. Except for a chapter in which he outlines how a more pragmatic and honest administration might have operated.
This book is a cogent reminder that Iraq is a difficult and complex reality, without easy answers. Too many Democrats (a good friend of mine included) will reflexively deny any improvement, just because failure digs a deeper hole for the Republicans. Too many Republicans take any criticism of the administration as a solely partisan attack, despite the gross incompetence and clear miscalculations of the administration.
The reason I gave 4 stars instead of 5 is that Packard does not rise above the partisan fray himself. Cheney might be despicable, but I wouldn't call him a 'giant frog' in a book that preaches objectivity and coming together to fix things. Assassin's Gate is quite even-handed in its analysis, but quoting him out of context makes it easier for flat-earthers to dismiss this book as just another character assassination.
Best wishes to the troops themselves - take care, be safe, and remain honorable. And peace be upon Iraqis. |
Intellectual history with a bite
| Customer Rating: | | Packer begins by exploring the intellectual roots of the invasion of Iraq in relationship to American ideas of democracy. In analyzing ideology and realism in foreign policy thinking, Packer shows how an essentially mild liberalism transforms into the core of neocon thinking. He has a fine sense of the complex interplay of dominant and subdominant intellectual themes. Packer's own view, a slightly left of center stance informed by the thinking of an Iraqi scholar, undergoes a slow evolution from mild approval of America's rationale to concern over its misperception of circumstances in country. Packer's theoretical introduction frames the rest of the book. Most of the rest of the book represents the kind of reporting that finds universals in stories of individual Iraqis and Americans and keeps a close account of the gathering tragedy of the invasion. Told with with sympathy, a clear leitmotif, and an eye for telling detail, Packer's work provides the clearest picture of life outside The Assassin's Gate through 2006. |
Best Book on the Iraq War (so far)
| Customer Rating: | Packer was an earlier supporter of the war in Iraq, who has, in the last couple of years, changed his tune. He is also an incredible writer, and Assassin's Gate is the best written book I have read on the war. Packer moves between DC and Iraq from the beginning of the plans for the war, including fascinating profiles of Anti-Saddam Iraqi and U.S. liberal who supported the war to the (almost) present. You can feel his disgust with the Bush administration grow and his hope for Iraq fail as the book progresses.
Assassin's Gate is an excellent read, and a good primer on the basic outline of the lead up to the war, but where the book really shines is in the profiles of people caught up by the whole disaster. Whether that's anti Saddamist Iraqi exiles, US soldiers, or young women in Baghdad, all of the people written about in this book really do come off the page as fully realized people caught up in a horrible situation they didn't ask for. This is a popular book, written for a mass audience, so you're not going to get all that much depth, but the personal stories and the inside the beltway backstory, make this book well worth the read. |
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