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I've never read anything to suggest to me that Saddam Hussein was anything other than a brutal, repressive, murderous dictator that brought misery to the Iraqi people, particularly the Kurds and the Shiites. So I didn't believe it was much of a stretch to think that his removal by American led forces would be warmly welcomed in Iraq and beyond. The great beauty of this book is to indicate why that was not the case.
Here's an example: "Perhaps history condemned the project from the start. A grim warning lay in Iraq's modern record, shaped as it was by deprivation - Saddam's tyranny, his wars, and the expectations of Baghdadis that they deserved better. The Iraqi impression of America was no less a problem. Whatever its intentions, the United States was a non-Muslim invader in a Muslim land. For a generation, its reputation had been molded by its alliance with Israel, its record in the 1991 Gulf War, and its support for U.N. sanctions. Not insubstantial were decades over which the United States had grown as an antagonist in the eyes of many Arabs. Iraq had long been removed from the Arab world, isolated by dictatorship, war, and the sanctions, but it remained Arab."
I've flagged about 30 pages that I plan to re-read every now and again.
My only complaints were the complete lack of Kurdish and insurgent perspectives and my own difficulty of getting very interested in the book for the first 100 pages or so. Also, I thought The Forever War (by Dexter Filkins) did a much better job of presenting varied perspectives of Iraqis.
I highly recommend skipping Imperial Life in the Emerald City and reading this book instead.
Here's an example: "Perhaps history condemned the project from the start. A grim warning lay in Iraq's modern record, shaped as it was by deprivation - Saddam's tyranny, his wars, and the expectations of Baghdadis that they deserved better. The Iraqi impression of America was no less a problem. Whatever its intentions, the United States was a non-Muslim invader in a Muslim land. For a generation, its reputation had been molded by its alliance with Israel, its record in the 1991 Gulf War, and its support for U.N. sanctions. Not insubstantial were decades over which the United States had grown as an antagonist in the eyes of many Arabs. Iraq had long been removed from the Arab world, isolated by dictatorship, war, and the sanctions, but it remained Arab."
I've flagged about 30 pages that I plan to re-read every now and again.
My only complaints were the complete lack of Kurdish and insurgent perspectives and my own difficulty of getting very interested in the book for the first 100 pages or so. Also, I thought The Forever War (by Dexter Filkins) did a much better job of presenting varied perspectives of Iraqis.
I highly recommend skipping Imperial Life in the Emerald City and reading this book instead.
