The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End, by Peter Galbraith.
[rating:5/5]

Peter Galbraith, a diplomat with long experience in Iraq, especially with the Kurds, delivers an amazing account of the American failures in Iraq. For example:

Insurgency, civil war, Iranian strategic triumph, the breakup of Iraq, an independent Kurdistan, military quagmire. These are all consequences of the American invasion of Iraq that the Bush Administration failed to anticipate. About some of these things, such as the Sunni Arab insurgency, the president and his top advisors have admitted they were surprised. About others, they are in denial. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush said, “Hindsight is not wisdom and second-guessing is not a strategy.” It is, of course, understandable why the president prefers not to look back. It isn’t that he failed to consider some possible adverse consequences of the war, but rather that he missed all of them. In devising strategy, one can hope for the best, but should be prepared for the worst. The Bush Administration hoped that American troops would be greeted as liberators and that Iraqis would embrace democracy, yet it had no contingency plans to follow in case it didn’t work out that way.

The only knock I could come up with on this book is that by the time I read it, I already knew a lot of the material. But you probably don’t read as much as me, so this book is a very informative look at the rash of poor decisions that lead to the current situation we find ourselves trapped in. Of the many voices speaking on the Iraq situation, Galbraith is the one I learn the most from. Highly recommended.

The Bush Administration has said its failure to restore law and order in Baghdad was because the military campaign went much more quickly than foreseen. Even if more troops had been sent to Iraq, as recommended by General Shinseki, it would not have mattered, the argument goes, because the speed of operations meant only a small force was available to enter Baghdad. This argument is dishonest.

Even with the troops available in Baghdad on April 9, the United States could have protected the archaeological museum, the National Library, and twenty of the most important ministries. The United States protected nothing because the secretary of defense and his top aides never though protecting public property – or maintaining public order – in Iraq was important. The president never thought about it at all.

The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End, by Peter Galbraith.
[rating:5/5]

In the Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa, by Daniel Bergner.
[rating:5/5]

Bergner’s book covers the recent grim history of Sierra Leone, as civil war rages across the country in terrible fashion. After the worst of it all, British soldiers arrive in a peacekeeping mission. He describes the scene where some were held hostage after venturing into the territory of the West Side Boys:

The eleven (British soldiers) were held in a waterside village called Gberi Bana, ensconced between a span of pale green marsh and a wall of deep green palms. Writing on a mud wall read, “Dark Angel West Side Niggaz”; a totem, a red sphere with white fringe, dangled near the dungeon; the dungeon itself, a hand-dug oven six feet deep with a ceiling of barbed zinc, lay directly outside a colonial remnant of wooden doors and crumbled rooms. There the men were locked down, while the militia’s commanders, among them a Colonel Cambodia, sent out their requirements for the hostages’ release: the end of Kabbah’s presidency and freedom for their imprisoned leader, Brigadier Bomb Blast.

As things calm down and an attempt is made to rehabilitate the child soldiers of the RUF, Bergner continues to travel the country in an attempt to make sense of it all:

To drop me at the camp, Foday had driven me beyond dozens of roadblocks: new S.L.A. troops requesting a “morale boostah” (that is, the price of a plastic baggie of liquor sold at the roadside stands); Civil Defense Forces gunmen half-demanding and half-begging for cigarettes; and little children with their own scraps of string held across the road. The six-year-olds wanted something, anything, to make them like the soldiers they imitated. Naked but for rag shorts, their lengths of string seemed about all they had. We couldn’t drive through them, for pity and, too, for fear of older, armed siblings who might be watching from the jungle, ready to take revenge. But we were angry at all the stopping, and at the brazenness of these runtish boys. “No. We have nothing,” I said through the window, and a kid pointed at a few tissues lying on the dashboard. Foday handed them out, four dusty tissues in all. The children danced.

In the Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa, by Daniel Bergner.
[rating:5/5]

The Ministry of Culture: A Novel, by James P. Mullaney.
[rating:5/5]

Mullaney’s book follows a few characters (mainly a journalist and an artist) through 1984 Iraq, then under the control of Saddam Hussein and at war with Iran. He captures the mechanics of the police state:

Ibrahim noticed the line of sweat creasing Jazeri’s brow. Despite the dputy minister’s visible warmth, he still wore the full green uniform of the elite Republican Army. Ibrahmi wondered about the reasons behind the formal dress. And why the three-policemen escort?

Jazeri took a crisp white handkerchief with a picture of the Iraqi presiden embroidered in the silk from out of his front pocket and wiped down his forehead. He quickly motioned the other men out of the apartment and abruptly closed the door behind them. Then Jazeri turned to Ibrahim with a disarmingly paternal smile, and after an intentional pause he began to yell abusively at him, spewing forth a stream of curses and demeaning phrases in Arabic. The deputy minister of information walked over to where Ibrahim was sitting and placed his hands affectionately on his shoulders. His face had grown bright red with his continuous ranting, and for a moment Ibrahim thought the man might pass out for lack of breath. Jazeri motioned his eyes toward the closed door and the soldiers waiting behind it, and Ibrahim understood that there was some underlying purpose behind Jazeri’s manipulations; something in Jazeri’s smile that contrasted with the man’s tone and language. He continued to curse at Ibrahim, and at one point he furiously slammed his fist down upon the dresser top. Jazeri then produced a thick manila packet from inside his khaki jacket and tossed it onto the floor in front of him. Ibrahim stared at the package on the floor and noticed the inch-long scuff marks stretched across Jazeri’s leather shoes. With his foot, Jazeri pushed the manilla packet underneath the table next to Ibrahim. He pause for a moment to catch his breath, an awkward silence now taking place of the abuse. After a few moments when his breathing had settled, Jazeri’s face hardened and he regained his sense of composure.

And we get a look at the Iran-Iraq war:

Men curse loudly and the boys moan to themselves; a few curse the ayatollah. The man whose shirt had caught fire is lying outside the trench, propped up against a car tire and sipping slowly from a water canteen he also periodically runs over the length of his back. The area east of us is now clear, but there is a change in the air; the same kind of change noticed when a stranger first enters a room but you do not yet see him.

And then I do see them. Hundreds of Iranian children, boys and girls- some of them even holding hands- walking in rows toward us. The smoke clouds part before them, and as the children move closer, I can see the ropes attached to their legs, binding them to each other to prevent their desertion.

The Ministry of Culture: A Novel, by James P. Mullaney.
[rating:5/5]

The Unquiet Grave, by Steve Hendricks.
[rating:5/5]

This is a book I could not put down. The historic, though mostly unknown events on the Pine Ridge Reservation from the 1970s are so over-the-top that you have a hard time believing it all really happened. And it was only 30 years ago. American Indians (AIM) picked up guns and began to assert their rights. The FBI and other government agencies fought back, eventually all but destroying the American Indian Movement.

Hendricks illuminates these events for the battles they were, as he builds the case against the FBI and the Establishment’s COINTELPRO response to what started out as simple activism. Hendricks makes the case that the FBI’s actions to undermine the American Indian Movement pretty much caused the situation to blow up into horrific violence carried out on all sides. Just like a fearful government undermined Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers, etc. You are left wondering what history would have been like if J. Edgar Hoover hadn’t been such a prick.

As the story goes from shootout to shootout, murder to murder, trial to trial, Hendricks peels layers and layers from each story in a grasp for the truth underneath. Many times, after hearing all the conflicting witness accounts to an event, we are left to wonder what really happened and which side had the worst set of bad guys (it seems that everyone was shady and that there weren’t many good guys on either side of the fight).

You can’t help but get caught up in the gossip, the theories of who killed who, the bumbling of the FBI and the judicial system. And you can’t believe how crazy the whole situation is.

I normally quote a few short passages from books, but here’s one longer excerpt from The Unquiet Grave:

The goons gave chase. When DeSersa noticed them in his rearview mirror, he flattened the accelerator of his Grand Prix until he was driving eighty-five or ninety miles an hour, but his lead nonetheless melted steadily. at an S-curve a mile out of Wanblee, his transmission jammed in fourth gear, and by the time he got it unstalled, the first goon car, a large black sedan, had pulled alongside him.

“Get down!” someone in DeSersa’s car shouted.

An instant later a gun roared from the black sedan. Three or four more shots followed in quick succession, and glass and metal exploded throughout the cabin of the Grand Prix. A cloud of smoke and debris swirled around everything.

“Oh Christ, man, I’m hit!” DeSersa screamed. “I’m hit bad!”

George Bettelyoun, sitting behind DeSersa, told him to stop the car.

“I can’t,” DeSersa said. He was in tears. “I’m hit bad.”

Lester Jack, sitting in the front passenger seat, urged DeSersa not to loser control, and this much DeSersa was able to do for his passengers. He kept the Grand Prix in its lane until it slowed of its own accord and coasted into the roadside ditch.

George Bettelyoun later said, “The black car that shot us up went past us and stopped. I was thinking they were going to come back and start shooting again. The other guys in our car, they got out and started running up the bank on the side of the road. I tried to get Byron out, but he said, ‘I can’t move. My leg-.’ So I looked over the seat, and his leg was almost blew off. There was a hole in there right through the center. So I said, ‘Get out. They’re gonna kill you.’ I knew they weren’t shooting the play around after I seen that hole in his leg. So he crawled across the seat and got out the door, and I tried to help him up that bank. But he couldn’t make it. He said, ‘Go on.’ So I just took off. It was all open country there. There’s no cover whatsoever, just a fence line that the weeds are piled up on.

The Unquiet Grave, by Steve Hendricks.
[rating:5/5]

The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart.
[rating:5/5]

I finished this book months ago, and misplaced it. Luckily it turned up and I’m able to now give you some excerpts. Rory Stewart decides to walk across Afghanistan in January, 2002. The story is as crazy as you would imagine:

I looked into the eyes of the man on my left. “I am planning to walk across Afghanistan. From Herat to Kabul. On foot.” I was not breathing deeply enough to complete my phrases. I was surprised they didn’t interrupt. “I am following in the footsteps of Babur, the first emperor of Mughal India. I want to get away from the roads. Journalists, aid workers, and tourists mostly travel by car, but I-”

“There are no tourists,” said the man in the stiff jacket, who had not yet spoken. “You are the first tourist in Afghanistan. It is midwinter- there are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee. Do you want to die?”

The new Afghan government insists that two of their soldiers accompany Stewart, and he soon leaves them behind as they grow tired of walking. Then he’s alone:

Exhaustion and repetition created within the pain a space of exhilaration and control. And at this point, I saw two jeeps, their headlights on, weaving slowly toward us through the fog. They were the first vehicles I’d seen since Chaghcharan. When they reached me, an electric window went down. It was the Special Forces team from the airstrip.

“You,” said the driver, “are a f*cking nutter.” Then he smiled and drove on, leaving me in the snow. I had seen these men at work when I was in the army and in the Foreign Office and I couldn’t imagine a better compliment. I walked on in a good mood.

There are so many good stories I wanted to quote from the book, as Stewart finds hospitality from so many Afghans that he randomly bumps into. Warlords, Mujahidin, tribal elders, and others:

I spent much of my two days’ rest with a French photographer who was also staying in the MSF house. Didier Lefevere had traveled across Afghanistan with the Mujahidin in the early 1980s, and he was back to photograph the war. Most war photographers carry large digital cameras; Didier was using black-and-white film and two old Leicas. In a war zone most photographers prefer to use a zoom. didier didn’t have one. “I am the zoom,” he said. While other photographers were using cars and helicopters to chase news stories in different Afghan cities, Didier had been in Bamiyan for a month, photographing Hazara refugees.

The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart.
[rating:5/5]