u***@yahoo.co.uk
2005-06-23 15:53:24 UTC
New tell-all book on the American occupation of Iraq!
SQUANDERED VICTORY: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to
Bring Democracy to Iraq By Larry Diamond
See: http://www.henryholt.com/holt/squandered.htm
Larry Diamond was not a supporter of the war in Iraq, but when his old
friend and former colleague Condoleezza Rice asked him to go to Iraq as
a democracy development expert and to advise on the upcoming transition
of power, he was torn. Though he considered the war to have been a
strategic miscalculation, he also believed that the postwar imperative
to establish a lawful, democratic political order in Iraq was a
formidable challenge and a worthy goal. And so he went to Iraq in
January 2004 to take part in one of the most audacious undertakings in
recent history, an endeavor he found riddled with mistakes and
failures. Published to mark the first anniversary of the handover of
Iraqi sovereignty, Diamond's SQUANDERED VICTORY: The American
Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Times
Books/Henry Holt & Company) gives us the first insider's account of
the U.S. occupation and a frank assessment of America's effort to
implant democracy in Iraq.
Diamond argues that the United States failed at virtually every turn in
postwar Iraq, a tragic squandering of a decisive and potentially
historic victory. In SQUANDERED VICTORY he chronicles the mistakes
that were made: the first U.S. civilian administration arrived in
Baghdad with virtually no capacity to function in Arabic; Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani-the most revered Shiite religious leader-repeatedly
assumed more pro-democratic positions than the United States itself;
the Bush Administration ignored repeated warnings from its own
officials in Iraq that the Shiite heartland was about to explode and
needed the protection of more American troops; the U.S. effort to
"sell" the interim constitution to the Iraqi people was undermined
by the failure to listen to Iraqi popular concerns and by the
sluggishness and ineptitude of the occupation's "strategic
communications" team. These breakdowns, Diamond explains, occurred
despite warnings from leading experts including the Army War
College's well-researched postwar planning analysis, which
synthesized the lessons of other American occupations and of Iraqi
history, society, and politics. This analysis forewarned of the
"real and serious possibility of the United States winning the war
and losing the peace in Iraq."
Vivid and provocative, Larry Diamond's SQUANDERED VICTORY is a
powerful analysis of our country's efforts to establish a democratic
Iraq and ultimately reveals our failure to make best use of this
opportunity.
For more, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/books/17book.html
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=74-0805078681-0
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805078681/qid=1119460625/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-3170788-4501417
SQUANDERED VICTORY: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to
Bring Democracy to Iraq By Larry Diamond
See: http://www.henryholt.com/holt/squandered.htm
Larry Diamond was not a supporter of the war in Iraq, but when his old
friend and former colleague Condoleezza Rice asked him to go to Iraq as
a democracy development expert and to advise on the upcoming transition
of power, he was torn. Though he considered the war to have been a
strategic miscalculation, he also believed that the postwar imperative
to establish a lawful, democratic political order in Iraq was a
formidable challenge and a worthy goal. And so he went to Iraq in
January 2004 to take part in one of the most audacious undertakings in
recent history, an endeavor he found riddled with mistakes and
failures. Published to mark the first anniversary of the handover of
Iraqi sovereignty, Diamond's SQUANDERED VICTORY: The American
Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Times
Books/Henry Holt & Company) gives us the first insider's account of
the U.S. occupation and a frank assessment of America's effort to
implant democracy in Iraq.
Diamond argues that the United States failed at virtually every turn in
postwar Iraq, a tragic squandering of a decisive and potentially
historic victory. In SQUANDERED VICTORY he chronicles the mistakes
that were made: the first U.S. civilian administration arrived in
Baghdad with virtually no capacity to function in Arabic; Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani-the most revered Shiite religious leader-repeatedly
assumed more pro-democratic positions than the United States itself;
the Bush Administration ignored repeated warnings from its own
officials in Iraq that the Shiite heartland was about to explode and
needed the protection of more American troops; the U.S. effort to
"sell" the interim constitution to the Iraqi people was undermined
by the failure to listen to Iraqi popular concerns and by the
sluggishness and ineptitude of the occupation's "strategic
communications" team. These breakdowns, Diamond explains, occurred
despite warnings from leading experts including the Army War
College's well-researched postwar planning analysis, which
synthesized the lessons of other American occupations and of Iraqi
history, society, and politics. This analysis forewarned of the
"real and serious possibility of the United States winning the war
and losing the peace in Iraq."
Vivid and provocative, Larry Diamond's SQUANDERED VICTORY is a
powerful analysis of our country's efforts to establish a democratic
Iraq and ultimately reveals our failure to make best use of this
opportunity.
For more, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/books/17book.html
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=74-0805078681-0
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805078681/qid=1119460625/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-3170788-4501417