There’s a lot to like about The Assassins’ Gate, George Packer’s sober meditation on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. For starters, Packer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, differs from his fellow liberal hawks in that his book is based on on-the-ground reporting, and therefore manifests an empathy for its subjects. He’s at his best when detailing the… return to article
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Reader Comments (4)Page 1 of 1 pagesWe could be living sixty years ago and you wouldn’t know it but for the language and scale of of the Reich.
Posted by Rabbit on Dec 1, 2005 at 4:46 AM George Packer should take a lesson from Mike Moore - why provide both sides of a story when one will do? So the war in Iraq is BAD, any evidence of thoughts otherwise should be discarded, perferably banned from publication if possible. They are both inconvenient and muddy the simple picture that we should fill our minds with (all that complexity can hurt your brain!)
Remember, Iraq was a peaceful paradise until GWB attacked it with no provocation whatsoever! He did so merely out of Christian spite toward this peaceful Muslim society. Our only goal is to rape their land and their people as well, plus throw in some torture for GW’s personal amusement. Really, it is quite simple.
Posted by wolf on Dec 2, 2005 at 10:57 AM The occupation isn’t prodeeding as planned not because the mis-placed idealism of CPA drones or the ‘idealism’ of young company-grade officers. The occupation of Iraq isn’t proceeding as planned because the plan called for rose petals and fairies and lots of chocolate sprinkles. It was conceived in profound ignorance of the people of the country and their history; it was put into action by people for whom any appreciation for the consequences of their ivory tower pipe dreams is simply unthinkable: life must mirror their ideology, or why would they have devoted all their lives to that ideology?
Packer’s empathy is not misplaced. The people he interviewed may well really have felt they were doing their jobs for the betterment of the Iraqi people. Not everyone believes, as does Mr Cook apparently, that they are mere pawns, devoid of their own will, playing their programmed piece in Halliburton’s program. Maybe their faith in their own free will is misplaced; maybe they don’t realize that everything they do benefits Hallburton, whether they want it to or not - that doesn’t make people doing their best in a bad situation any the less deserving of our empathy, or Packer’s.
Posted by onezero on Dec 12, 2005 at 9:56 PM Enjoyed the review, I may read this one. Two points—one Packer’s view as described reflect the alliance between the human rights movement and the neo-cons in support of the war. The human right groups playing a bigger role in the Democratic Party, but probably besmirching their cause in the long run. Their idealism suffers from the same defects of Woodrow Wilson’s, in the end idealism is subordinate to national interest.
My nomination for best book on the Iraqi war is Yaroslav Trofimov’s “Faith at War” written by a Wall Street Journal reporter who speaks Arabic. He toured the Muslim world showing its diversity. His policy prescriptions are few but support soft power prescriptions. The goal: separate the Muslim people from the terrorists. Such a strategy requires the U.S. to modify policy so that it meets with the approval of majority Muslim opinion. It counters the prejudice that Muslims are anti-democratic and anti-modern.
In the end, a huge obstacle to abandoning the war is American faith that we are the “good guys” trying to help the Iraqi nation. “Faith at War” demolishes that illusion.
Posted by natriley on Dec 26, 2005 at 9:56 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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