Imperial Life in the Emerald City

Continuing the top ten books as chosen by the editors of the New York Times Book Review, I turn to Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran. In 2003, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. government went into occupation mode, taking over a large compound surrounding what used to be Saddam's Republic Palace. This became known as the Green Zone, and it was off limits to the Iraquis, unless they happened to work there. Instead it was a haven for the occupying Americans, most of them working for the CPA, or Coalition Provisional Authority, which was there purportedly to help Iraq rebuild as a democracy, in all ways from infrastructure to education to writing a constitution. The whole thing turned out to be, from Chandrasekaran's point of view, a mess.

The book traces the failure all the way back to the White House, but centers most of the story on L. Paul Bremer, who was viceroy during the occupation.

The author documents one arrogant bad decision Bremer makes after another, which only makes the Iraquis hate the Americans, whether it be a mass firing of those who were in Saddam's Baath party (many had joined so they would have safer lives during Hussein's rule) to closing a major newspaper that was critical of the U.S. While much of Baghdad had electricity only so many hours a day, the Palace was coolly air-conditioned twenty-four hours a day.
At times the book is a real-life depiction of the military bureaucracy that is on display in Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

The bungling starts with the appointments of officials, who are not so much selected for their qualifications as whether they are loyal to the Bush agenda. It doesn't take a genius to see that appointing someone to head the ministry of industry and metals should have a background in that field, but yet the person appointed was chosen as much for his opinions on abortion as his job experience. This also includes the appointment of the now disgraced former New York City police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, as a police advisor, who was then making $16,000 a pop as a speaker with Rudy Giuliani's firm, and was never completely focused on the task at hand. A ridiculously qualified person who was passed over is described as having a wall of degrees, but not a picture of himself with President Bush.

The focus of the CPA, Chandrasekaran comes to the conclusion, was all wrong from the start. Instead of creating a Jeffersonian democracy, the Americans should have set about providing a safe Iraq, where the citizens wouldn't be afraid to leave their homes at night. He begins the book with an epigraph from T.E. Lawrence, which says in part: "Do not try to too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly."
Of course, the Americans did nothing perfectly, and today a civil war is partly a result. He concludes with this observation: "Iraqis needed help--good advice and ample resources--from a support of corps of well meaning foreigners, not a full scale occupation with imperial Americans cloistered in a palace of the tyrant, eating bacon and drinking beer, surrounded by Ghurkas and blast walls."

I think the best part of the book may be short glimpses at life in what Chandrasekaran refers to as the "bubble" existence inside the Green Zone. Examples include sexual activity between staffers, where females are vastly outnumbered (a joke went around that when flights left Baghdad, a pilot would announce, "Ladies and gentleman, we're exiting Iraqi airspace. Ladies, you are no longer beautiful") to Halliburton, the conglomerate that won much of the rebuilding contracts, rounding up all cats to destroy for fear of disease, including those that had been adopted as pets.

For those who are already of the opinion that the misadventure in Iraq is a blunder of collosal proportions, this won't change your mind. It's a document rich with the hubris of the misguided.