... That common wisdom holds that while the decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein is still open to debate, American mismanagement of the country after the invasion is not. Even the Bush administration's staunchest supporters now accept that "mistakes were made" and admit that, for example, dismantling the Iraqi army and driving out officials tied to the old dictatorship's Baath Party (both policies that Bremer championed) were bad ideas. But often implicit in this dominant interpretation is a complacent understanding, even a justification, of U.S. mistakes made during the occupation. After all, goes the thinking, ethnic divisions, suicidal Islamist fanatics, decades of oppression and decay, and all sorts of other obstacles conspired against the success of the bold American enterprise.
It is hard to hold that view after reading this book. Chandrasekaran, now an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, was The Post's Baghdad bureau chief in 2003-04 and has a keen eye for the small detail that illuminates larger truths. He clearly suggests that the self-inflicted wounds created by CPA ineptitude, arrogance and ignorance were far from inevitable. Nor, he shows, were they minor causes of the mess the United States faces today in Iraq. Imperial Life in the Emerald City documents the way that an avalanche of unjustifiable mistakes transformed a difficult mission into an impossible one...
Mistakes Were Made
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