The U.S. in Iraq

Here is a quick summary of two books on U.S. involvement in Iraq:

Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood (Donovan Campbell). Ramadi, Iraq: population, 350,000. Heat waves that top 120 degrees, and a seven month long deployment. You are Marine Officer Lt. Donovan Campbell, Princeton grad and committed Christian, and your company is tasked with keeping schools open, water flowing, and roads clear of IEDs. I bought this book after hearing Campbell on NPR and reading an interview he did with World Magazine, and read it in three days. If you ever feel odd because it feels like our country is not at war, or if you just want to know what it’s like to be an American solider in Iraq, read this book.

The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (George Packer). Packer, now a writer for the New Yorker, that most pretentious of magazines, writes both an autobiographical sketch of time he spent in Iraq covering the first period of the U.S. occupation and a sweeping overview of what strategic mistakes the U.S. made as it failed to win the peace as fully as it won the war. The book was published in 2005, two years before the surge, so many of the criticisms he makes have been righted at this point. The book is best read for its broad overview of the strategic assumptions that drove American policy in first years of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and for its ability to give a visceral feel for what post-Saddam life felt like for many Iraqis.