Book Review: End of Iraq
“But there’s another way for the bloodshed to stop. And that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands — to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside, and to comply with the United Nations resolutions and then rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.” The idea was suggested by Peter Woodard Galbraith in his book End of Iraq: How American incompetence created a war without end.
End of Iraq was initially published in mid-2006 at the pivot of the Iraq war. The book is still one of the best work available. It is roughly 250 pages long and sheds light on international politics focused on American foreign policy, more specifically on the Iraq war. The book explains how the United States of America, under the Bush administration, created a genocidal war with precisely no realistic strategy on the table and as its direct result how the entire Middle East will be destabilized, which we are already witnessing.
Peter W. Galbraith was a former politician, and diplomate served in the US Senate and appointed by President Clinton as first US ambassador to Croatia. He negotiated several exceptional deals including the release of his friend, the former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto from Jail during the reign of General Mohamed Zia-ul-Haqq, Erdut agreement that ended Croatian war, and played an essential role in the transitional government of East Timor. He is an author, a political commentator and an academic as well.
Peter Galbraith visited Iraq several times since the late 1980s and helped uncover the Gassing of Kurds by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain. He was a great friend of Kurds and contributed immensely to the Kurdish cause from the very beginning through to the formulation of the post-Saddam constitution and assisted Kurds in the regional government negotiations.
The book End of Iraq describes Saddam’s limitless tyranny which begun with western support and how he turned into an enemy of the western establishment. Then follows on explaining the hypocritical policies of the United States and its incompetent strategies as the mightiest nation on earth, and then goes on narrating how an endless bloodbath was created as a result. The author presents information in easily comprehensible language even by non-academics in chronological order of events.
The book also presents two central ideas of “the three-state solution” and a way to get out of Iraq for the American forces hence paving the way for the author’s dream of a fully autonomous and independent Kurdistan. Galbraith as both an American diplomate and an advocate for Kurds with experience and expertise in both the grounds see, just like many other academics, the war on Iraq as a massive loss for the United States and the Middle East economically and most importantly concerning human lives.
If you like to understand the mess that is going on in the Middle East especially in Syria, Libya, Iraq and in other parts you need to know how it was begun. The End of Iraq by Peter Galbraith explains how it all kicked off. If you are a journalist, a student, an academic or even an ordinary person trying to make sense of the chaos in the Middle East you should read the book.