Book Review

Iraq: When fools rushed in

Fiasco: the American adventure in Iraq

Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated: stories from the new Iraq
Rory McCarthy
William Heinemann, £25
Tablet bookshop price £22.50      Tel 01420 592974

An alternative title to Fiasco by the veteran Washington Post correspondent Thomas Ricks, might be "Denouement" - because the book reads like the epitaph to the disastrous American-British enterprise in Iraq. It is the best and most lively account so far of this ill-conceived and appallingly executed enterprise.

Vice President Cheney and Defence Secretary Rumsfeld were itching to go to war in Iraq well before George W. Bush took power. It was the al-Qaida attacks on 11 September 2001, in which Saddam and Iraq had no hand, that gave them their opportunity. More specifically, the plan was owned by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, Douglas Feith, his policy chief, and Richard Perle, President of the Defence Advisory Board. They had been pressing for an attack on Iraq since the early 1990s, on the grounds that the Desert Storm operation of 1991 under Bush senior had failed in its objective - regime change in Baghdad - and an experiment in neocon liberal democracy in Baghdad would change the face of the region, bring it new strategic stability and secure the world's second-largest oil repository for the USA and its allies. Though not discussed in detail in the book, this was the grand scheme that Tony Blair and half the British foreign policy and security establishment bought hook, line and sinker, though quite why still defeats me utterly. As Ricks shows, the policy of containment, of no-fly zones and the cruel embargo was having its effect and by the end of 2002 Saddam's rule was visibly shaky.

The vehemence of the war party round Cheney and Rumsfeld is surprising given how little they really understood of operational military affairs, the business of making war itself, the regime of Saddam Hussein, the peoples of Iraq and its neighbourhood and the historical problems of their governance. For detailed analysis of such matters they appear to have contempt, as for them conviction is all. This is particularly true of Douglas Feith, who jacked up the Iraq adventure when he became a founder member of the Project for the New American Century in 1997-98. When he is at the Pentagon as Assistant Secretary for Policy, he seems to try to fade into the background as it all starts going wrong.

And it started going wrong within weeks rather than months. Tommy Franks comes across as a narrow, bullying figure with little idea of what the US forces might be up against once they got to Baghdad, and almost no conception of how to run an occupation. Nor had anybody at the White House, for the politicians had been too busy interfering with the soldiers to get on with the job of establishing peace and stability when the fighting was done.

It was Paul "Jerry" Bremer III, former diplomat and supporter of Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, who, a month after the arrival of American troops, became Bush's proconsul for Iraq. In his first two communiqués in May 2003 he disbanded the Iraqi army and sacked from public office all Baathists to the third and fourth level of party membership -  including primary school teachers, nurses and hospital doctors. The exploration of why he made such an evidently crass mistake is one of Ricks' finest pieces of investigation.

The Iraq debacle is littered with disastrous relations. Bremer, a diplomat of no previous experience of the region, was at the centre of two of these, one of repulsion with his senior US commander Lt General Ricardo Sanchez, and one of attraction to the cunning exile Ahmad Chalabi. The grip of Chalabi and other exiles on the American and British intelligence and diplomatic services now seems extraordinary. They convinced them that Saddam's overthrow would be a snip, that Iraqi soldiers would join the American coalition, and that the oil would flow as never before. The spooks' rule of thumb is to discount what exiles tell you by a factor of seven, yet on the evidence of this book Chalabi clearly hoped that the Americans would make him president of Iraq in Saddam's place: that is why he had to use Bremer to speedily get rid of rivals in the army and the administration.

The Bremer-Sanchez relationship was a dialogue of the deaf. The two senior Americans in Iraq in 2003-04 hated each other. Sanchez floundered and when the "insurgency" got under way in June 2003, to be redoubled early the following year, he did not know what had hit him. The American Army had all but abandoned counter-insurgency operations in the aftermath of Vietnam. Command skills units in the field had little idea of where they were or who they were up against. Interpreters and Arabic-speaking advisers were in short supply, and frustrated and increasingly scared troops resorted to violence, bullying and torture. The torture at Abu Ghraib is no exception, Ricks contends. The same criticism can be applied to the British effort in Iraq - skills on the ground have been scarce, and mistrust has deepened between occupier and occupied.

How the occupation has affected the lives of Iraqis  is the common thread to Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated by Guardian journalist Rory McCarthy, which is one of the best reporters' books for years. He was assigned to Iraq for two years, during which time his life became increasingly constricted and threatened. He skilfully weaves his narratives through the stories of a dozen main characters whom he visits and revisits. There are graphic set pieces such as the first American assault on Falluja and the siege of Najaf when the Shrine of the Imam Ali was held by Shia fighters under the charismatic cleric Sheikh Ahmad al-Shaibani, lieutenant to Moqtada al-Sadr. Among the vignettes is the gracious and moving encounter with the circle of poets of the Iraqi Writers' Union.

McCarthy combines a fine eye and pen with an acute and delicate feel for history. Most striking, though, is his control of sentiment without drowning in sentimentality. He avoids the wallowing of  the "schlock and shock" or "Keanery" (after the BBC's Fergal Keane) school of  self-indulgence that pervades much British journalism.

Both books are powerful critiques of what is happening in Iraq today. Ricks shows that the Iraqi operation is now passing the point of remedy. But it is McCarthy's that quietly makes the most powerful conclusion. With his friend the conservative Shiite English lecturer Sahim he discusses the future of Iraq. She mentions her work on E.M. Forster's A Passage to India which concludes that Britain must part from India if there is to be any friendship between Indians and Britons. "At the beginning we thanked the British and Americans for getting rid of Saddam but again we cannot accept them as a reality. It is difficult to decide between them. This is the better of two evils, but it is still an evil."

A viable future for Iraq now seems beyond any Anglo-American plan of occupation, is the message of both books. The obligation on any reader is to insist this is recognised and remedied, and those who devised the current mess should answer for it.

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