How did we get here?

Readings on the road to war and the still-unfolding aftermath [under construction].

History: Colonialism, Cold War, Gulf War, Sanctions

• Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-Building and a History Denied, 2005
  • On British colonial rule in Iraq during the 1920s and implications for the present.
• Charles Trip, A History of Iraq, 2007
  • A sweeping history of modern Iraq.
• Joseph Sassoon, Saddam’s Ba’th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime, 2012
  • On the inner workings of the political organization that ruled Iraq
• Joy Gordin, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, 2010
  • On the post-1991 sanctions that crippled the Iraqi economy.

The Invasion and Its Aftermath

• Robert Draper, To Start a War: how the Bush Administration took America into Iraq, 2020
  • An in-depth look at the decision to go to war – excerpt available here
  • See also Joseph Stieb on the book’s shortcomings
• James Fallows, Blind into Baghdad: America’s war in Iraq, 2006
  • A compilation of essays on the planning and execution of the Iraq war.
• Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003-2005, 2007
  • On the backstory to the invasion of Iraq as well as the failure to anticipate and contain the Iraqi insurgency.
• Richard Bonin, Arrows of the Night: Ahmed Chalabi and the Selling of the Iraq War, 2012
  • On the life of Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi and his role in advocating for war with Saddam.
• Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, 2007
  • On the fraught efforts to govern Iraq under occupation forces.

Protracted Fighting and Slow Rebuilding

• Sarah Stillman, “The Invisible Army,” The New Yorker, June 6, 2011
  • On the vast army of foreign workers that supported the U.S. military presence in Iraq.
• Zaid al-Ali, The Struggle for Iraq’s Future: How Corruption, Incompetence, and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy, 2014
  • On failures of governance in Iraq during the American occupation and beyond.
• [tbd]

ISIS and Beyond

• Dexter Filkins, “What We Left Behind,” The New Yorker, April 28, 2014
• Sara Pursley, “The Legend of Iraq’s Artificial Borders,” Jadaliyya, June 2, 2015
  • A critique of the idea that the essential problem facing Iraq and other Arab countries are their “artificial” borders dating back to the colonial era.
• Tamer el-Ghobashy, “Trade a Lexus for a Prestigious Phone Number? In Iraq, the Best Digits Cost a Mint,” The Washington Post, February 13, 2017
  • Economic life in contemporary baghdad.
• Isabel Coles and Ali Nabhan, “After Defeating Islamic State, Iraq’s Shiites Turn Ire toward Government,” The Washington Post, March 12, 2018.
  • On the shaky post-war consensus in Iraq.