Authors: Jonathan Steele
ISBN-13: 9781582434797, ISBN-10: 1582434794
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Counterpoint
Date Published: April 2009
Edition: First Trade Paper Edition
While much has been made of the faulty intelligence claim that Saddam had a secret arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that was used to justify the U.S. invasion, in reality the failures of political intelligence were equally serious.
Award-winning reporter Jonathan Steele reveals the disastrous mistake U.S. decision-makers made by not seeing that the post-Saddam vacuum would be filled by Shia Islamists with close ties to a resurgent Iran. They underestimated the complexity of Iraqi society and the deep well of proud nationalism that was bound to produce resistance if the U.S. did not make clear that it intended to withdraw quickly.
Steele shows, for the first time, how the invasion and occupation were perceived by ordinary Iraqis whose feelings and experiences were ignored by Western policymakers. The result of such arrogance, Steele demonstrates, was a failure that will forever resonate among the darkest chapters of American and British history. Blending vivid reportage, informed analysis, and powerful historical narrative Defeat is the definitive anatomy of this horrendous catastrophe.
America's mistakes have been given an extensive airing in many excellent books…In Defeat, British journalist Jonathan Steele has managed something that might have been deemed beyond reach: He has asked the question in a new and interesting way. In short, he wonders: Could we have ever gotten this right?…It is an understated book, informed by Steele's wide reading in Iraqi history and his reporting over the course of eight stints of a month or more in Iraq between the invasion and 2007. What Steele has done is the important work of asking Iraqis how they felt when their loved ones were mistakenly killed at checkpoints or in crossfire, and what it was like to have a child mistakenly locked up for weeks. He has picked up on the small but vital things…
Introduction 5
I Iraq Without Iraqis 11
II Arab Anguish 29
III Creating Resistance: The Sunnis 53
IV Creating Resistance: The Shias 75
V Leave in Time or Get Bogged Down 113
VI Creating Resistance: Humiliation and Death 141
VII Britain and Basra 163
VIII Sectarian Conflict: Who's to Blame? 197
IX The Farce of Sovereignty 231
Conclusion 249
Epilogue 259
Notes 273
Bibliography 289
Index 297