Customer Reviews

In the Red Zone: A Journey into the Soul of Iraq

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Today we lost the author of this excellent book and some remarkable pieces of journalism in the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times. So my review to this book will be marked (and dated) by the event of his killing.

Marked by 9/11 in NY, Steven Vincent decided to try to understand why so many people hate us to the point to attack and kill completely innocent people. By writing, he wanted to share with all of us what he was seeing and learning so more people could understand.
He had the courage to go to Iraq and live in no "greenzones" or armored protection so he could better understand what the Iraqis think, feel and have to go through everyday. This book recounts his personal experiences and his thoughts ("understandings") while on his first two journeys there. I can assure you that by reading this book, you'll change your views, whatever they are, about the War on Terror, the War in Iraq and the Middle East conflict(s).

On a final note: it's my belief that Steven was killed by the Shiite extremists, followers of the infamous cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the ones that are changing southern Iraq into an islamic republic similar to the one in neighboring Iran, under the watchful (?) but ineffective eye of the British Armed Forces.
He payed the ultimate price while trying to inform us.

This a lesson on Freedom, Liberty and Democracy. Sadly, one (more) where someone lost his/her life.

(Thank you Steven for sharing your experiences with us.)

May the Lord rest his soul in eternal peace.

I met Steven Vincent days after In the Red Zone had been submitted to the publisher. His personal reflections from 9/11, when he stood atop his apartment building and watch the second plane hit, brought tears to my eyes. But that was nothing compared to his remarkable insight into Iraq from his journeys there. Fresh from returning and putting his thoughts into written form, he regaled me for hours with what he learned and what all Americans must know about Iraq. I cannot recommend In the Red Zone more highly.

I'm halfway through this book and I'm blown away. Mr. Vincent writes in a style that is engrossing and well done. I have had a hard time putting this book down (I started it yesterday!) I read both of Karl Zinmeister's excellent books on the Iraq war and post-war from the inbedded side, along with the troops. Mr Vincent gives us the Iraqi civilian side of things AND adds his perspective as he goes along and bears witness to all encounters.

I couldn't recommend a better and more timely book for what is going on in Iraq. I already look forward to his next installment. Thank you Mr. Vincent for an excellent effort.

Rebeccasreads highly, highly recommends IN THE RED ZONE as a vital read for our time, offering clues to the utterly incomprehensible, to Western minds, dichotomy existing in the Middle Eastern mindset.

No matter your politics or world view, IN THE RED ZONE offers real-life (as opposed to objective journalistic reportage) glimpses of how everyday Iraqis view America & the Coalition soldiers -- "It wasn't OUR fault this madman[Saddam Hussein] got in here. Thanks for getting rid of him -- now, how soon are you going to repair our house?" (p. 73) & at the same time highlights the tragic conflicts (Sunni vs Shia; Arab vs Jew) within their own world view.

IN THE RED ZONE is a riveting personal account that grips you from start to finish. You will be amazed, alarmed, angered, & moved to tears. Steven Vincent's writing is fluent & thoughtful, evocative & funny -- "We have to laugh about our lives, or we'll go mad." Qasim said."(p. 38).

Steven Vincent went to Iraq on his own dime, beholden to no one, because he'd witnessed the 9/11 attacks: he had to know why & how we liberated Iraq. His adventures IN THE RED ZONE tells you what he learnt, & what he & the people he talked to think about terrorism, insurgents & resistance fighters, tribal loyalty & fanaticism, & the changing times.

Man though he is, he manages to meet the women: the quiet & courageous heroines determined to gain suffrage from under the veil with which the other half of the world has smothered them. Here you'll learn about legal killings & family "honor".

Steven Vincent gets around via taxis, & often winds up in the heart of the action: Imagine a celebration where death images are the decorations & flagellation the merriment!

Oustanding!

I just finished reading Steven Vincent's "In the Red Zone", and I must say this is a great book on Iraq that I couldn't find another one these days. I was deeply moved and enthralled by the author's journalistic dedication, his great moral courage, his noble idealism, humanitarian perspectives on today's Iraqi society, all along with his amazing writing skills.

Sadly, we lost a hero, a real American hero! As a real journalist, Steven Vincent sacrificed his valuable life in Iraq. And if that will waken more of our people's consciences and firm our resolves on war to terrorism, his death is not in vain!

Steven C. Vincent, a New York City journalist who was kidnapped and killed in Iraq on Tuesday, was described by friends and colleagues yesterday as an intrepid newsman roused by the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and committed to shoe-leather reporting, whatever the consequences.

For much of his career, Mr. Vincent, 49, a freelance writer, had covered the art world, including museums, auction houses and the antiquities trade. But in September 2001, when he scrambled to the roof of his apartment building in the East Village and saw the second airliner strike the World Trade Center, "I saw the face of evil in that moment," he later told a friend.

Mr. Vincent resolved to go to Iraq, where he lived a hardscrabble life in a $15-a-day hotel and wrote articles about what he regarded as Islamic fascism. He compared his two trips to Iraq to the tours taken by journalists covering the rise of fascism in Europe during the Spanish Civil War.

First, let me say that Steven Vincent died for this book. He was murdered because he wrote brutally honestly about the dark underbelly of Iraq, about how here (and much of the Middle East) life is cheap and what passes for culture twists minds and perpetuates continued ignorance in the majority of the populace. Steven is gone now, but his opus is still available and if you only read one book about Iraq in your entire life, then In the Red Zone should be that one book.

I read this book in one sitting, from cover to cover, all 240 pages in the span of about six hours. Everything you need to know about the war, Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, the occupation, what the future could hold - it's in here. The good, the bad and the ugly are all laid out for you. This book will be of equal fascination to both pro and anti-war readers because Steven didn't sugarcoat a thing when he wrote In the Red Zone. He didn't sugarcoat Iraq one iota and he died for it.

Life is cheap in cultures that glorify death. Steven found that out the hardest way. His death has a silver lining - Nour - his brave Iraqi intrepreter. She was shot by the same vicious parasites that killed Mr. Vincent but survived and is still somewhere in Iraq (as far as I know), guarded, silenced or both. Steven and Nour are microcosms of the relationship between America and Iraq. Read In the Red Zone. It will force you to make adjustments to everything you thought you knew. In the Red Zone is Chapter 1 in the story of 21st century. Other Americans and Iraqis will be stepping forward to write Chapter 2. Are you one of them? Which side will you step forward on?

After our post 9/11 invasion of Iraq, Steven Vincent, a freelance reporter and art critic living and working in New York, wanted to learn more about that country. So he went there.

Vincent went to Iraq, not as an embedded journalist largely ensconced in the relative safety of the fortified and heavily guarded Green Zone, but as a vagabond, exploring Iraq's chaotic and lawless Red Zone and its people. In the Red Zone gives us a prospect rarely viewed. And Vincent returned and returned to Iraq's Red Zone, to learn and write more--to try to explain more. In the Red Zone is a precious journal of what he saw and what he learned; it can teach much to us and to our leaders.

In the Red Zone is an incredibly insightful book, drawing not only upon Vincent's cabbing it, unarmed and without bodyguards, throughout Iraq, but also on his research into the country, its people, its at-each-others'-throats religions, and tribal fissures. A supporter of the our invasion of Iraq, Vincent says there is plenty of blame for the current, seemingly intractable mess, not the least of which is what he sees as our country's failure of will to do all that is necessary to complete the job and help the Iraqi people to "escape the dungeon of their history." Vincent sees that history as a black hole of misogynist (that suppresses the potential contributions of half the Iraqi population) martyrdom-infused, malevolence.

In an eerie foreshadowing, Vincent describes a talk he gave to budding Iraqi journalists, now freed from Saddam's spiked yoke, telling them about how important a free press is to a functioning democracy. One of the young Iraqi reporters later told him: "You talk about freedom, but Iraqi journalists are still not free. If we go too deep into some stories, we will anger certain people-and they will kill us." True to that warning, Steven Vincent was murdered in Iraq, and speculation ranges from his writings linking Iraqi police to the Islamic fanatics seeking to destabilize the post-Saddam Iraq, to Vincent's friendship with a Muslim woman translator.

Vincent tells us that he was fully aware of the dangers, which finally exploded in a hail of bullets that silenced his voice. His reportage remains, however, not only to warn us of the layered dangers that face Iraq's future, and ours, but also to give us possible paths for their mediation and conquest. We ignore In the Red Zone at our peril.

Whether you supported or opposed the US-led liberation of Iraq, Steven Vincent's tales of his travels throughout Iraq offer a realistic and understandable glimpse at the challenges facing the U.S. and the people of Iraq. His conversations and interactions with ordinary Iraqis in cafes, in taxicabs, and at religious festivals are simultaneously enlightening and entertaining.

As an aside, reading the book following Mr. Vincent's death was eery and moving. Knowing that he was ultimately murdered in Basra made reading Mr. Vincent's description of his travels there riveting and painful.

Freelance journalist Vincent first visited Iraq in September 2003. While other reporters sheltered in insulated compounds or heavily-fortified hotels of the "Green Zone," he lived and traveled in the "Red Zone," that is without security and among ordinary Iraqis. In all, Vincent has penned one of the best-written accounts of post-Saddam Iraq, one of the few that captures the debates, issues, and contradictory emotions that Iraqis are juggling.

In the Red Zone fills a void left by the many think-tank pundits, academics, and journalists who wrote books in the wake of Saddam's fall, where the Iraqi voice is often lost. Vincent's account has the advantage of bringing to light his encounters with ordinary Iraqis. Among other experiences, he was in Karbala when a series of bombs killed 140 in the city in March 2004; and while traveling in Basra, he was briefly interrogated by U.S. intelligence. He makes no attempt to cover the minutiae of daily Iraqi politics but instead takes a big-picture approach.

That said, In the Red Zone has its limitations. There is little discussion of the Kurdish issue and minor errors of fact pop up-for example, the date when Iran's Safavid dynasty began.

In contrast to the usual journalistic practice of adding color to an article by including an occasional man-on-the-street interview, usually conducted by an Iraqi assistant, Vincent provides a deeper insight into Iraqis. He introduces the reader to Qasim, a Baghdad art gallery owner who, because of a club foot, managed to avoid the carnage of the Iran-Iraq war; Assad al-Abady, deputy director of the Iraqi National Organization for Human Rights; a secular Sunni woman torn between her love of freedom and the "humiliation" of having it delivered by foreigners; a Fallujah policeman who swears blood lust against Americans after U.S. soldiers kill his son; a Shi'ite taxi driver still euphoric over liberation; and a Christian woman in Basra whom Vincent later learns had been raped in her youth by Saddam's police.

Vincent also spent time with foreigners. He details a long conversation with a Canadian antiwar activist who lectured him about U.S. "human rights violations" but would not condemn insurgent terrorist attacks on Iraqi civilians or visit Saddam's mass graves. Vincent also describes a surrealistic encounter with CodePink, an American peace group, during which one member doubted that Saddam really was that bad. He also notes the Iraqi reaction to Western peace groups. "How can people accept for so long the crimes of a dictator, then rise up to try and stop a war begun to remove that dictator from power?" one Iraqi lawyer asked. "Antiwar activists should examine their consciences."

By Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2005
http://www.meforum.org/article/738