Professor Diamond was asked by Dr Rice help build a new Iraqi government. The book is a journal of the activities and actions of Professor Diamond interspersed with events on the ground in Iraq. The details can be difficult to follow and at times irrelevant to the overall story. I preferred to read the book by skipping around as a previous reviewer suggested. The paragraphs are more like a series of daily activity reports than an organized attempt to tell a story. The book offers unique insights into the inner workings of the American Occupation Administration in Iraq within the sphere of Professor Diamond. The reader gets a few glimpses of higher level decisions, but much of the story at the decision making level is missing if Professor Diamond was not privy to the conversations. In reading the book, it is important to keep in mind that Professor Diamond is viewing the situation with limited information. He thus recounts details of his own work on the intellectual framework for democracy and efforts to communicate American Democratic Ideals to the intellectual elite of Iraq. It is interesting that this was a major focus of one the limited personnel available in Iraq, but readers are left to fill in the blanks about the machinations at higher levels of administration and efforts directed to more central goals of the occupation.
Diamond responded to the call for help, but he was self-aware that his lack of knowledge of Iraq, Arabic and local politics made him marginally qualified for the task he was handed. Reading the book instills a sense of anger at how badly the Bush Administration has botched post-war Iraq. The conclusion of the book is that the Bush Administration ignored its own experts within its own administration, ignored expert advice available to it in American Academia and elsewhere within the US, and ignored experts at the UN and other international experts that could have helped. Instead the Bush Administration cobbled together an ill suited group to run Iraq. These included recent college grads with resumes on file at conservative think tanks but no real world experience and intellectuals such Dr. Diamond who has a great understanding of the theory of democracy but had no sense of the important details that could make the difference between a successful or unsuccessful implementation.
Prof. Diamond lays much of the blame for the failure in Iraq at the feet of the civilians in the Pentagon. He leaves off criticism of Dr Rice but it is clear that she had so little grasp of the Iraq situation as to think that someone who knew no Arabic and very little about Iraq would be qualified for the job. This blunder demonstrates the contempt that the Bush administration has for democracy at its core, the need for competent, honest government to administer the law and the mandate of the people. The penchant of the Bush administration to allow corruption and cronyism to override responsible government is in full view. A mature stable democracy such as the US can survive a short bout of such corruption and cronyism and correct those excesses. However, a new project such as Iraq is a delicate balance that is easily destroyed by corrupt and crony government. By his daily accounts, Diamond gives the reader insight into how an ideological and unsound worldview coupled with the worst kind of government corruption can frustrate even the best-intentioned and honest public servants.
Diamond senses that someone more knowledgeable about Iraq was needed on staff, but American experts were as ignored as the Iraqis themselves. In several places, Diamond's lack of knowledge of Iraq and Iraqi politics leads him astray and his readers as well. For instance, Diamond has a sense of Muqtada al Sadr from his Iraqi intellectual contacts who are at odds with the al Sadr. The failure of the American Occupation to understand who al Sadr is and what he is resulted in the ill-fated attempts to kill or capture him. I was somewhat disappointed that Prof Diamond did not endeavor to better understand this important faction of impoverished Iraqi Shiites in writing his book.
The book induced much head shaking including the actions of the author. WTF was he spending his time giving seminars to the intellectual elites? His POV is enlightening because part of the problem in Iraq has been a US elitist attitude that common people don't know democracy. Democracy is nothing more than the rules that men agree to abide by. Democracy cannot exist without respect for rule of law. Diamond even writes this in his book. However, we read of the efforts of Professor Diamond to lecture on the finer points of democracy, rights of the minority, etc. (a personal high point?) while the fundamental priority needs to be the bringing together all parties to agree on a set of rules. Prof. Diamond is either not charged to address the fundamental issue or sets off to do what he can elsewhere. Meanwhile, any possibility of negotiating a set of rules acceptable to enough Iraqis to be workable is being undermined by attempts by the US make the rules as the book details.
Professor Diamond details a number of blunders that made the situation worse and may have made it impossible for the US to achieve its goals in Iraq. However, left off Diamond's list was the attempt by the US to impose democracy from the top down, instead of from the bottom up. Why was no effort made to first establish democracy at the neighborhood level? Someone more familiar than Diamond with democracy within Labor Unions or the Chinese model of worker associations might have addressed this important component and why it was missing from the post-war Iraq plan. Having neighborhoods responsible for security and for prioritizing their concerns to be passed to a higher level is one way to instruct the broader public on democracy and empower them by doing. The closest the book comes to discussing this aspect of democracy is to criticize giving huge contracts to corrupt American companies that did not deliver instead of having Iraqis rebuild their own country. From the outside looking in, Prof Diamond's time in Iraq could have been better spend addressing democracy at the community level.
The book ends by asking whether or not Iraq can become a democracy. Of course it can. Any country can. But no occupied country is ever a democracy.
Overall, the book is a useful and interesting account of life on the ground as part of the American Occupation.
