Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq [Hardcover]

Larry Diamond (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805078681 | ISBN-13: 978-0805078688 | Publication Date: May 26, 2005 | Edition: First Edition

America's leading expert on democracy delivers the first insider's account of the U.S. occupation of Iraq-a sobering and critical assessment of America's effort to implant democracy

In the fall of 2003, Stanford professor Larry Diamond received a call from Condoleezza Rice, asking if he would spend several months in Baghdad as an adviser to the the American occupation authorities. Diamond had not been a supporter of the war in Iraq, but he felt that the task of building a viable democracy was a worthy goal now that Saddam Hussein's regime had been overthrown. He also thought he could do some good by putting his academic expertise to work in the real world. So in January 2004 he went to Iraq, and the next three months proved to be more of an education than he bargained for.

Diamond found himself part of one of the most audacious undertakings of our time. In Squandered Victory he shows how the American effort to establish democracy in Iraq was hampered not only by insurgents and terrorists but also by a long chain of miscalculations, missed opportunities, and acts of ideological blindness that helped assure that the transition to independence would be neither peaceful nor entirely democratic. He brings us inside the Green Zone, into a world where ideals were often trumped by power politics and where U.S. officials routinely issued edicts that later had to be squared (at great cost) with Iraqi realities. His provocative and vivid account makes clear that Iraq-and by extension, the United States-will spend many years climbing its way out of the hole that was dug during the fourteen months of the American occupation.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In late 2003, Stanford University professor and democracy expert Larry Diamond was personally asked by his former colleague Condoleezza Rice to serve as an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, a position he accepted with equal parts "hesitation and conviction." He opposed the initial invasion of Iraq, but "supported building the peace," and felt the U.S. had a moral imperative to reconstruct Iraq as a democratic and prosperous nation. Before going to Iraq he had serious doubts about whether the U.S. could actually do this--an opinion that was solidified after spending three months working with the CPA. Squandered Victory is his insider's examination of what went wrong in Iraq after the initial invasion. Diamond details a long list of preventable blunders and missed opportunities, from President Bush's decision to give the Pentagon the lead responsibility for the management of postwar Iraq to the CPA's inability to work with Iraqi leaders such as Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Diamond expresses admiration for CPA Administrator L. Paul Bremer, whom he believes was sincere about wanting to bring democracy to Iraq, yet points out that he was wholly unprepared and unrealistic about the task, resulting in "one of the major overseas blunders in U.S. history." In his descriptions of confrontations with Bremer, Diamond shows him as unwilling to diverge from paths that were obviously failing.

As an academic with an expertise in democracy building, Diamond sometimes seems more comfortable with theories than practical solutions, but he did experience the process in Iraq from the inside and provides a useful background on the various ethnic and religious groups vying for power there. He claims that he remains hopeful, but his optimism lies more with the abilities of the Iraqi people than with the U.S. government, since the difficult process of democratization will likely take much more time and effort than the U.S. can afford to spend. --Shawn Carkonen

From Publishers Weekly

When Diamond got a call from his former Stanford colleague Condoleezza Rice asking if he would go to Baghdad to advise Iraqi authorities on drafting and implementing a democratic constitution, the political scientist, who had "opposed going to war but supported building the peace," was able to overcome his concerns about the region's instability. What he saw in Iraq during the first four months of 2004, however, left him extremely pessimistic about the prospects of success (although he admits all is not necessarily lost). Diamond sees a refusal to deal honestly with deteriorating conditions, particularly the rise of violent insurgency, and characterizes it as one of America's worst blunders ever; indeed, he calls that refusal "criminal negligence." Diamond's mounting personal frustration becomes apparent especially in direct confrontations with then Ambassador Paul Bremer. Though much of the story is given over to wonkish details of power brokering among Iraq's various political, ethnic and religious factions, there are also vibrant particulars of life inside the American compound, where even going out for pizza could be a life-threatening event. Such eye-witness experience bolsters this vivid critique of the current administration's foreign policy cornerstone.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Times Books; First Edition edition (May 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805078681
• ISBN-13: 978-0805078688
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,269,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat tedious, speaks truth, reveals our shortfalls, June 28, 2005

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Hardcover)

The bottom line is this book is on page 290: "We never listened to the Iraqi people, or to the figures in the country that they respected."

While some reviewers are critical of this author for representing all that is wrong with our post-war approach (he doesn't speak Arabic and knows nothing of the Middle East) I do not hold that against him--he tried to help, and he was the best we had. It is the fault of a long series of US Administrations, and multiple generations of Congress, that have chosen to ignore the real world and to short-change American education to the point that we are literally clueless as a Nation about the real world and how billions of people in the real world hold mixed feelings about America: admiring much of what we represent, while despising our immoral corporate and unilateral government behavior.

The U.S. Army, both before the war and in the post-reconstruction period--and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army--come out of this book looking very professional. The Army got it right, both in its pre-war estimates of what would be needed, and in its post-war recommendations. The author places the blame for the post-war deaths and disasters squarely at the feet of a naive President that empowered a Secretary of Defense inclined to go light, and side-lined a Department of State whose own intelligence estimates on Iraq have been consistently superior to those of either the Central Intelligence Agency or the Department of Defense.

I put this book down with a heavy heart, coincident with Secretary Rumsfeld announcing that we will be in Iraq and be taking losses for another twelve years. The good news is that Iraq will over time achieve its own balance, its own form of democracy. The bad news is that, as Winston Churchill has said so famously, "The Americans always do the right thing--they just do it last (after making every other possible mistake)."

See also:
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq
Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After: A Prelude to the Fall of U.S. Power in the Middle East?
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (Vintage)

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read, August 1, 2005

By 

jonny bakho (Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Hardcover)

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.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An in-depth look at post-invasion Iraq, February 4, 2006

By 

Lee L. (Washington DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Hardcover)

A few things that should be mentioned first...

For the reviewers that seem to think starting the book on the next to last chapter will suffice are actually committing the same mistake that the U.S. did, and that is trying to handle the topic of Iraq with next to no knowledge about the country. You can't be ignorant of what was happening then and expect to know what's happening now.

Also, give the author a break. Just because he's not a middle east expert and does not speak Arabic doesn't mean he's not qualified or shouldn't have written a book about his experience in Iraq. His area of concern is democracy itself which is something that applies to the whole world, not just the middle east. The work that he's done in the past is applicable in a general sense to Iraq or to any other country.

I enjoyed this book because of the detailed description of what was happening within the U.S. decision making body immediately after the invasion. The only other book that really discusses this topic is Noah Feldman's What We Owe Iraq. Put simply, this isn't material that you can just find anywhere. It isn't a scholarly endeavor like his other work...in a lot of ways it is a travel diary. Because of this it comes across a bit easier to read, but you can still extract a fair amount of scholarly information from the book.

This is a particularly dense book at times though and if you don't have anything beyond a passing interest in Iraq, then this book probably isn't for you. However, if you are interested enough to take the time to get through the book, I believe you will be rewarded. The book doesn't pretend to provide the one and only answer on how to deal with Iraq, and in a lot of ways the title is misleading, it's simply one person's take on what happened.

Like with Noah Feldman, I feel better knowing that there are people like Diamond who are trying to shape how the U.S. deals with Iraq. He comes across as a genuine person that wants to see things turn out for the better. Even though the U.S. didn't listen to him or Feldman when they should have, it's good to know that people like them are at least there and trying to make a difference.