Customer Reviews

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

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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)

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.

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.

Larry Diamond, professor at Stanford and friend of Condaleeza Rice, had studied, observed, and assisted democracy-building efforts in 20 countries over two decades prior her asking him to help in Iraq. His book relates subsequent democracy-building efforts (in overly long detail), and a litany of already reported mostly Pentagon blunders that have undermined success.

Retired General Garner was the initial choice to lead post-war efforts. Unfortunately he was hampered by Pentagon vetoing his key choices for assistants that had good Iraq background and skills. General Garner thought the U.S. would be out in six months. While Garner did relate well to the Kurds (had worked with them previously), his knowledge and interest in the rest of Iraq was limited, and he soon was replaced by Paul Bremer.

Soon after arrival, Bremer ended plans for a quick turnover (per White House), angering Iraqis and damaging U.S. credibility. He then disbanded Iraq's army, and removed senior Baathist members (30-50,000) from government. Both caused immediate, serious and lasting anger, and helped "underwrite" strong resistance. Bremer then ignored Ayatollah Sistani's call for an elected body to create Iraq's new constitution - reportedly because concerned that early elections would be dominated by better organized radicals, and would suffer from lacking adequate voter rolls, supervision, etc. Next began squabbling with the U.N. over who had what power vs. elections.

Diamond's efforts soon began communicating information about democracy. Nationwide dialogs, facilitated by 500-600 Iraqis, took place - asking Iraqis what they wanted to accomplish. Translations of Federalist papers, Martin Luther King speeches, etc. were also arranged for. Unfortunately, the effort was hampered by conflicts with Islam over the role of women, and families issues, as well as the underlying jockeying between Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd ethnic groups.

Reading through Diamond's accounts of these democratizing efforts I was struck by the idiocy of it all - attempting such an effort while basic societal requirements for security and utilities were increasingly unmet. Diamond, however, held his similar thoughts until the end of the book. There he unhappily concluded that the widespread and serious post-war problems in Iraq have ironically become justification for neighboring regimes to insist that their culture and politics similarly are not ready for democracy.

Mistakes made including giving post-war control to the Pentagon despite obvious early errors - eg. allowing looting of all government offices EXCEPT the oil ministry (we're after their oil; Rumsfeld's response - "stuff happens"), disbanding the army, not insuring early and adequate payment of police, etc., not enough troops (resulting in leaving the borders open), over-estimating the popularity of returning exiles (eg. Chalabi), failure to protect/destroy weapons caches, early failure to recognize Sistani's importance, initial failure to recognize the need for including Sunni's, unarmored vehicles, indecisiveness in handling Sadr, delaying elections, and using some ludicrously inadequate personnel (very young individuals in way over their heads). Overall, Diamond concluded that our efforts equated to "criminal negligence."

Conclusions: 1)A democratic state cannot be built unless one first provides state security. 2)The long-term outcome in Iraq is uncertain. 3)Diamond probably will not be invited to the White House or back to Iraq.

Dr. Diamond's wisdom, expertise and insight unfold like a well-written novel. For those of us who have had difficulty grasping Iraq's history, culture, religious tensions and social intricacies (let alone its geography), and who have struggled to understand why we first went to and still remain in Iraq today, Diamond's honest account is enlightening and captivating. We find ourselves wanting to turn the next page. We immediately admire his youthful optimism at the beginning of the quest but predict, as he takes us through and beyond the Green Zone in graphic detail, the likely path of misfortune that lies ahead. And yet, like Diamond, we come away from the final pages with still a glimmer of hope.
Surely, Diamond's critical analysis will anger some, but we must respect his courage for accepting Dr. Rice's challenge (and apparent plea) to embark on the monstrous journey to plant the seeds of democracy in Iraq.
What also shines admirably through this book is its lessons (in simple English) of what a democracy is all about, how it must evolve with baby steps, respect and patience. Diamond clearly has volumes to teach about building a democracy; we have a lot to learn. This is a must read!

"Squandered Victory" is, I submit, a book which will have wide appeal to those who are intellectually interested in America's recent intrusion into Iraq, its justification for that intrusion, and its problem with "building a peace" after defeating the Iraqi military, bringing down Saddam Hussein, and occupying the country. The general reader, however, may run into difficulty handling the depth of detail that Larry Diamond provides and upon which he bases his evaluation of the current Iraq situation and his recommendations for establishing a stable and prosperous Iraq in the future. Therefore, I suggest that the general reader may be better served by reading the Introduction and then Chapters 1 and 2, followed by reading the last two chapters (10 and 11), before tackling the other chapters in the book. I don't often recommend this procedure but, in this particular case, I'm afraid the ordinary reader may get bogged down amongst the "trees," and fail to complete a reading of the book, thereby missing the "forest."

Diamond's book is steeped in detail. And rightly so. But his conclusions (Chapters 10 and 11) should not be ignored and, indeed, in my opinion, constitute the most important part of the entire work. The author is eminently qualified to draw the conclusions he does, criticizing the policies and practices of the American occupation, pointing out what went wrong, and suggesting possibilities for making things right. He certainly has the proper credentials: senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, well-respected political scientist and sociologist, academic position at Stanford University; and the appropriate experience: an activist expert and lecturer on democratic institutions, coeditor of the "Journal of Democracy," and, of course, serving as a senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, this latter position providing the experience which forms the basis for what he has to say in "Squandered Victory."

It was Dr. Condoleezza Rice who asked Professor Diamond to go to Iraq as an advisor to the CPA. In January of 2004 he arrived in Baghdad and worked inside the now famous (infamous to some) "Green Zone" until April of that year. He experienced firsthand the frustrations, the fears, the angers, the ups and downs, the hopes and disappointments, not only of his fellow coworkers in the CPA, but of the Iraqi people as well. Diamond's accounts of his personal experiences while in Iraq are secondary to the main intent of the book, but he relates them in a vivid exposition of the dangers and frustrations of daily living within what was and still is a war zone ((I mean, how would you feel about going out for a pizza, realizing you were risking your life in the process?).

The author was not a supporter of the war in Iraq; he makes that announcement at the outset. He felt, however, that since the war and occupation were now realities and the Saddam Hussein had been overthrown, and being, if my interpretation of his position is correct, a pragmatist when it comes to political affairs (as I am), then, if he could help in building a democratic Iraq, he would do so. What he discovered, once he was working within the CPA, was a series of blunders, miscalculations, and missed opportunities on the part of the American occupation authority in dealing with the actual situation. Many of those who were in positions of authority and advisement are severely criticized by Diamond, including CPA Administrator L. Paul Bremer who, if Diamond is correct, was simply not prepared for the task at hand and had no clear plan as to what to do to establish a democratic government in the country.

Obviously the United States "won" the war on the ground. But I think, considering the overwhelming capabilities of the U.S. military, that was a given. We could literally destroy any country on the face of the earth if we wanted to. The problem, however, as I think Diamond clearly points out, is "making" the peace on the ground. This has not been done and, it appears, may not be done for many years. "Squandered Victory" provides plenty of evidence as to why this is the case. It exposes both the naiveté and the premature optimism of the Bush administration in deciding to invade Iraq and "impose" a democratic form of governance on a country which had no tradition of democracy and little understanding of it. It also seems, if I'm interpreting the author's presentation correctly, that there has been little opportunity to actually present the fundamentals of a democratic sociopolitical organization to the Iraqi people themselves (who, after all, wants to conduct seminars, workshops, or give lectures while being shot at or at risk for roadside bombs?).

Professor Diamond does appear to remain somewhat positive about bringing democracy to Iraq, provided certain changes in policy are made and implemented. I have to part company with him at this point. I am not at all optimistic about success in Iraq, despite the author's take on the matter. My considered opinion, for what it's worth, is that Iraq may likely become Bush's Vietnam. I sincerely hope I am wrong. But, if we should have learned anything from the hard experience of our previous military misadventures in the latter half of the twentieth century, it is this: We may "win" a military victory over any army that dares to challenge us; but we cannot "win" a war with insurgents or factionalists who look upon us as an occupying power and have the support of a significant portion of the population.

Lest some readers think my review is biased in favor of the "leftist" or "liberal" position on the war, let me inform you that my views are in accord with traditional American conservatism (Classical Liberalism) which adheres to at least five fundamental tenets, one of which states that we should refrain from getting involved in foreign political entanglements, particularly of the military variety. This is an important book and I recommend it to all readers.

A professor of political science and sociology at Stanford and a renowned "democracy building" expert, author Larry Diamond brings a bracing perspective to the reconstruction effort that continues to go on in Iran. What makes this a highly recommended read is that Diamond is preoccupied not with Bush's decision to go to war and turning his book into more of a polemic but with the empirical fact that there was no workable plan by the Bush administration to secure the peace afterward. He should know since he was tapped by former Stanford colleague Condoleezza Rice to serve as an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, the US-run body that ruled Iraq from May 2003 through June 2004.

What makes the book resonate is his eyewitness account of the failed attempt to bring democracy to Iraq. Along with two Iraqi exiles, he was there to draft Iraq's interim constitution, known as the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), without any guidance from Washington on just how to do it. According to Diamond's account, the degree to which the Bush Administration misread the postwar situation in Iraq is staggering, just as much as the open-ended task given to him to complete without any participation of the local populace whose future the three of them were designing. This mammoth task included determining the authority of the occupying power; providing the optimal balance among Shiite ambition, Kurdish separatism and Sunni alienation; creating a system of checks and balances; and enshrining respect for human rights in the law.

However, it was all done in the hermetically sealed "palace" in Baghdad, and the readiness of Iraq for democracy was not even a factor that was considered, even though the nation was obviously a deeply divided society filled with hostility toward American imperialism and lacking a strong middle class to support the constitution. For Diamond, the CPA's administrator, L. Paul Bremer, typified the arrogant complacency in the failure to realize how Iraqis saw their American occupiers. The gulf between the powerful and the powerless widened as Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army and barred mid-grade and senior Baathists from public employment. However brutal his criticisms, Diamond does not make Bremer the complete scapegoat, as the author points out that some of the worst decisions Bremer made were probably imposed on him by senior members of the Bush Administration.

Diamond has guarded hope for the future of Iraq as well he should. His assessment is fair-minded enough to recognize that occupation did bring some benefits, for instance, new political parties, a stronger civil society and a less dogmatic educational system. In fact, he admits there is the possibility that Iraq may emerge slowly from the existing political chaos, first into a troubled semi-democracy, and then, gradually into a full democracy. Going back to his academic role in the last chapter, Diamond provides hindsight guidance on how future American occupations could be handled after such invasion, though it is difficult to comprehend how advice could be taken seriously given the idiosyncrasy of localized conflict as it moves to a global stage. He provides a utopian sense that ultimately lacks credibility.

The bottom line in Diamond's treatise, however, is that the Bush administration displayed too much hubris and engaged in too much wishful thinking. Washington's broader Iraq policy, according to Diamond, is an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions, and the laundry list of breeches is beyond disturbing. They include not only purging the Baath Party and disbanding the army, but also invading Iraq with too few forces to maintain security, letting the Pentagon set the strategy for postwar Iraq and failing to plan effectively for peace. Obviously, anyone who has read "Imperial Hubris" by Michael Scheuer (formerly Anonymous) will have known about these failed decisions, but Diamond offers a first-hand account that is genuinely unique. This is truly eye-opening reading well worth it for the deeper understanding of what is really going on in Iraq.

I thought I knew just how badly the Bush administration was at governing, until I read this book about how badly they governed Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the war. This book will make you even angrier about every single death since the war ended, every dollar spend, every new enemy made. Not because the author is a saint in academia who stood above the fray, but because he went there to make a contribution and discovered there was no way to talk to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Bremer or anyone else about making better decisions. He gives the insider's, blow-by-blow account of just what went wrong--and account you aren't going to get from anyone working for the white house these days...or, sadly, from many in the corporate media.

In Squandered Victory, Diamond provides an insightful and penetrating analysis of how poor planning, bad decision-making, and a stubborn insistence on an ideological point of view, in the face of clear facts to the contrary, contributed to the mess that is now a fact of daily life for the Iraqi people and for the world community. Diamond does an excellent job of sorting through a mountain of detail to provide a clear and compelling picture from an insider's point of view. This is a must read for anyone who wants to be informed about the nature of this historic American occupation and effort.

An incredible but inedibly dense book that could have benefited from judicious editing and a detailed chart (Russian novel style) listing the players and their affiliations. (I often found myself reading about an Iraqi whose name sounded vaguely familiar. I'd interrupt my reading to flip back to the index, find the name, locate the previous mention of the person, then continue reading.) Diamond also has the habit of alluding to incidents that occurred outside the scope of the book, and the reader is left to put the pieces together.

Those quibbles aside, Diamond presents an understated and thoroughly documented portrait of what happened in Iraq, what didn't happen, and why. The arrogance of the administration--who chose to ignore the advice of those with greater insight into the big picture--was (and probably continues to be) a major contributing factor to the United States' failure to impose democracy on a shattered country. Diamond notes the bubble that housed the Americans, the lack of contact with the Iraqi people, the failure to protect any Iraqi institutions (other than those related to oil production) and to guard the border. He colors in the background behind the sound bites; his perspective enables the reader to understand the dynamics of this misbegotten effort.

Other reviewers have criticized Diamond for his lack of understanding of the real Iraq. But Diamond enumerates the four attributes required of personnel in a post-war reconstruction zone, freely acknowledges that he possesses only two of them, and notes that no one possessed all four. Because the administration had overlooked or effectively silenced the voices of those who might have enabled the transition to be successful (Diamond mentions the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, the Army's chief of staff, a RAND study) they were left to rely on people without adequate experience or skills--recent college graduates, in some cases--to rebuild the country.

Diamond does not shirk from offering a scenario that might have proven more successful: deploy more U.S. soldiers from the start, protect the infrastructure to maintain public order and prevent looting, provide incentives to engage the Iraqi police along with the soldiers and Baath party members in the new regime, promote true democracy by soliciting participation from Iraqis at all levels. While realizing that this strategy would not have ensured success, the administration would have benefited from choosing to respect Iraqi institutions and people. Democracy, as many have noted, cannot be imposed at the end of a gun.

Diamond does not offer much hope for Iraq, at worst seeing it as another Lebanon or Congo, at best a Nigeria--corrupt, but quasi-democratic. More significantly, he does not suggest that the current administration has learned from its mistakes, or that anyone who has the power to effect change has any plans to conduct future operations in a more insightful or productive manner.