Shop Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Buy used:
$4.99
$3.99 delivery January 11 - 13. Details
Or fastest delivery December 31 - January 6. Details
Used: Like New | Details
Sold by jf overstock books
Condition: Used: Like New
Comment: excellent clean like new
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Added to

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Larry Jay Diamond
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq Hardcover – Bargain Price, June 14, 2005

by Larry Diamond (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 32 ratings
See all formats and editions
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.
Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    384 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Times Books
  4. Publication date
    June 14, 2005
  5. Dimensions
    6.4 x 0.94 x 9.48 inches
  6. See all details
Next slide of product details
Books%20with%20Buzz
Books with Buzz
Discover the latest buzz-worthy books, from mysteries and romance to humor and nonfiction. Explore more

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Previous set of slides
  2. Electoral Systems and Democracy (A Journal of Democracy Book)
    Larry Diamond
     
    Paperback
    -45%$14.95
    List: $27.00
    Get it as soon as Friday, Jan 3
    FREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by Amazon
  3. Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy (A Journal of Democracy Book)
    Larry Diamond
     
    Paperback
    $36.65
    Get it as soon as Monday, Jan 6
    FREE Shipping by Amazon
    Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
  4. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
    Fareed Zakaria
     
    Paperback
    $17.95
    Get it as soon as Friday, Jan 3
    FREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by Amazon
Next set of slides

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
32 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top reviews from the United States

  • Jimin Ma
    4.0 out of 5 stars Hubris, arrogance and deficiency in historic perspectives.
    Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    Larry Diamond’s ‘Squandered Victory’, portraying his take on the war in Iraq, and while I was taking a moment to reflect on what I had learned from reading his experience, I found, quite by coincidence, that I can draw similar lessons from the two other recently finished reads.

    ‘The Best and the Brightest’ and the ‘Coldest Winter’, both by David Halberstam, about our involvement in the Vietnam war and in the Korean wars, which I had submerged in the months prior to turning the pages in ‘Squandered Victory’ – they are all about decision makers’ hubris and arrogance and their deficiencies in historic perspectives. In ‘The Best and the Brightest’, an overly confident statistician from Ford, an insolent egoist from Harvard, an un-elected, unassured president, had teamed up in setting up the most dreadful and the most humiliating blunder of American’s foreign conflict in its history. In the ‘Coldest Winter’, another self-aggrandizer egomaniac, Douglas Macarthur, told his soldiers that they’ll be home for the 1950 Xmas before plunging in the coldest, bitterest, carnage that took 35 thousand American lives and close to a million North Koreans and Chinese lives before settling on the same 38th geographic parallel as before the conflict – it gives me the chill with our current administration, lacking, even worse, in historic perspective and their oversized egos, managing the world during the most delicate timing of its political and climatic state, and leading us calamitously forward.
    Helpful
     Report
  • Ed Uyeshima
    4.0 out of 5 stars Academic Paints Post-Invasion Iraq as a Morass of Epic Proportions
    Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2005
    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.
    6 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • C. Collins
    5.0 out of 5 stars Detailed story of the tragedy of post-war Iraq
    Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2008
    Verified Purchase
    Larry Diamond is an internationally recognized expert on the processes, concepts and development of democracies. Thus it made perfect sense for Condoleza Rice to ask him to go into post-war Iraq and assist with the transition of Iraq to a democracy. This book details his experiences in Iraq from which he draws his conclusions about the many errors the United States made in regard to Iraq. The first nine chapters cover his experiences in Iraq. The tenth chapter summarizes the mistakes he thinks were made by the United States. The eleventh and final chapter covers his future predictions as to how Iraq will now evolve and whether democracy is possible under the conditions he observed while serving his nation in Iraq.

    There were mistakes made in regard to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The war itself will probably be seen by future generations as the major mistake made, however management of the occupation was a tragedy. There was a plan to quickly win the war but no plan how to secure the peace and maintain the victory. Neo-conservatives had been lead to believe unrealistic scenarios fabricated by Iraqi expatriates such as Ahmed and Salem Chalabi. The US only provided support to the Oil Ministry building in Baghdad and all other buildings were ransacked. The US War College oddly enough had fully predicted much of the chaos that would occur if insufficient troops were used to secure the victory. A major tragedy was that there were not enough quality supplies and materials available to the US servicemen and women post invasion. It was as if no planning what-so-ever had occurred as to how to secure the victory. The lives of these young men and women who died because the $400,000 canvas-top covered Hummers offered no real protection lies at the feet of Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, the Vice President and the President.

    Diamond would point out that the lack of post-war planning prior to the invasion would have to rank as one of the greatest mistakes made, one which had many unintended negative consequences for the Iraqi people and for the image of the United States. The neo-conservatives were dismissive of the UN yet needed the UN to offer the US coverage after the invasion. The British were insistent upon a larger role for the UN since it gave the invasion more legitimacy. The US wanted the UN to cover the US in regard to world opinion but never interfere in the occupational decisions.

    Another major mistake documented by Diamond is the disbanding of the entire Iraqi army of 700,000 soldiers as well as disbanding the civil infrastructure of teachers, librarians, college professors, civil servants, etc., al of which numbered around 400,000 persons. Thus the very forces that might help hold the country together were disbanded. Diamond indicates that one negative consequence of disbanding the military is that the borders were no longer secure, which allowed terrorists, spies, and other forces that wished to stimulate insurgency ready access to Iraq. Iran took immediate advantage of this major mistake and began to fill the power vacuum by ensuring that Shiite Iraqis sympathetic to and under Iran's influence received funds, weapons, and support to foster insurgency.

    A third major mistake was misunderstanding the cultures of Iraqi's major ethnic and religious groups. Diamond reports that young inexperienced Americans with inability to speak Arabic or with no background knowledge of the region were given vast responsibilities which they carried out in insensitive manners, frequently making matters worse rather than better.

    This is especially true in regard to Ayatollah Sistani, the leading religious influence and leader of the Shiites. Sistani had the ability to undermine every US effort and yet he was never engaged in a respectful manner and when he was eventually engaged by the US, much harm in relationships had occurred. This is a critical point because whereas the US wished Iraq to become a democracy with federalist attributes to protect the rights and resources of the Kurds, the Shiites recognized that with 60% of the population they could establish a democracy and yet maintain control of the entire country due to their numbers. Thus the Shiites wished for early elections, quick removal of the US, and then domination of the new government. Sistani was key to slowing down this rush to power which could stimulate a civil war and yet since he was never engaged properly he continued to support elections, starting with elections to determine who would write the new constitution. After months of work writing a new temporary constitution with appointed Iraqis, the Shiites walked out and refused to sign. This could have been avoided had Sistani been included more often in a meaningful way. In addition, whereas Iran has a theocracy where laws are reviewed and approved by religious leaders before enactment, Sistani was more liberal in his interpretation of the role of Islam in a democratic society. He was a potential ally. Whereas there are Shiite factions that receive support, funds, training and information from Iran; Sistani has not lined up with these forces and remains an Iraqi nationalists, resistant to undue influence from Iran. Sistani was also highly suspicious of the US efforts to divest the oil interests into private hands as quickly as possible.

    A fourth major mistake was the assumption of the neo-conservatives in the highest leadership positions in the Pentagon that the Iraqis would accept us with open arms as liberators and that the movement toward democracy would be speedy. The fostering of the democratic process requires multiple structural supports and cultural precursors. The neo-conservatives continued to have a negative influence on all decisions made after the invasion. They did this by vetting decisions made by the new Iraqi provisional council through Bremmer. Bremmer would negotiate a deal only to have it undermined by the neo-conservatives in Washington.

    Many of these mistakes lead to the two front insurgencies that occurred. The rise of al-Sadr and his Mahdi army was a highly negative force, disrupting much of the southern sections of Iraq where the Shiite majority resides. The Mahdi army created makeshift Sharia courts and tried and executed Iraqis for violation of Islamic law. Entire gypsy villages were destroyed due to the conflict between gypsy culture and Islamic law.

    The insurgency has many faces and origins now, resulting from multiple nationalistic, ethnic, cultural, and criminal influences. Unfortunately the unemployment of 700,000 soldiers provided ample manpower for the various factions. In addition, poor control of conventional Iraqi weapons meant they quickly fell into the hands of the insurgency, making life much more risky for US armed forces. Further incompetence lead to US funded weapons for police services also being diverted to the various insurgencies.

    Diamond and his colleagues worked hard to educate the people of Iraq about Federalism, a political conception that would allow for the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds to move toward democracy, form a central government, share power and resources, and maintain minority rights. They worked hard to create a transitional government and transitional constitution that would guide the way toward democracy. Yet they lacked resources. Not only did they need hard cars to travel safely around the country, there were insufficient educational and media campaign resources and materials. The democracy education process was vastly under resourced, as were resources needed just for personal safety of US citizens working in Iraq.

    Diamond, upon leaving Iraq, writes Condoleza Rice a detailed assessment outlining his fear of the high potential for civil war in Iraq. There were pitfalls in holding elections too soon and pitfalls in holding them too late.

    What does the future hold? Diamond pointed out that tremendous resources were being used to build military bases in Iraq. The case seems clear that the US sees that it must be in Iraq for an additional ten to twenty years to ensure a stable Iraq that can counter the force and influence of Iran. These bases help protect and support our four major clients in the region: Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

    Diamond suggests that the US consider allowing an agency such as USAID to specialize in post conflict reconstruction. He suggests that Sistani was correct that local elections for mayors should have begun early so as to build the capacity to understand democracy at a local level and then move to regional and then national levels. Diamond's final chapter would indicate that the forces toward democracy are many and sometimes they seem counter-intuitive. Despite the mistakes there is still hope.
    One person found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report