Boganmeldelse: The End of Iraq

I forsommeren kom endnu en bog i en lang række af bøger, som gør status på især USA's planlægning og udførsel af krigen i Irak. Bogen, The End of Iraq, er skrevet af Peter W. Galbraith, der udover at være søn af den kendte forfatter, politiker og diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith også er diplomat i sin egen ret.Netop dette adskiller bogen fra mange af de alternative fortællinger omkring USA's eventyr i Irak, for mens de fleste andre bøger er skrevet af politiske journalister i Washington, rækker Galbraiths forhold til Irak mere end to årtier tilbage i tiden. Forfatteren arbejdede som embedsmand i Senetatets Foreign Relations Committee fra 1979 og var i den kapacitet en hands-on-observatør af den amerikanske Irak-politik gennem firserne, og han oparbejde i samme periode et tæt forhold til politikere i Kurdistan (heriblandt den nuværende irakiske præsident Jalal Talabani). Med dette udgangspunkt var han førstehåndsvidne til Saddam Husseins anfal-kampagne i slutfirserne, hvor Hussein gassede sine landsmænd i nordirakiske Kurdistan, og Galbraith krediterer i bogen sig selv som forfatter af den lovgivning, der indførte de første amerikanske sanktioner mod Irak.

Dette indgående kendskab til årtiers irakisk historie klemmes ind i bogens første 70-80 sider. Det kan virke kursorisk til tider, men det giver absolut læsere, der (som jeg, desværre) ikke har et indgående kendskab til begivenhederne omkring Iran-Irak-krigen, en vigtig baggrundsviden for at forstå landets nuværende etniske splid.

Resten af bogen er mere nutidig. Det er for det første en gennemgang af både optakten til og udførslen af krigen. Hér er det især Galbraiths egne (til tider hjerteskærende, ofte bitre) anekdoter, der bærer historien om amerikansk inkompetence, arrogance og, for at sige de rent ud, dumhed. Blandt andet var Galbraith, sammen med et filmhold fra TV-kanalen ABC, i Irak umiddelbart efter Bagdads fald for at lede efter dokumenter af og omkring det forrige regime:

"Our ABC team had no difficulty finding documents. At Uday Hussein's house [we] found the personnel records of the Saddam Fedayeen, the guerilla force that had carried out deadly ambushes against American troops advancing on Baghdad. It later became a pillar of the insurgency. [...]
Across Firdos Square from the Sheraton, we found a principal Iraqi center for wiretaps and other electronic eavesdropping. Behind a set of doors and a false wall, we discovered a stair case and rooms stuffed with transcripts of conversations, including intercepts of U.N. and foreign embassies' communications. The Iraqi intelligence services even spied on each other and there were tapes of their conversations. [...]

Squatters told us they had been told to burn the papers by a nocturnal Iraqi visitor, who they presumed was from Saddam's intelligence services. I called Wolfowitz's (Da under-forsvarsminiter, neokonservativ og krigsarkitet; nu præsident for Verdensbanken) office in the hope he could arrange protection for the transcripts. I also offered to turn over the Saddam Fedayeen files. Nothing happened. Even though the Sheraton was surrounded by U.S. troops, the deputy secretary of defence's office could not arrange a pickup of the Fedayeen documents. One would have thought it might be useful to have names and home addresses of people already attacking U.S. troops. Of course, they did not protect the transcripts. [...]

Over the three weeks I was in Iraq, I went unchallenged into many important Iraqi buildings and facilities. These included the Foreign Ministry, the Trade Ministry, the former Royal Palace, the Iraqi Olympic Committee headquarters, Mosul University, Uday Hussein's house, prisons, arms depots, and intelligence facilities. Looters were at work in every building I visited but not once did I have a sense of danger. On the contrary, they were friendly, and several asked me to take their pictures as the carted off public property. [...]

Many of the sites I visited had obvious intelligence value [...] [y]et neither the Pentagon not the CIA seems to have made any effort to mine these sites for intelligence. As part of it's case for war, the Bush Administration alleged that Iraq was covertly acquiring materials for weapons of mass destruction [...]. The Foreign Ministry would have been a logical place to find documents relating to Iraq's foreign intelligence activities and to procurement of forbidden materials. But looters were the only people I saw prying open foreign ministry safes. They were visibly disappointed to find the safes held documents and not money.

Rumsfeld (Forsvarsminister) did think the Oil Ministry was important, and as I passed it on April 15 (2003), I saw an American tank and a handful of troops stationed in its walled compound. Nearby, the Ministry of Irrigation burned, destroying the plans and blueprints for Iraq's dams, barrages, pumping stations, and thousands of kilometers of canals. The implications were obvious. Oil was a priority, but the water on which millions of Iraqis depended was not. Many Iraqis had the same thought."

Nå, ikke mere citat for nu, men uddraget ovenfor viser bogens styrke: En personlig relatering af omstændighederne koblet med en god portion harme og indignation. Det kunne sagtens kamme over og blive moraliserende, men diplomaten Galbraith holder heldigvis sig selv tilbage i tilstrækkelig grad. Man sidder derfor tilbage med en fornemmelse af, at intet udelades af historien for at spare nogens følelser. Galbraith er mildest talt ingen fan af Saddam Hussein, men han understreger tydeligt, at dette spørgsmål må dekobles fra USA's egen involvering i Irak.

Bogens sidste tredjedel behandler de nuværende etniske stridigheder -- i sine voldelige, men også især i sine politiske inkarnationer -- i Irak, og Galbraith fokuserer især på befolkningen i det de facto autonome og forholdsvist rolige Kurdistan. Forfatteren er stærk fortaler for at splitte Irak op og for en amerikansk (og dansk) tilbagetrækning til netop Kurdistan. Galbraith opsummerede selv for nyligt dette argument i en kronik i New York Times, Our Corner of Iraq.

En opsummering i stjerner? Nej. Men det skal ikke afholde Publius fra at give Galbraiths bog en varm anbefaling. The End of Iraq er dog ikke alene om emnet og markedet. I øjeblikket toppen Tom Ricks salgslisterne med Fiasco, mens tidligere journalitiske gennemgange af Irakkrigen inkluderer Micheal Gordons Cobra II og George Packers The Assassin's Gate. Publius inviterer naturligvis eventuelle danske forlag eller distributører af disse bøger til at sende os anmeldereksemplarer.