"Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone" by Rajiv Chandraskearan is deeply engrossing account of the American occupation of Iraq after the Second Gulf War from 2003 to 2004. It is a book laden with irony, overwhelming stupidity, and ultimately good but woefully misguided intentions that leaves one disheartened at the failed opportunity to rebuild Iraq after years of war and mismanagement.

I'll admit that I approached this book preparing to be enraged. Enraged at how things were mismanaged, enraged at squandered opportunities, enraged at the ideological battles that clearly enveloped the whole enterprise. And all of these things did happen but I found myself feeling another unexpected mix of emotions: inspired by the ambition of the Americans (to build a modern, secular liberal democracy with free trade in the Middle East) but saddened at the disconnect between reality and theory that was the rule rather than the exception in the Green Zone, a walled off compound in Bagdad where most of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) ran the occupation.

While the ambition was there, the will to provide talent and resources was not. The fact is that most people chosen for assignments in Iraq were not the ones who had studied the area for many years but for the most part were Republican Party loyalists. Many if not most were woefully under qualified for the roles they were given. Most of them did not speak Arabic. The people who knew the area, especially those from the CIA and the State Department were excluded or ostracized, seen as too pessimistic about the mission. And these people pursued widespread changes to Iraqi society such as instituting a flat tax, creating copyright laws, reforming the traffic code and pushing to privatize industry and health care- ideas with a lot of ideological pull but completely unnecessary or irrelevant to the immediate concerns of everyday Iraqis. Furthermore, it is clear that the United States was promised an epic war with noble intentions on the cheap with no sacrifices. We were not expected to pour the hundreds of billions of dollars or send hundreds of thousands of troops needed to successfully do the occupation and reconstruction. The most galling aspect for me was the heavy-handed use of private contractors for nearly every task normally associated with the military or humanitarian groups from building houses to even training the Iraqi police!

The books topic is compelling enough but what makes the story shine is Chandraskearan's writing and presentation. A journalist for the Washington Post who spent nearly three full years in Iraq both pre and post invasion, the author is a strong, clever writer who tells the story without allowing himself to get in the way. He does not insert himself needlessly into the narrative but instead inhabits the world like a fly on the wall and only appears when necessary. While not wholly objective, he does not allow his own beliefs and passions to overshadow his observations. Instead, he allows the events to speak for themselves. His strength lies lies in the ability to create images and anecdotes to show wider ideas about what is ultimately a very confusing and complex undertaking. In between most chapters are small vignettes which give the reader a small insight into the lives of inside the Green Zone. In my opinion, the book stands out among journalistic accounts of the War on Terror and will become a classic in war reporting well worth reading.