Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Significant and Disturbing But Valuable Revelations, 10 Dec 2005
Like many others, I receive my news from a variety of electronic and print sources and almost always in small portions. One of few exception is The New York Times. Another is The New Yorker magazine to which I have also subscribed for decades. I vividly recall articles written by Elizabeth Drew, for example, who brought uncommon intelligence and sensitivity to sometimes highly controversial issues in the 1973-1992 period. Today, I read with special appreciation articles written for The New Yorker by Hendrik Hertzberg and George Packer. I mention all this by way of suggesting why I was so eager to read Packer's The Assassins' Gate and then having done so, why I now hold it in such high regard. Actually, there are several reasons. First, Packer provides convincing, indeed disturbing answers to questions such as these:
1. What were the intellectual origins of the Iraq war? Who were its principal advocates? Why?
2. How do these origins explain initiatives and events which preceded and then followed the invasion and subsequent occupation by American troops?
3. What are are Packer's own eyewitness observations of the consequences?
4. Which of the Iraqi dissidents does Packer consider most significant? I was especially interested in what he has to say about Kanan Makiya.
5. What did Packer learn while traveling within Iraq, especially from conversations with Iraqis now living there who had personally observed and experienced (for better or worse) the regime of Saddam Hassein? Of special interest to me is what Packer observed (and shares) during a visit to the northern city of Kirkuk.
Also, Packer makes every effort to acknowledge as fairly as he can a remarkably wide range of political opinions, extending from Far Left Liberals to Far Right Conservatives. He even notes the nuances of difference between Vice President Cheney's realism and Paul Wolfowitz' neoconservatism. Of course, Packer has opinions of his own, several of which were changed -- some significantly -- by what he personally experienced while in Iraq.
Also, Packer reveals a great deal about current day-to-day life there for Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. He seeks (and welcomes) their opinions, respects their aspirations, and shares their concerns. Certain ideas led to the war. Which ideas will prevail as Iraq now struggles to achieve self-determination, in whatever form that eventually proves to be? What do the Iraquis themselves think about all this?
Finally, in this volume Packer demonstrates skills of the highest level both as an exceptionally astute reporter and as an erudite interpreter of what he has observed. That is to say, his reader is provided with both a wealth of detailed information and a frame-of-reference within which to understand that information.
Like a gate, Packer's book offers a point-of-entry. He guides his reader to a broader and deeper understanding of both a complicated process and the consequences, to date, of that process. Now what? Where is the gate which provides an acceptable point-of-departure?
Meanwhile....
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easily the best book on the Iraq mess - disturbing, stunning, 9 Jan 2006
I have a whole bookcase of books about the Iraq business and this is far and away the best - and that is saying something! I would agree with everything that the previous reviewer wrote, and so I won't repeat his detailed summary; suffice it to say that the story is alarming, the writing amazing, the breadth and the depth are awe-inspiring. If you have to read only one book on Iraq, make it this one. (All my friends got compulsory copies).
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