Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
For this Iraq they and we pay too much., 9 Dec 2006
Shorn of its wishful thinking and vacuous bluster this book does have a few pages of facts about who's who, what's what, and that the cost of this ill-conceived Iraqi debacle to America is likely to be two-trillion dollars in treasure, and in excess of three-thousand dead and twenty-thousand injured, at present estimates and body-count, of blood.
There are three fundamental problems. 1. A peaceful Iraq cannot be achieved whenever there is zero understanding of freedom, as per the individual and their self interest, with the role of government limited to defending freedom as specified by constitutional rights which are not based on philosophies-of-faith, but on rational principles. 2. The Israeli-Palestinian problem is a fabrication of radical-Islam in consort with international actors allied to the UN, and is not amenable to any contrived two-state solution within the envisaged territories. 3. Iraq's finances are inextricably tied to oil. But who owns the oil. As well as the concept of freedom, the concept of property rights must be established.
Although this book is well laid out and clearly and plainly written, it addresses none of these vital issues, but does spin its intellectual wheels interminably about in who's international and regional interests a stable Iraq may be, etc. Nevertheless, pottery-barn economics guide us: 'You break it, you own it'. But since Iraq has always been something of a cracked-croc since the time of its inception in 1922, there is ample grounds to reckon that America has paid over and above its value.to acquire ownership. That said, even America could do with some enlightenment about its philosophical underpinnings so that America's leadership can see clearly beyond this report.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Frank and constructive, 2 Feb 2007
This is a considered, frank but refreshingly constructive and readable examination of the situation in Iraq and of what needs to be done in both the short term and the long term to improve matters, written in a style which belies the turgidity which the title and subject matter might suggest.
As a linguist (and someone who has only visited America once), I was surprised at the size of the gulf between official UK English and its US counterpart. Was it GBS who said we were two nations divided by the same language? Whoever it was never spoke a truer word.
That does not, however, detract from the value of this report for all of us. It is refreshing in its recognition of the responsibility which the coalition must assume for what is happening in Iraq today and in the way it promotes the use of collaboration and co-operation in the search for a solution, rather than the imposition of a Western model. While it promotes the idea of Iraqi self-governance, however, it still recognises the need for US forces to be ready and able to intervene should the situation in the area deteriorate.
My fellow linguists will be shocked and horrified by the statistics on how few US Embassy employees in the area speak Arabic fluently; communication must surely be placed at the forefront of any efforts to resolve this huge problem.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Incomplete, 25 April 2007
For a main text of less than a hundred pages, aimed exclusively at policy-makers concerned with the question of What Next?, it is not bad - especially the recommendations on better US diplomacy in the region, ie Iran and Syria, and the Israel/Palestine dispute. Shame that doesn't appear to be happening.
I missed, though, any serious analysis of how the greatest military machine the world has ever known, run by the most powerful democratic state in history, had managed to get itself in this fix in the first place. So it feels very incomplete.
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