by Amy Chua
key positions of power: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 83; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 206; Selig S. Harrison, “Afghanistan’s Tyranny of the Minority,” New York Times, August 16, 2009.
top ministry positions: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 83, 116; Harrison, “Afghanistan’s Tyranny of the Minority.”
Afghan National Army: Harrison, “Afghanistan’s Tyranny of the Minority”; see also Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 190–91.
“[t]hey get the dollars”: Harrison, “Afghanistan’s Tyranny of the Minority”; see also Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 206.
grew increasingly alienated: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 16, 206.
at the very bottom: Ibid., 16.
hiding in the mountains: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 77.
turned our back: Ibid., 86–88; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 206.
failed to implement: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 86–88; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 206.
extortions, rapes, gang robberies: Coll, Ghost Wars, 282–83.
corruption and lawlessness: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 86–88; Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 206.
“The Taliban is out”: Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 588.
By 2010, the Taliban: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 186.
$650 billion on the war: Siddique, The Pashtun Question, 205.
43 percent: Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Quarterly Report to the United States Congress, January 30, 2017, 89–90.
“the Taliban have”: Euan McKirdy and Ehsan Popalzai, “Afghan Troops Withdraw from Key Area in Fight with Taliban,” CNN, March 24, 2017.
the Pakistani Taliban: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 151; “Pakistan Taliban: Peshawar School Attack Leaves 141 Dead,” BBC News, December 16, 2014.
“not sufficiently studied”: Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 168–69.
“The Pashtun Dilemma”: See, e.g., Siddique, The Pashtun Question; Sarwar, “Ashraf Ghani and the Pashtun Dilemma”; Tim Willasey-Wilsey, “The Return of the Pashtun Problem and NATO Withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014,” Gateway House, Indian Council on Global Relations, June 18, 2012, http://www.gatewayhouse.in/return-pashtun-problem-and-nato-withdrawal-afghanistan-2014.
Chapter Four: Iraq
“A group of imams”: Emma Sky, The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq (New York: PublicAffairs, 2015), 35.
“You don’t kill”: Sam Bailey, “Interview: General David Petraeus,” Frontline, June 14, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/interview-general-david-petraeu.
Germany and Japan: See President George W. Bush, speech to American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, February 26, 2003, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030226-11.html; Peter R. Mansoor, Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 6; Sky, The Unraveling, 56.
“There was a time”: Bush, speech to American Enterprise Institute.
“We will help”: President George W. Bush, remarks at Whitehall Palace, London, November 19, 2003, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=812.
“The rise of freedom”: President George W. Bush, speech at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, June 28, 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/29/iraq.usa.
“the streets in Basra”: “Eyes on Iraq; In Cheney’s Words: The Administration Case for Removing Saddam Hussein,” New York Times, August 27, 2002 (excerpts from Vice President Richard Cheney’s speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, Nashville, TN, August 26, 2002) (quoting Fouad Ajami).
“the freedom-loving peoples”: Ibid.
“sneaking hundreds of”: Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 137.
The problem was: Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (New York: Anchor Books, 2004), Afterword to the Anchor edition, 90.
Like Iraq, Yugoslavia: See ibid., 170–72; Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), chapters 8 and 9; Stephen Engelberg, “Carving Out a Greater Serbia,” New York Times, September 1, 1991; Tom Hundley, “Bosnia’s Mixed Marriages Bear Special Burden,” Chicago Tribune, September 8, 1996.
But when democratization: Chua, World on Fire, 172–74; Judah, The Serbs, 165, 180–81, 192, 225–41; Barbara Crosette, “U.N. Details Its Failure to Stop ’95 Bosnia Massacre,” New York Times, November 16, 1999.
“We will kill Croats”: Johanna McGeary, “Face to Face with Evil,” Time, May 13, 1996, 46.
In 2003, Iraq too: Chua, World on Fire, 290; George Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar,” New Yorker, April 10, 2006.
roughly 15 percent: John Hartley, “Post Election Iraq: A Case for Declining Optimism,” in Beyond the Iraq War: The Promises, Pitfalls and Perils of External Interventionism, ed. Michael Heazle and Iyanatul Islam (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006), 95; Peter Mansfield, A History of the Middle East, 4th ed. rev. by Nicolas Pelham (New York: Penguin Books, 2013), 441; Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 90–93; Yaroslav Trofimov, “After Minority Rule, Iraq’s Sunnis Refuse Minority Role,” Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2015.
Shias comprised . . . slums: Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship (London: KPI, 1987), 190–91; see also Jon Lee Anderson, “Out on the Street,” New Yorker, November 15, 2004.
Sunnis had dominated: R. Stephen Humphreys, Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 78, 120; Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (New York: Scribner, 1995), 114; Nasr, The Shia Revival, 90; Farouk-Sluglett and Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958, 192; William R. Polk, Understanding Iraq: The Whole Sweep of Iraqi History, from Genghis Khan’s Mongols to the Ottoman Turks to the British Mandate to the American Occupation (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 121; Sky, The Unraveling, 38.
the Baath Party: Nasr, The Shia Revival, 186–87; see also John Keegan, The Iraq War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 43; Farouk-Sluglett and Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958, 197–98, 205–6.
almost cultlike leader: Farouk-Sluglett and Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958, 184, 229.
filled the ranks: Ibid., 206–7, 229; Sky, The Unraveling, 39.
own hometown and clan: Farouk-Sluglett and Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958, 206–7, 229; Sky, The Unraveling, 39.
nationalized oil company: Farouk-Sluglett and Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958, 229–30.
rising influence of Shia: See Saïd K. Aburish, Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (New York: Bloomsbury, 2000), 70–71, 122–23, 183–84; Farouk-Sluglett and Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958, 195–200.
large Shia population: Aburish, Saddam Hussein, 122; Alex Edwards, “Dual Containment” Policy in the Persian Gulf: The USA, Iran, and Iraq, 1991–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 45.
banned Shia . . . executed: Nasr, The Shia Revival, 186–87; Farouk-Sluglett and Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958, 197–200.
Entire Shia villages: Chris Hedges, “In a Remote Southern Marsh, Iraq Is Strangling the Shiites,” New York Times, November 16, 1993.
hundreds of thousands: Mansfield, A History of the Middle East, 387; Polk, Understanding Iraq, 121–22.
Saddam retaliated mercilessly: John Kifner, “After the War; Iraqi Refugees Tell U.S. Soldiers of Brutal Repression of Rebellion,” New York Times, March 28, 1991; Aburish, Saddam Hussein, 311–12.
long-oppressed 60 percent: Chua, World on Fire, 290.
“There is not a history”: Paul Waldman, “On Iraq, Let’s Ignore Those Who Got It All Wrong,” Washington Post, June 13, 2014.
“Mo
st Arab countries”: David Corn, “Kristol Clear at Time,” Nation, January 2, 2007.
“[t]here has been”: Statement of Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, Department of Defense Budget Priorities for Fiscal Year 2004: Hearing Before the House Committee on the Budget, 108th Cong., February 27, 2003, 9, 39.
“[O]ne can predict”: Noah Feldman, What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 49.
Sunni insurgents began: See Thabit A. I. Abdullah, A Short History of Iraq, 2nd ed. (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2011), 165; Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2009), 59–60; Sky, The Unraveling, xi; see also John Diamond, “Prewar Intelligence Predicted Iraqi Insurgency,” USA Today, October 24, 2004.
Only one . . . “if they supported”: Abdullah, A Short History of Iraq, 162–63.
“in the top four ranks”: Sky, The Unraveling, 56.
de-Baathification “reinforced Sunnis’ fears”: General Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir (New York: Penguin, 2014), 112.
stripped the country . . . Hospitals found themselves: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Hard Lessons, 74; Anderson, “Out on the Street.”
disbanding the entire: Abdullah, A Short History of Iraq, 163; Miranda Sissons and Abdulrazzaq Al-Saiedi, “A Bitter Legacy: Lessons of De-Baathification in Iraq,” International Center for Transitional Justice, March 2013, 21; Anderson, “Out on the Street”; see also Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 78–79; Dexter Filkins, “Did George W. Bush Create ISIS?,” New Yorker, May 15, 2015.
some 250,000 to 350,000: Filkins, “Did George W. Bush Create ISIS?” (250,000); Abdullah, A Short History of Iraq, 163 (350,000).
Many of these men: Anderson, “Out on the Street”; Filkins, “Did George W. Bush Create ISIS?”
one expert estimated: Davide Mastracci, “How the ‘Catastrophic’ American Decision to Disband Saddam’s Military Helped Fuel the Rise of ISIL,” National Post, May 23, 2015, http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/how-the-catastrophic-american-decision-to-disband-saddams-military-helped-fuel-the-rise-of-isil.
the U.S. solution: Chua, World on Fire, 291; Mansoor, Surge, 25; George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), 358.
With practically no: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Hard Lessons, 116.
“[t]he most organized”: David Rohde, “After the War: Occupation; Iraqis Were Set to Vote, but U.S. Wielded a Veto,” New York Times, June 19, 2003; see also Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Hard Lessons, 116.
“remarkable transformation” . . . “hundreds of parties”: President George W. Bush, speech to World Affairs Council, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 12, 2005, http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/12/bush.transcript.philly.speech.
the political parties: Abdullah, A Short History of Iraq, 168–70.
Shias voted for Shias: See ibid., 169–70. Iraq’s Sunnis mostly boycotted the January 2005 elections; they voted in the December 2005 elections—but overwhelmingly for Sunnis. Ibid., 169; see also Packer, The Assassins’ Gate, 438–39; Peter Beaumont, Rory McCarthy, and Paul Harris, “End of Iraq’s Nightmare . . . or the Start,” Guardian, January 22, 2005.
“The elections hardened”: Thomas E. Ricks, “Petraeus Cites Errors in Iraq,” Washington Post, January 23, 2007.
roaming Shia death squads: See “Iraq’s Death Squads,” Washington Post, December 4, 2005; Erwin Decker, “Iraq Woes: Death Squads Terrorize Baghdad,” Spiegel, March 16, 2006, http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/iraq-woes-death-squads-terrorize-baghdad-a-406342.html.
declared “all-out war”: “Al-Zarqawi Declares War on Iraqi Shia,” Al Jazeera, September 14, 2005, http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2005/09/200849143727698709.html; Jackie Spinner and Bassam Sebti, “Militant Declares War on Iraqi Vote,” Washington Post, January 24, 2005.
twenty Sunni mosques: Ellen Knickmeyer and K. I. Ibrahim, “Bombing Shatters Mosque in Iraq,” Washington Post, February 23, 2006; Mansoor, Surge, 28.
More than a thousand: Ellen Knickmeyer, “Blood on Our Hands,” Foreign Policy, October 25, 2010.
Sunni-Shia civil war: Michael Crowley, “How the Fate of One Holy Site Could Plunge Iraq Back into Civil War,” Time, June 26, 2014, http://time.com/2920692/iraq-isis-samarra-al-askari-mosque.
in “exit-strategy” mode: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar”; Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008 (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), 12–13.
FOBs: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar”; Ricks, The Gamble, 12–13.
“We’re here to guard”: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”
success . . . twenty thousand additional: Mansoor, Surge, 55, 277–82; Sky, The Unraveling, 177, 212, 225; see also Michael E. O’Hanlon, The Future of Land Warfare (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015), 142.
spin and finger-pointing: See, e.g., Jeffrey M. Jones, “Iraq War Attitudes Politically Polarized,” Gallup, April 8, 2008, http://www.gallup.com/poll/106309/iraq-war-attitudes-politically-polarized.aspx; “Democrats, Republicans, and Political Fault Lines on Iraq,” Council on Foreign Relations, May 18, 2007, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/democrats-republicans-and-political-fault-lines-iraq; Peter Beinart, “The Surge Fallacy,” Atlantic, September 2015; Alex Kingsbury, “Why the 2007 Surge in Iraq Actually Failed,” Boston Globe, November 17, 2014.
sent primarily to Baghdad: Mansoor, Surge, 68, 278–79.
a 180-degree shift: Ricks, The Gamble, 27, 29–30.
ethnically conscious policies: Mansoor, Surge, xii, 126–27, 130–31, 269; Sky, The Unraveling, 177–92.
city of Tal Afar: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar”; see also Ricks, The Gamble, 50–51.
“When we came”: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”
one that tried to understand: Mansoor, Surge, 24–25; Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”
McMaster required his troops: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”
“[T]he regiment bought”: Ibid.
“hajjis,” for Arabs: Ibid.
“Every time you”: Ricks, The Gamble, 60.
Arabic language classes: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”
McMaster sent his troops: Ricks, The Gamble, 61; Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”
spent forty to fifty . . . “first the Shiite”: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”
McMaster began building alliances: Ibid.; see also Mansoor, Surge, 24–25.
first successful . . . lonely bright spot: Ricks, The Gamble, 50–51, 59–60; Mansoor, Surge, 24.
Drawing on McMaster’s: Mansoor, Surge, 127–28.
“[A]nyone who was caught” . . . “The corpses”: Ibid., 124.
al-Qaeda’s senior leaders . . . executed: Ibid., 124, 130, 132.
“Sunni Awakening” . . . seized this opening: Ibid., 126, 129–30; Sky, The Unraveling, 183–84.
working closely with Sunni tribal sheikhs: Mansoor, Surge, 129–33.
“[o]ver countless cups” . . . roadside bomb: Ibid., 129, 133.
new local police: Ibid., 129–30.
“cultural savvy and local”: Ibid., 130.
as anachronisms, as the CPA initially did: Ibid., 11.
dismissing their importance: See Ricks, The Gamble, 219.
“[t]ribal society makes up”: Ibid.
then “gated” them: Mansoor, Surge, 135.
By November 2006: Ibid., 132, 136.
became blueprints for: Ibid., xiii, 127–28, 133.
Shia al-Askari mosque: Ibid., ix.
four hundred thousand Iraqis: Anthony H
. Cordesman with assistance from Emma R. Davies, Iraq’s Insurgency and the Road to Civil Conflict (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008), 656.
“well over fifty”: Mansoor, Surge, ix.
using overwhelming force: Ricks, The Gamble, 26.
“An operation that kills”: Ibid., 29; see Mansoor, Surge, x, xii.
the “big idea”: Mansoor, Surge, 136.
“key to victory”: Frederick W. Kagan, Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, Phase I Report, Iraq Planning Group, American Enterprise Institute, 2007, 14.
a color-coded map: Ibid., 16, fig. 2.
so-called “brain trust”: Mansoor, Surge, 202; see also Ricks, The Gamble, 18–19, 24–26; Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”
“cultural ineptitude” . . . “[I]f I could sum”: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”
remarkable Emma Sky: Alissa J. Rubin, “In Iraq, a Blunt Civilian Is a Fixture by the General’s Side,” New York Times, November 20, 2009.
had “encyclopedic knowledge”: Sky, The Unraveling, 177.
“rather than raiding”: Ricks, The Gamble, 28 (quoting from an essay on counterinsurgency strategy by Australian army Lt. Colonel David Kilcullen, which the U.S. military under Petraeus later largely followed); see also Sky, The Unraveling, 161–62, 209.
“By living among”: Mansoor, Surge, 269.
“the groups just shy”: McChrystal, My Share of the Task, 244.
Experts today agree: Mansoor, Surge, 267–68; see also Peter D. Feaver, “The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision,” International Security 35, no. 4 (2011): 92, n. 10; Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman, and Jacob N. Shapiro, “Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?,” International Security 37, no. 1 (2012): 1–34.
“stopped fighting Iraq’s”: Ricks, The Gamble, 219.
civilian deaths fell: Mansoor, Surge, 280.
a tipping point occurred: Ibid., 210.
“in the past 8 months”: Ibid., 281.
Undoing the effects: Ibid., 166, 177.
2005 national elections: Dexter Filkins, “What We Left Behind,” New Yorker, April 28, 2014.