Aaron Glantz was a reporter for the San Francisco Bay Area’s Pacifica Radio. He went to Iraq from 2003-05 to report on the conditions of everyday Iraqis. He came away with two main impressions. One was that the Left and Right in America didn’t care about Iraqis at all just their own political agendas. The second was that the U.S. lost Iraq just a year into the occupation because of their misrule.
Pacifica Radio was a progressive station and wanted Glantz to report on the American misrule in Iraq. When he arrived in 2003 however he found out that everything wasn’t black and white. For instance, he went to a mass grave with victims of Saddam Hussein. He talked to family members who’d been looking for their family members for over a decade. His producers said they would air the report but didn’t want anything else about Saddam’s crimes because they only wanted stories about American ones. This was when the author began to discover that Americans had no idea what was happening in Iraq nor really cared.
By 2004 Iraqis were facing increasing violence and mistreatment by the U.S. which in turn fed the resistance to their presence. It seemed like back home Americans didn’t seem to want to hear about the everyday struggles of the Iraqi people just stories that fit their own political agendas such as not finding WMD or spreading democracy. This made Glantz increasingly cynical about the U.S. His critical eye is one of the highlights of How America Lost Iraq. He never took things at face value and always questioned events. It gives his book depth that is missing from many others written by journalists.
The author’s second revelation about Iraq was that the American strategy and tactics turned the country against them very quickly. The first battle of Fallujah and Sadr uprising in 2004 were the main examples of this. The U.S. destroyed much of Fallujah because 4 American security contractors were killed and went after Sadr because he was opposed to the foreign presence. Before Glantz believed that the resistance was a small minority in the country but after these two events a wide swath of the population had turned against the U.S.
It wasn’t just those two major conflicts however it was the daily routine of raids and detentions that cost America the support of Iraqis. Glantz reported on how the U.S. would constantly conduct raids looking for one person but ended up arresting all the males they came across. They would be sent to prisons and not be seen or heard from for months. Many would be sent to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison where they would be abused. Glantz heard story after story about these actions and felt the growing anger amongst the people.
Aaron Glantz wrote a very interesting book about Iraq. It does a good job capturing the change in emotions amongst Iraqis during the first two years of the occupation. Initially Iraqis would complain about the Americans but they were waiting to see how things worked out. By 2004 the attacks upon Fallujah and Sadr had turned most people against the U.S. It was now seen as the enemy and blamed for everything even if it wasn’t involved. Glantz’s views about America and Iraq are also incisive. People there just wanted to hear what supported their views instead of what was really going on and impacting Iraqis. This all makes How American Lost Iraq one of the better books by a journalist about the conflict.
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