Review Mugged By Reality, The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions

Agresto, John, Mugged By Reality, The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions, New York: Encounter Books, 2007

 

John Agresto worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority from 2003-2004 as the advisor to the Ministry of Higher Education. The book covers two themes. The main one is the author giving a neoconservative argument for why he supported the Iraq War. The second is what were the root causes for the failure of the U.S. occupation sprinkled with anecdotes about the people he met in Iraq. The book is about how the author struggled to hold onto his ideas as they were confronted by the occupation. Some of his criticisms are poignant but too many times he rambles on and contradicts himself.

 

The author repeats many of the Bush White House and neoconservative reasons for the invasion of Iraq. First he thought that overthrowing Saddam would be a setback for terrorists and could create an American ally in the heart of the Middle East that would transform the entire region. Agresto held the common American belief that all people want freedom and democracy and therefore after the dictatorship was removed Iraqis would naturally move in that direction. These are all themes which President Bush and his advisors pushed as justifications for the war.

 

The book also goes into some of the inane beliefs of the administration. For instance the author said that America isn’t hated because of its policies but because the U.S. wants to free people around the world and believes in bringing equality to the downtrodden. This he said greatly angered Islamists. Then he writes that Iraq proved to be the central front on the war on terror because of all of the attacks upon U.S. troops. He ignores the fact that there was no terrorism in Iraq until the 2003 invasion and that showed that America’s actions do cause reactions rather than hatred for freedom or equality.

 

Some of his writing about why the U.S. failed in Iraq go over much better. For one he said that too many pushed democracy as an end rather than a means to create a just and stable society in Iraq. The U.S. repeatedly said that voting would create stability but that didn’t happen after three rounds of balloting in 2005. Agresto argued that a democratic culture and institutions needed to be created for the political system to work but the Americans never put any effort into that and many times ignored them. The author saw that elections put in power mostly religious parties that didn’t care about freedom and rights but only their sect and imposing their ideas upon society. Too few realized the shortcomings of this policy especially President Bush. He was a true believer that democracy would lead everyone towards a society like America.

 

Other times the book goes into how Saddam’s dictatorship debilitated Iraqi society. For one public workers rarely showed any initiative. Instead they were afraid to act by themselves fearing they might anger a superior. Therefore the smallest acts required the authorization of the highest leaders in the government which meant things worked at a snail’s pace. Baghdad also used its oil wealth to subsidize many things like fuel and electricity so many goods were considered free making the public feel dependent upon the state. Again this created a culture where Iraqis didn’t believe they had to do anything because the government was supposed to do things for them. Agresto didn’t touch on this but these ideas were also held by the new elite which was put into power by the Americans and undermined democracy. The political class didn’t feel like they should serve the public but the people should serve them since they controlled the government and its vast resources.

 

Last, Mugged By Reality goes into how Iraq’s universities were quickly transformed for the worse after 2003. At first, the U.S. held elections for new presidents of all the colleges and believed this was the start of a new era of academic freedom in the country. The first Minister of Higher Education however fired all the presidents to try to put his party’s people into office. The U.S. reversed that order but ended up trying to limit the minister’s power because he was only interested in patronage and imposing his party’s rule. Then many of the schools were taken over by students and militias who segregated male and female students, made women cover themselves, and carried out a wave of assassinations of the faculty. Sometimes they were killed for being Baathists but as time passed they were gotten rid of because they weren’t the right sect or because they gave a bad grade. The universities were supposed to help create a new educated class of Iraqis but quickly fell into terror and disarray just like the rest of the country.

 

This is what made Agresto feel like the U.S. failed in Iraq. Washington simply didn’t understand what it took to rebuild a country and had no comprehension of Iraq’s culture which shaped how people acted. He thought that religion was the overriding influence because of the Islamist terrorists and religious parties that took power but it was actually because he didn’t know Iraqi history. He mistook Iraq during the occupation as how the country always was which was not true.

 

The author and the White House went into Iraq with the belief that Iraqis would act like Americans because they epitomized universal ideas of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness but that proved false. Both struggled to hold onto their philosophies while dealing with Iraq.

 

Mugged By Reality doesn’t add much to the knowledge about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. It’s more of a personal story of someone who had big ideas and hopes for Iraq which got crushed by the reality that he found. The book comes down to Agresto trying to hold onto his ideals while amending how they could be implemented using Iraq as a lesson about how not to do things.

 

Link to all of Musings On Iraq’s book reviews listed by topic