Just finished Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City. It’s a fine book. He has the writer’s eye for telling detail. Given his cultural heritage, and the fact that his skin is darker than most Americans (he grew up the Bay Area), he could get out into the real Iraq — he lived outside the Green Zone for most, possibly all, of the nearly two years he spent in Baghdad — more than his colleagues, and far more than anyone in the Coalition Provisional Authority. This book benefits tremendously from his ability to supply perspective.

Unlike almost anywhere else in Baghdad, you could dine at the cafeteria in the Republican Palace for six months and never eat hummus, flatbread, or a lamb kebab. The fare was always American, often with a Southern flavor. A buffet featured grits, cornbread, and a bottomless barrel of pork: sausage for breakfast, hot dogs for lunch, pork chops for dinner. There were bacon cheeseburgers, grilled-cheese-and-bacon sandwiches, and bacon omelets. Hundreds of Iraqi secretaries and translators who worked for the occupation authority had to eat in the dining hall. Most of them were Muslims, and many were offended by the presence of pork. But the American contractors running the kitchen kept serving it. The cafeteria was all about meeting American needs for high-calorie, high-fat comfort food.

He supplies too many details for the book to be characterized briefly. If you’ve read his Washington Post articles, you know all about the experienced and respected people who were dumped so the White House could replace them with twenty-somethings who were selected because they sent résumés to the Heritage Foundation. If that doesn’t qualify you to reconstruct a society that’s ten times as old as the one you know, I don’t know what does.

For example, Chandrasekaran tells the tale of Thomas Wirges, an army reservist who had worked for American Express as a stockbroker. He was seconded to the CPA to help get the Baghdad Stock Exchange going again. Not surprisingly, he encountered some problems, among them insufficient regulation and the destruction of the building the exchange had used. He came up with a relatively simple two-phase plan: reopen the exchange with the somewhat primitive system the Iraqis were used to, then gradually introduce modern stock-exchange methods and laws. He presented the plan to his boss, who

…promised to have a securities expert sent over. I’m going to get a high-level person coming in from the New York Stock Exchange or the Securities and Exchange Commission, Wirges thought. I’m going to get someone who knows what to do.

Instead, he got a restless twenty-four-year-old.

Jay Hallen didn’t much like his job at a real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and although he had never been there, he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read histories of the region in his spare time.

He had mixed feelings about the war to topple Saddam, but he viewed the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey, whom he had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier. Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?

“Be careful what you wish for,” Jeffrey wrote in response. Then he forwarded Hallen’s résumé to O’Beirne’s office. [Yes, Kate O’Beirne’s husband. — ced]

Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in three to four weeks?

Hallen had no relevant experience, and he got no training. He did get two immunizations, and a flak jacket that lacked the proper ceramic plates for stopping AK-47 bullets. Then he flew to Kuwait, where they gave him a gas mask and a lecture on the four most common types of explosive devices in Iraq, plus a full set of army fatigues in case the Green Zone was overrun (Americans were supposed to don the fatigues so the military would know whose side they were on).

The day he arrived [in Iraq], he met with his new boss, Thomas Foley. Hallen was shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of reopening the stock exchange.

“Are you sure?” Hallen said to Foley. “I don’t have a finance background.”

You can see where this is leading, and sure enough it led there.

One more quote. You’ve probably read about the huge percentage of American troops who believe the invasion of Iraq was a response to 9/11, and wondered how they possibly be so confused.

A mural of the World Trade Center adorned one of the entrances [to the dining hall, set up in the Republican Palace]. The Twin Towers were framed within the outstretched wings of a bald eagle. Each branch of the U.S. military — the army, air force, marines, and navy — had its seal on a different corner of the mural. In the middle were the logos of the New York City Police and Fire departments, and atop the towers were the words Thank God for the coalition forces & freedom fighters at home and abroad.

[UPDATE: I should also have included a link to Chandrasekaran’s website, with more on the book, reviews, his tour schedule, and so on.]

Posted by Chuck Dupree at November 04, 2006 07:05 PM

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