Over vacation, I read Baghdad Without a Map: And Other Misadventures in Arabia by Tony Horwitz. I should have read “One for the Road” (see below) on vacation and read Baghdad without a Map at home. Baghdad Without a Map is less light hearted than Horwitz’s other books, primarily because the region he is touring is more grim and complicated. He relates his experiences in Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Lebanon, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates. The Middle East certainly isn’t monolithic, and this book tends to bring that home.
One upside to reading this book was feeling a bit better about the positive aspects of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. He was there in 1987, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war, I believe and had no political axe to grind, making his observations a bit more reliable in my opinion. Life in Iraq was just bleak and filled with Saddam 24/7. Songs about Saddam on the radio, pictures of Saddam on every corner. Questions if you didn’t have enough pictures of Saddam in your house. 5 security forces spying on the people and on each other. This doesn’t change my overall calculus with respect to how our Iraqi adventure got started, the cost to the U.S. verses the benefits to the U.S., and whether the whole enterprise was worthwhile. But, the positive side of the ledger has a better balance.
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