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Iraq: The Cost of War
Tony Blair's decision to back George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq will go down as a defining moment for Blair, and for Britain. As Ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock was centre stage in the dramatic months leading up to the Iraq war. After the war he was Special Envoy for Iraq, the UK’s highest authority on the ground, and he worked side by side with Paul Bremer, the US administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, in Baghdad and saw first-hand the impact of the divisive turf wars back in Washington.
He kept a diary of what he witnessed in Iraq as the security situation deteriorated and has spoken remarkably candidly about the US-led administration. This extraordinary book is a record of what he saw.
Greenstock writes openly about US—UK relations and takes his readers behind closed doors in the tumultuous days leading up to the Iraq war. Through his eyes we see the actions and interactions of key players in New York, Washington, London, Paris and the Middle East. To what extent was the Bush administration determined to attack Iraq come what may? What promise did Blair extract in exchange for backing Bush? How important was Israel to American calculations? Was the war legal? What effect is it continuing to have on Britain’s long-term relations with America and Europe? No one is better positioned to set the story of Britain’s decision to go to war in its international context.
Held back from publication when originally written in 2005, and now revised with a new foreword and epilogue following the publication of the Chilcot Report, Iraq: The Cost of War is a dramatic and groundbreaking blow-by-blow account of one of the most pivotal and controversial conflicts in recent world history.
He kept a diary of what he witnessed in Iraq as the security situation deteriorated and has spoken remarkably candidly about the US-led administration. This extraordinary book is a record of what he saw.
Greenstock writes openly about US—UK relations and takes his readers behind closed doors in the tumultuous days leading up to the Iraq war. Through his eyes we see the actions and interactions of key players in New York, Washington, London, Paris and the Middle East. To what extent was the Bush administration determined to attack Iraq come what may? What promise did Blair extract in exchange for backing Bush? How important was Israel to American calculations? Was the war legal? What effect is it continuing to have on Britain’s long-term relations with America and Europe? No one is better positioned to set the story of Britain’s decision to go to war in its international context.
Held back from publication when originally written in 2005, and now revised with a new foreword and epilogue following the publication of the Chilcot Report, Iraq: The Cost of War is a dramatic and groundbreaking blow-by-blow account of one of the most pivotal and controversial conflicts in recent world history.
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Published November 3, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 8, 2017
Is the United Nations completely irrelevant to nations of the world or is it a vital platform for the poorer nations of the world to vent out their frustrations? UN seems similar to Sufi mazars (religious Shirins) in Pakistan where the disenfranchised and the poor Pakistanis go to vent out their frustrations and to make supplications for the Sufi to intercede on their behalf. So the poor and the powerless or in the case of UK, the once all-powerful will converge in the UN to plead their plights with the greatest powerful state of the world, USA. And the great USA, in turn, possesses this 'need' of justifying its actions from the poor, powerless and once powerful nations, which it would have done in any case anyway. So its a perfect symbiotic relationship, with both requiring each other for their own ends, which still doesn't answer my relevance question, but I guess a comparison will have to be done between a pre-UN and a post-UN world.
This book focuses on the UK-USA "special relationship". It appears that the UK needs USA for security purposes, and USA requires UK to do its foreign policy proselytizing. So although the UK had serious reservations about USA going to war with Iraq, it had to go along as there was no other choice. UK has chosen USA over EU as it knows that EU is a toothless tiger as compared to USA. Brexit has demonstrated this very obvious Europhile tilt very clearly. The once all powerful people of UK have chosen to be liberated from UK and are far happier to be subservient to the US Corporations. And now there is even talk about a common Anglophile nexus between UK and USA. But UK must remember that its main role in this 'special relationship' is to galvanize the world opinion in line with USA's which it can only do while appearing to remain a keen member of various world consortiums like EU, Commonwealth etc.
A pilgrimage to a Sufi mazars anyone?
This book focuses on the UK-USA "special relationship". It appears that the UK needs USA for security purposes, and USA requires UK to do its foreign policy proselytizing. So although the UK had serious reservations about USA going to war with Iraq, it had to go along as there was no other choice. UK has chosen USA over EU as it knows that EU is a toothless tiger as compared to USA. Brexit has demonstrated this very obvious Europhile tilt very clearly. The once all powerful people of UK have chosen to be liberated from UK and are far happier to be subservient to the US Corporations. And now there is even talk about a common Anglophile nexus between UK and USA. But UK must remember that its main role in this 'special relationship' is to galvanize the world opinion in line with USA's which it can only do while appearing to remain a keen member of various world consortiums like EU, Commonwealth etc.
A pilgrimage to a Sufi mazars anyone?
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews