Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions

by John Agresto

John Agresto spent nine months in Iraq—from September 2003 to June 2004—working under Ambassador Paul Bremer as senior adviser to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. His daunting task was to assist Iraqis in rebuilding their once distinguished system of colleges, universities, and vocational schools. As he left Iraq, Agresto was asked by the Pentagon to write a few paragraphs about the “lessons learned” during his time there. Those paragraphs were never written, but a book was born instead. Mugged by Reality is partly the memoir of an American civilian and educator trying to help a devastated country revive its educational institutions. It is also a compendium of the successes and failures that followed in the wake of Iraq’s liberation. Many books discuss what the United States and its allies did or didn’t do, making our mistakes look simple in hindsight: we disbanded the army, we didn’t have enough troops, we de-Ba’athified too thoroughly. If only we had done things differently, they say. But the sober truth is that we have been thwarted not simply by failures to “understand the culture of the Middle East,” but by failures of Americans in Iraq to understand their own culture and what America really stands for. In the end, Mugged by Reality offers “lessons learned” not only about Iraq and Middle Eastern culture, but also about American democracy and about our common human nature.

Genres: Nonfiction

202 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me start by saying that it's disappointing that many people have slandered this book as racist, Orientalist, white-saviory, etc. It isn't. I didn't agree with its core take on the war, but we should offer a basic level of respect to someone like Agresto who have more than a year of his life to try to rebuild education in Iraq to give more opportunity to a nation crushed by tyranny and extremism. You don't have to support the war (I didn't and don't) to support the reconstruction project and the brave and selfless people, Iraqis and Americans, who tried to piece together a larger nation.

This book is written from a self-consciously conservative lens, which makes sense given the politics of the Bush administration. Agresto was the CPA official in charge of higher education reconstruction in Iraq. These parts of the book were fascinating. He formed close partnerships with Iraqi academics, officials, and translators, and he really brings out their personalities. Contra accusations of Orientalism, Agresto actually found Iraqis to be more like Americans than one might expect: fairly secular in outlook, reasonably educated, and locked into Western popular culture. He worked to change up the curricula to form stronger foundations for critical thinking, history, liberal arts, etc because a democratic people needs this kind of education. He pushed away from the rote form of education that dominated in Iraq under Saddam in which students had no leeway for critical thinking/argumentation, undergrad education was neglected, and students had basically no choice on what they would study. Agresto admits that this was a struggle that largely failed, although there were some small points of light, especially in Kurdistan. Anyone interesting in the US experience in Iraq will greatly enjoy his commentaries on education in post-invasion Iraq.

Agresto's argument as to what went wrong in Iraq is interesting, although I don't fully agree with it. He says that the US ignored the damage to Iraqi society and psychology that decades of tyranny had inflicted. We expected to be greeted as liberators and for Iraqis to rush into provide security and rebuild the country along unified, nationalistic lines. We overlooked the bubbling sectarian conflicts of this society, which were unleashed by Saddam's overthrow. In many ways, we built those divisions into the political system itself, although I'm not sure there was an alternative to the interest group political system of post-Saddam Iraq. We downplayed/failed to prepare for providing security and basic services, pooh-poohed the looting (which absolutely ransacked the Iraqi educational system), and missed a window of opportunity where there might have been more trust from the Iraqis. The main organizations ready to fill the gap were fundamentalist religious groups that acted against the formation of genuine liberal democracy in Iraq (instead, we got a corrupt sectarian gov't aligned with Iran, a sort of tyranny of the majority dominated by the Shia). In short, we failed to understand Iraqi history and society while also failing to grasp the Hobbesian lesson of human nature: people will choose security over freedom even if it means sacrificing the latter.

Agresto's core lesson is that building a liberal democracy requires building a democratic people from the ground up. The US had a self-governing people before it became a country, and it had liberal traditions of tolerance, speech, rule of law, etc. Iraq lacked these things, and it isn't racist or Orientalist to say so. This means that the US should be exceedingly careful in its assumptions about democratization in the world; democratization in and of itself isn't necessarily a good thing. Instead, we want to facilitate the spread of liberal democracy, not just the tyranny of the majority or the bare forms of elections without the substance of minority rights, rule of law, constitutionalism, etc. In a sense, this is anti-universalist conservatism at its best, countering the overly sunny universalism of the neocons who assumed that a vibrant democracy could be formed in Iraq in short order.

However, at this point I have to deviate from Agresto's argument. He's oddly unwilling to part with the original purpose of the war, in his eyes: to transform not just Iraq but the entire region from an anti-American bastion of extremism to a democratic, open, tolerant place that would no longer generated terrorism or WMD-based threats to the US. However, given his arguments about the limits of IRaqi political culture, wasn't that original vision of transformation fatally flawed to start with? Also, Agresto barely mentions WMD and terrorism, which was clearly the Bush administration's core reasoning for invading the country in the first place. Invading Iraq to bring about cultural and political transformation is a form of idealism that one would expect somewhat like Agresto to reject, but it's also clearly an act of imperialism. If there was no imminent threat from Iraq, and no active genocide occurring in the country, there was no legal or moral basis for invading the country.

In short, while this book has some interesting views on Iraqi and US political culture, it just can't acknowledge that this war, whether conceived from idealistic or threat-based grounds, was fatally flawed and unnecessary from the start. A core question of grand strategy is about when it is justified to put the lives of US citizens in jeopardy (and to kill many, many people of a foreign nation, not all of them "guilty") to achieve a goal that cannot be achieved by non-violent means. This was simply not the case in Iraq, making this war unnecessary, strategically counterproductive, and unjust. That doesn't make the effort to rebuild/stabilize Iraq unjust, as the US has both a strategic and moral obligation to stay for some amount of time after toppling the government. Still, one must question Agresto's overall thinking about the grounds for war even if he has interesting things to say elsewhere.

One more critique: this book is a bit repetitive and disorganized. While it is short, Agresto keeps making the same basic points over and over again, and some of the chapters could have been tightened. Small point.

Agresto is hard on the Iraqis, and I suppose you could frame some of his comments as bordering on Orientalist. Still, I wouldn't, as this is a totalizing frame that ignores Agresto's actual experiences on the ground with real people. It makes sense, for instance, that a people who lived under tyranny for most of their lives might be afraid of taking initiative or standing up to authority, or that they might have a somewhat fatalistic view on life. He also argues that there just wasn't much willingness on the part of Iraqis to risk themselves for the nation or the common good; it was all sect, faith, tribe, etc. Not all cultures are the same, and Agresto is honest about what he witnessed on the ground. The key is not to hurl accusations of racism and Orientalism at him but to balance his account with other accounts, including Iraqi voices, to get a sense of what was really going on in terms of Iraqi culture.

This book is great for anyone interested in the Iraq War, especially the intersection of conservatism and this war and/or US-Iraqi efforts to rebuild the country after the invasion. Despite some flaws, it is fair-minded and engaging and deserves to be considered on its merits, not through ideological prisms.

[Degenerate Chemist · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at page 24

"America's real interest is not and was not in capturing Iraq's oil or in scattering its weapons; it was in changing the very character of the Middle East."

I can congratulate you if you can read that without rolling your eyes. This book is some thinly veiled American exceptionalism propaganda with a covered with some nice white savior racism. I could barely stomach the rambling first chapter and its contradictions, cognitive dissonance, and justifications of imperialism.

And the plain ignorance of modern history. Things always turn out so well when the west tries to change the character of the Middle East. You think at some point we would have learned our lesson. Maybe it has something to do with all that . . . What is it called . . . Moil, foil, coil . . . Ill think of it eventually.

[Roger Burk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the reflections of an American college president who served as senior advisor to the Iraqi minister of higher education under the Coalition Provisional Authority. It was written after his service and during the nadir of the Iraqi mission, before the Awakening and the Surge. It is very pessimistic. (One wonders what he thinks now.) He was initially supportive of the invasion, but came to view it as a catastrophic blunder. The main factors: the unreadiness of the Iraqis for liberal democracy; the feckless American belief that everyone is ready for liberal democracy; the inadequacy of the means compared to the immensity of the task; the arrogant, bullying, and contemptuous behavior of many American soldiers. He also talks about many self-sacrificing heroes, including Iraqis as well as American soldiers and civilians. However, he fears that their afforts will likely go for nought. The book is written from one man's perhaps limited perspective, but it seems honest, perceptive, and objective.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

An account of his year in Iraq by the former president of St. John's College. The author spent a year in Iraq as a consultant to the Ministry of Higher Education. The best thing about this book is its overall lack of politics; the author concentrates rather on the philosophical underpinnings of democracy and the ways in which these are absent in Iraq and other parts of the Arab world. He also discusses the American missteps that led to the disastrous years of civil war in Iraq. The book was published before the surge, and it would be interesting to get the author's perspective on the merits of that policy, as well as an updated vision for Iraq's future. However, this book is an excellent combination of memoir and philosophical meditation on contemporary politics.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sobering account of an American's experiences in Iraq, working for the Department of Education in the post-war country. Written by a conservative but is very 'fair and balanced,' a good insight into the bleak situation there.

[Stan Lanier · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reflections of a Republican serving as a civilian in Iraq in the early days of that war. To my mind, his observations about efforts in Iraq are more trenchant than his domestic philosophical and political musings. Still, the title tells it all.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sort of astounding account of the Iraq war by a self-proclaimed neoconservative who went to Iraq to help reorganize the university system. I knew the war was horrible, obviously, but it was shocking to read about how grossly incompetent and delusional the whole thing was.

[Zayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a perfect mix of well-told memories and political commentary. Though, very clearly, a republican, Agresto does not let that overrun the book. It is well written and well informed. It also, oddly enough, gives fairly accurate predictions for the region well before anything came to pass.

[Joseph]

I'm looking forward to Agresto's follow-up book, "I Told You So: The US Failed Miserably in Iraq, So Now We Have ISIS."