Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War

There was an almost divine quality to American power; it was merciless in its practice, flawless in its execution, … Saddam had ruled for thirty-five years; the Americans had toppled him in less than three...

Time and again, I am struck by how seldom I hear the word, hurriya , ‘freedom,’ in conversations about politics in the Arab World, … Much more common among Arabs is the word, adil ,...

tribal authority had grown in the wake of the government’s fall . . . tribal code stipulated a brutal frontier justice, which had come to fill a lawless void. This code, rigorous and unforgiving, was...

Each side, American and Iraqi, saw their actions as responses to the other’s threats. Each side felt the other was forcing it to act. Each side thought the other only understood force.