Lost Victory

[Valin]

The Weekly Standard:

Building up, tearing down in Iraq.

GARY SCHMITT

Jun 8, 2015, Vol. 20, No. 37

 

The Unraveling is a love story. Like many love stories, it starts with two seemingly irreconcilable personalities forming a bond they never anticipated. But, true to form, the ending is tragic. In this instance, the main character is author Emma Sky, the British, Oxford-educated, lefty international do-gooder who falls for the U.S. Army and its religious, flag-waving, America-the-Beautiful officer corps, and one officer in particular: General Ray Odierno, former commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq and the current Army chief of staff. The tragedy, of course, is Iraq.

 

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While there, Sky comes to terms with her role in the occupation of Iraq as part of a war that she had opposed. After an initial false step or two, she also realizes that, to stave off the explosion of ethnic tensions in Kirkuk and the surrounding area into a civil war, she and the U.S. Army would have to become “one team.” But that grudging concession soon turns into a more fulsome appreciation of the American military’s “leadership and its resources,” as well as its capacity to be “flexible, adaptable and a quick learner.” Most important, she discovers that “the soldiers generally wanted to do the right thing.”

 

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As an insider’s account, The Unraveling is full of descriptions of meetings, events, and key personalities—both Iraqi and American. Of the latter, Sky is especially gifted in capturing, in just a few sentences, the quirks, flaws, and virtues of the individuals who worked in Iraq or who came through as visiting dignitaries. To her credit, she’s bipartisan in her skewering. Chris Hill, the American ambassador put in place by the Obama White House in early 2009, is described as having not wanted the job and uninterested in engaging with the Iraqis at a key transition point in the country’s post-Saddam era. “It was,” Sky writes, “frightening how a person could so poison a place. Hill brought with him a small cabal who were new to Iraq and marginalized all those with experience in the country.” Likewise, Sky aptly captures Donald Rumsfeld and his irritating let’s-be-clear-about-who’s-the-honcho-in-the-room routine in recalling his visit to Kirkuk. As Odierno tried to brief the defense secretary on the situation in northern Iraq, “Rumsfeld kept interrupting, shooting questions at him. How many soldiers in theater? How many killed? How many wounded?”—not for a moment wanting to hear what the commanding general for the area actually assessed the situation to be.

 

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What has happened since in Iraq, with the rise of ISIS and even more dangerous sectarianism, comes as no surprise to the author. But she writes in her preface that as difficult as the task was in Iraq, nothing was “preordained.” Coming from someone on the left—someone who is not even an American to boot—makes this an essential point not to be lost as we continue to play gotcha on the question of whether toppling Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do.

 

 

The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq Hardcover

Emma Sky April 7, 2015