After expending an enormous amount of blood and money since the war in Iraq began in 2003, the U.S. military completed operations in 2011, hopeful that they were leaving behind a stable government and a competent, well trained Iraqi army. But as of the early summer of 2014, the army was on the run from the radical Islamic group ISIS, and the country seemed to be falling apart. What happened? Filmmaker Michael Kirk's PBS-aired Frontline documentary looks at how initial encouraging signs after the fall of Saddam Hussein quickly gave way to chaos, looting, and a growing insurgency. American officials didn't have adequate plans for securing the country, and the decision to dismantle the Iraqi army left a lot of disgruntled and well-armed men jobless and out on the street. A reporter interviewed here describes the U.S. embassy in Baghdad's relatively safe "green zone" as an "emerald city" (as in "Oz"), walled off from both reality and the rest of the country. Old religions and ethnic rivalries between Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds quickly resurfaced, and al-Qaeda engaged in bombing rival mosques to inflame the population, also targeting embassies and markets as it sought to prove that the government couldn't protect the people. The Bush administration, after enjoying a brief "mission accomplished" moment, vacillated between "war tourism" (staying on bases, only engaging the enemy when necessary) and a more aggressive posture with the "surge," along with a move to win Sunnis over to the government's side (the "Sunni awakening.") Unfortunately, the inexperienced Shia Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki stoked sectarian divisions by firmly embracing Shiites while excluding other groups. Bush's mistakes were compounded by Obama's disengaged posture, and the announcement of withdrawal timetables that encouraged radicals. Featuring testimony from reporters and government officials, Losing Iraq offers a depressing portrait of America's bipartisan failure that has yet to fully play out (the film was produced before the current air war against ISIS). Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (S. Rees)
Losing Iraq
(2014) 90 min. DVD: $24.99 ($54.99 w/PPR). PBS Video. SDH captioned. ISBN: 978-1-62789-140-0. Volume 30, Issue 1
Losing Iraq
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