Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (9-83)

Summary:

The book starts off by talking about the changes that happened to the life of the people in Iraq with the arrival of the American soldiers. Some of the Iraqi’s that work for the American’s have to eat in a cafeteria in which pork is served. They are against it, but cannot do anything to change it. The Green Zone is like a city within a city. It was made up of two hundred and fifty-eight rooms. It took one of the soldiers one hours to count them. It was Saddam’s house, but now it served as place for the soldiers to live in. If a soldier wanted to leave the Green Zone, he needed to have a good reason and he had to have other soldiers accompanying him. From inside the walls of the Green Zone, the fighting and the protestors and the troubles in Baghdad seemed a world away.  After the American soldiers destroyed the statue of Saddam in front of the Palestine Hotel, the thieves ran inside and grabbed what they could get. The Iraqi’s went with trucks and began taking furniture, electronics and after two days the building had nothing left but the walls and smoke coming out of it. The Iraqi’s were targeting the Central Bank next, but the ORHA (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance) couldn’t get the military involved to help them. Jerry Bremer had all the power he could get. Even President Bush had given him a lot of power. Bremer went inside the schools in Iraq, because he wanted to see what could be done to change the schools after the war was over. In fact, change was the main reason that he was there for. The Americans were trying to turn Iraq into a republican country.

Quotes:

He was the viceroy and he was in charge. When one of the exiles interrupted him to say that Iraqis wanted Iraqis in charge, not Americans, he bristled. “You don’t represent the country,” he said.

Response:

I don’t think that Bremer did a wise thing by telling the exiles that things would be done his way, because they didn’t seem very happy and it might lead to more fighting and protests in Iraq. This quote is the prefect quote to show that people need to think about their actions what affect those actions might have on different people.