The End of Iraq

How American Incompetence Created a War Without End

Peter W. Galbraith

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9781416526254
• eBook ISBN:
  9781847396129
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The invasion of Iraq by American, British and other coalition forces has indeed transformed the Middle East, but not as the Bush and Blair administrations had imagined. It is Iran, not Western-style democracy, that has emerged as the big winner, creating a Tehran-Baghdad axis that would have been unthinkable before the war. THE END OF IRAQ is the definitive account of the US and UK's catastrophic involvement in Iraq, as told by America's leading independent expert on the country. Peter Galbraith reveals in exquisite detail how US policies -- some going back to the Reagan administration -- have now produced a nearly independent Kurdistan in the north, an Islamic state in the south, and uncontrollable insurgency in the centre, and an incipient Sunni-Shiite civil war that has Baghdad as its central front. Iraq, Galbraith argues, cannot be reconstructed as a single state. Instead, a sensible strategy must accept that it has already broken up and focus instead on stopping an escalating civil war. Unflinching, accessible and powerful, THE END OF IRAQ explores and explains the myriad mistakes and false assumptions that have brought the country to its current pass, and what must be done to prevent further bloodshed.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. The Appointment in Samarra
• 2. Appeasement
• 3. He Gassed His Own People
• 4. The Uprising
• 5. Arrogance and Ignorance
• 6. Aftermath
• 7. Can’t Provide Anything
• 8. Kurdistan
• 9. Civil War
• 10. The Three State Solution
• 11. How to Get Out of Iraq
• Appendixes1. Special Provisions for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
• 2. Iraq’s Political Parties and the 2005 Elections
• Cast of Characters
• A Note on Sources
• Acknowledgments
• Index