Also an American Legacy in Iraq: a commentary and a review

The scene is dark. All the spectators can hear is the soft spoken voice of a scared man reflecting on hopes crashed following American invasion in Iraq in 2003. ‘Betrayed’ a play by George Packer, author of the ‘Assassin’s Gate’ and directed by Pippin Parker tells the story of three young Iraqis “who loved America too much”. When the lights go on, we can see his figure: how the sharp lines in a tired face do not match up with the warmth of the voice! It is a Friday evening at ‘Culture Project’, a tiny, charming theatre on Mercer Street in SoHo. I had planned to see the play ever since reading ‘Imperial Life in the Emerald City’, an insider’s story told by Washington Post journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran. “Death to Saddam, long live the American liberators!” an actor portraying a Sunni Iraqi in Western clothes yells while tearing apart a poster of the former Iraqi dictator. The scene is vivid. It reminded me of images we had seen in Eastern Germany and other Eastern European countries once communism fell. “Death to Ceausescu”, the Romanian people in late 1989 demanded liberation both, from a brutal tyrant and his hardliner interpretation of socialism. The early 1990s also saw the international community punish Saddam Hussein for having invaded oil-rich Kuwait; twelve years later, America decided to finish off Hussein himself by toppling his regime. Chandrasekaran’s book highlights the enormity of betrayal of American values that followed in the aftermath of the war in 2003. High hopes by Iraqi civilians for a speedy process of economic, political and social peace-building efforts spearheaded by Americans did not materialize. It is obvious that the Administration had not planned how to improve or safeguard the well-being of Iraqi civilians. ‘Citizen safety’ was not a major concern. Children being able to go to school – a prerequisite for stability in any society – has remained a key failure of America’s legacy in post-Saddam Iraq.

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