Books: The Fall of Baghdad

Death up close

By John Dicker

Forget WMDs. Forget yellowcake. Forget imperial-minded chickenhawks, Blame America First-ers and that movie by the guy in the baseball cap.

Just don't forget the Iraqi people. That's the thrust of Jon Lee Anderson's decidedly nonpolemical account of life in pre- and post-"Mission Accomplished" Iraq. Anderson, who covers all things war-ravaged for The New Yorker, has written a unique book about a war that's yet to be officially deemed a quagmire but shows little sign of blossoming into anything better.

What makes The Fall of Baghdad different from so many other titles about the war is that it's actually about the war in Iraq, and the people who, however liberated, dodge bombs, Baathists and Islamofascists on a daily basis.

"When it came to Iraq, the thoughts of most Americans did not extend much beyond Saddam Hussein," Anderson writes. "Iraqis were seen almost exclusively as hapless victims of his tyranny, or else as conniving participants of it, but either way, they were essentially faceless."

One of only 16 American journalists to stay in Baghdad for the shock and the awe, Anderson paints a complex portrait of a swath of Iraqi faces at no small risk to his own safety. The Fall reads in part like a string of profiles and a day-to-day narrative on the difficulties of reporting from a dictatorship wheezing its final breath.

What quickly emerges is that even after the oft-repeated footage of Saddam's statue going down in Firdos Square, Iraqis were not prone to pontificate about their predicament. The fear instilled through decades of Baathist repression has seemingly infected their capacity to think and effectively communicate. However, in a culture where dissent is often a ticket to execution, silence can make a lot of sense.

In a conversation with Ala Bashir, a plastic surgeon and sculptor who unintentionally became the darling of Saddam, the grim reality of the country's political life is made even clearer.

Anderson says: "The obvious thing for them to do if they wanted to avert war was to demonstrate in public and say: `Mr. President, we love you very much but please resign your office for the sake of the nation.' Ala Bashir nodded. `That's true. And it's the one thing they cannot do, because they know they would be killed.'"

As this is a book about a war, there's no lack of carnage. Anderson neither diminishes nor exploits the horrors he encounters, but merely reports them. In a Baghdad hospital, he witnesses a family who just lost their two young children. The nurses and the doctors wept openly. So did Anderson.

Whether victims of the invasion or just citizens whose lives have been placed in a perilous holding pattern, Iraqis consistently ask the author variations on the same question: "Why is America doing this?" Is it an occupation or a regime change? These are rarely rhetorical jabs, they really want to know. Anderson, in his portrait of prolonged chaos, seems to poke a subtle argument as to why platitudes of liberation offer little comfort to people accustomed to being acted upon politically, rather than acting themselves. That, and it's hard to trust the power that bombs your city one

day and then stands by as it is looted the next.

While he casts a skeptical eye on peace activists who come to Baghdad to act as human shields, Anderson never discusses his own need to be there. Shortly before the war, The New Yorker asks him to evacuate, but he finds a way to stay without directly disobeying them. Anderson is married with three kids, so one assumes he has more than a few incentives to survive; yet he

never voices a desire to go home. Perhaps his own feelings are similar to Patrick Dillon, a Vietnam veteran who flocks to war zones the way others go to holy sites.

"I love death. I know it's wrong, but I do. Don't you? Isn't that why you're here?" Dillon asks the author.

Even while remaining grateful to Anderson for his tenacious reporting, one wonders the same question. And that's not to cast aspersion, merely to ask what it is about death that makes some people so willing to get in its face. Even if it's only by turning the pages of what for you and me is a good book and for others is a seemingly endless crisis.