Why Peace: Occupying Iraq, State Department-style

May 13, 2012

Tags: Baghdad, Guttman, Why Peace
Posted in: Embassy/State, Iraq, Military

I was very happy to contribute an essay, “Occupying Iraq, State Department-style” to the new book edited by Marc Guttman, Why Peace. My essay deals with the increasing narrow gap between the actions of the Department of Defense and the Department of State abroad, and the implications for America of a foreign policy devoted only to hostility.

This book is an exploration of aggression, and of the evolutionary (and revolutionary) process to peace. Through the insights of men and women, from a wide range of backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives, Why Peace presents stories of wars, invasions, and political repressions—down to the most basic levels of authoritarianism. These individuals share mind-opening and inspiring personal experiences with state violence: North Korean gulag prisoners, exiled journalists, soldiers at war (and some who refused to go back), Colombian campesinos displaced by drug war fumigations, people violently displaced by their government for private corporate interests in the Amazon, families run over by war, victims of cluster bombs in Southeast Asia, Guantánamo prisoners, a Cuban student denied the rights to speak and organize, and much more.


Read a review here or here to learn more.

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