Phil Borden, "Shaku Maku: On The Ground In Occupied Baghdad". Denver, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008.
Phil Borden is a relative by marriage from Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, a PhD in history of ideas, and an expert in small business development including women-owned businesses. In 2006, he was asked to save an economic development contract related to setting up the Baghdad Private Business Center for the Department of State. After the contract was finished, he visited Baghdad twice more to try to continue helping the brave members of his Board, all but two of whom had moved to Amman. His experiences included both the surge and the pre-surge. While in Baghdad, he wrote a weekly email report for all the people he knew who were worried sick about him. This report, a dry series of observations on daily life in the Red Zone, grew far beyond Phil's immediate circle and was even posted under other people's names. His wife got him to publish the reports as a book, combined with excerpts from letters to individual people and some material to introduce the chapters. (Outskirts Press is a self-publishing outfit as one can find out with The Google.) I am happy to use Daily Kos, the biggest bullhorn I have, to promote this book.
IMHO the value of the book is its ability to portray the experiences of someone who comes to Iraq as a pure civilian. Among the things which Phil learns is what he doesn't know: at the very end of the book, he speaks well of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, The Looming Tower, and his favorite, George Packer's Assassin's Gate. Although Phil is surrounded by security contractors, mostly from DynCorp, and is very safe, we learn the frustration of someone trying to do things which have worked before, with curiosity and the ability to communicate with the Iraqi businesspeople he is there to help, who is stymied in being able to do anything permanent by, foremost, the violence and great uncertainty about security, and second, the stupid free-market ideology of the people at State he is dealing with. Phil observes that many of the people in the contracting game in Iraq know nothing except how to get more contracts, and has the experience of USAID trying to redo all the work he has done for three times the budget. I think that it adds to the book to have these passages about frustration with bureaucracy which could happen anywhere. We have the glimmerings of an idea of the frustration of an Iraqi who knows none of these things but wants only to have a decent life, and who is dealing with a bureaucracy whose interest is to promote their particular sect and cannot even take out the trash. In fact, in an early letter Phil compares the environment in Baghdad to the environment of the L.A. ghetto. It goes without saying that Phil finds the MSM coverage of Iraq quite wanting, and the book provides another set of observations through which to filter that coverage.
Phil did not believe in the war when he came to Baghdad, but his view becomes darker and more cynical, and a security contractor he is fond of is killed. His description of the Democrats is worthy of Glenn Greenwald:
I tend to blame Democrats more than Republicans, because we know the Republicans are bad guys with a certain view, but Democrats presumably do not share that view. Yet they have never stood up when it had meaning. Now they are doing some of the oversight, but for all the wrong reasons. They have no more integrity or guts now than they did before, they just sniff the blood in the water. I think conservative politicians like Chuck Hagel and to a lesser extent Murtha, are closer to the heroes in the story.
He also writes that our staying in Iraq props up the very worst there: we have emphasized religious division and people who share neoconservative values. Even if Iraq becomes a client state of Iran, the incentives to be incompetent will be swept away.
The light-hearted tone of the general circulation report describes everything that is going on inside him less and less. He turns to writing very bad poetry for his eyes alone.
Because most of the people around Phil are security contractors, we get some information about what it is like to be a security contractor. Phil observes low-grade violence and danger each day, although he is relatively safe from it. A car bomb explodes across the street and a rocket hits the room next door. The "surge" means more surveillance of Baghdad with heavier equipment.
Phil visits Erbil for a conference, but he is otherwise limited to Baghdad. He takes walks along the Tigris and tries to find safe places to observe the area near the hotel. He also meets colleagues at hotels, at a Forward Operating Base, and inside the Green Zone, which is far more luxurious in terms of food.
What happens to Phil contains none of what could be called incident in the book. However, the story is moved forward by the intelligent, ironic voice and the power of honesty. The book is worthwhile as a primary source about Iraq.