Washington Post National Editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of the award-winning book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone,” is scheduled to address Denver’s World Affairs Council this week. Chandrasekaran spoke by phone with Denver Post staff writer Bruce Finley.
Q: What might have been a realistic alternative to setting up, and ruling from, the fortified Green Zone?
A: There always had to be some sort of protected zone … but it need not have been right smack in the center of Baghdad. And it need not have been the same area that Saddam Hussein had commandeered for himself for his Republican Palace, his palaces for his children and villas for his cronies. It sent a very negative symbolic message to the Iraqis that we Americans were setting up shop in the palace of the tyrant. We just as easily could have set up some base of operations near Baghdad’s airport or some other part of the city.
Q: What galled you most about the behavior of U.S. occupiers?
A: Serving pork products in the cafeteria in the Green Zone, where many Iraqi Muslims ate. … It was incredibly culturally insensitive.
Q: What would greater interaction with Iraqis have added in the post-Hussein period?
A: It would have made us much more modest in our ambitions. We went in there in the very early days with this ambitious agenda that included an awful lot of micro-management and dealing with minutiae. … If there was more Iraqi input, the Americans would have spent less time worrying about things like rewriting the tax code … and instead focused on far more basic things like creating jobs and fixing hospital emergency rooms.
Q: To what extent have problems been fixed?
A: Some of the most egregious policies have been corrected. Most notably, the State Department is now in charge. We are now sending more professional diplomats, as opposed to young people hired principally for their political qualifications. … Other problems persist. The Iraq Study Group noted last year there were only eight Americans working at the embassy who spoke Arabic.
Hear more about it
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” speaks at 6 p.m. Thursday in the Brown Palace. The event is open to the public.
Prices: $20 for Institute of International Education Members, $30 nonmembers; $15 students.
More information and reservations: 303-837-0788, ext. 10
