The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer | Iraq War History Book | Political Analysis & War Journalism | Perfect for History Buffs & Political Science Students

Assassins' Gate is an astonishing work. This book is a rare find, Packer is a journalist who not only digs deep for the stories he tells, but is able to put them within the proper context, a feat rarely attempted and seemingly un-attempted nowadays.This book is based on the reporter's experiences meeting with the ex-pat Iraqis that lobbied for America to overthrow Hussein and the extensive amount of time he spent in Iraq after the invasion. The book has narrow objectives. It doesn't push a point a view based on the status of major metrics like the change in oil supplies or electricity to Iraqis. This book does not report much of anything regarding America's invasion of Iraq. This book is not an attempt to defend the supporters or detractors of America invading. This book does not attempt to provide a bird's eye view of the success or failure of the vast undertaking of building a democracy in Iraq.What this book does do is interweave stories about real Iraqis and the effect Hussein had on their lives, and what life is like after we brought the Baathists down. Packer also gets the perspective of the military, the bureaucrats in the Coalition trying to rebuild a country, and the local Iraqis that are working with America to rebuild Iraq. While Packer keeps his reporting down in the dirt, rather than writing from an ivory tower, one is able to come up with some strategic conclusions about how efforts have gone so far and what successes and failures Iraqis and Americans have experienced based on his anecdotal narratives. This is because Packer does such a great job of providing a large number of perspectives where he's able to capture the complex impressions of the people experiencing these times in Iraq. There are no cardboard caricatures in this book!Packer does take the liberty of providing us with his perspective on the current reality near the end of the book. I have found no writer more worthy of pushing their point of view, he earned it by spending so much time outside the green zone with Iraqis and the Americans that are the boots on the ground making the effort to increase our odds of success.If one were at a dinner party with Packer discussing the wisdom of our approach and the performance of our efforts, and partisans from both sides were also present, I believe by the end of the evening, all the non-partisans would be pretty much ignoring the ideologues to listen exclusively to what Packer learned. Problem is, it seems there are hardly any non-partisans (see pg. 383 where Packer reports on his dinner party conversations back in America).Decades and a century from now, when these events have played out more and history has lent us some perspective, I have no doubt historians will be heavily leveraging Packer's work. Packer provides perspective and the human element necessary to illuminate how the major milestones into 2005 affected the people of Iraq and the Americans present in Iraq who are making the effort to build a constitutional democracy.