ANOTHER AMERICAN OCCUPATION FAILURE NOT DISCUSSED BY THE CANDIDATES: 2/8: A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East's Long War by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2024
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Your-Own-City-Travels/dp/0593536886/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
A Stranger in Your Own City is award-winning writer Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s vivid, shattering response. This is not a book about Iraq’s history or an inventory of the many Middle Eastern wars that have consumed the nation over the past several decades. This is the tale of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniacal leader who shaped the state in his own image; a people who watched a foreign army invade, topple that leader, demolish the state, and then invent a new country; who experienced the horror of having their home fragmented into a hundred different cities.
When the “Shock and Awe” campaign began in March 2003, Abdul-Ahad was an architect. Within months he would become a translator, then a fixer, then a reporter for The Guardian and elsewhere, chronicling the unbuilding of his centuries-old cosmopolitan city. Beginning at that moment and spanning twenty years, Abdul-Ahad’s book centers on the West and in its place focuses on everyday people, soldiers, mercenaries, citizens blown side
1925 BAGHDAD
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a |
| 0:02.0 | a series of the world. I'm John Batzer. I'm with the author and journalist |
| 0:09.8 | Raeth Abdullah Har, his new book is a Stranger in Your Own City, travels in the Middle East |
| 0:15.2 | long war. |
| 0:17.0 | B Rayth, you paint a beautiful scene of your father showing you in the high in the sky over Baghdad an F4 phantom. |
| 0:25.9 | Who was your father at that moment? What did he make of the F4 phantom for the, I believe you were |
| 0:31.7 | five years old. |
| 0:33.0 | I was five. My father was a what do we call an amateur |
| 0:38.0 | interested in aviation and planes and collected all these you know foreign magazines about and |
| 0:45.0 | and collected all these, you know, foreign magazines about airplanes and jet fighters. |
| 0:47.0 | He had a few friends who were pilots in the Araca Air Force. |
| 0:50.0 | So this is why he could, you know, spot the F4 flying over Baghdad. |
| 0:56.0 | I really remember that day as my first war. |
| 1:00.0 | I went to my parents bedroom, my father later took me to the roof, seeing that was the first time I hear the sounds of heavy anti-aircraft machine guns. |
| 1:11.0 | And it's a very interesting point because you know |
| 1:14.8 | because I think that's the point where all the miseries of alab started that war |
| 1:20.1 | with Iran which led to Saddam having a very strong army but a bankrupt country which led |
| 1:28.8 | him to invading Kuwait in 91 and the history was the rest. The story includes you witnessing a parade. My date says |
| 1:39.3 | 1989 so you were a few years older. A parade, a victory parade, though the war ended with no clear |
| 1:46.8 | winner, both sides, as we witness in all wars, both sides extremely greased-stricken, but at the same time claiming success. |
| 1:57.4 | You witness a parade where there are Iranian prisoners and Iraqi soldiers. |
| 2:02.2 | I picture the parade marching by and you get close enough for one |
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