ANOTHER AMERICAN OCCUPATION FAILURE NOT DISCUSSED BY THE CANDIDATES: 7/8: 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
⏱️ 12 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
1932 BAGHDAD
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You hit a limit that's why this doctors? |
| 0:07.0 | Yes. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm sorry. I get used to the... I get excited in the conversation. I forget what time it is I can handle that. |
| 0:15.0 | 20 minutes to go you're wonderful thank you. |
| 0:21.0 | Thank you John I love the conversation. |
| 0:24.0 | On to Mosul and we're going to leave the redemption for October 2019 in the |
| 0:31.5 | fourth segment, okay? |
| 0:33.6 | Yes. |
| 0:34.6 | Five. |
| 0:36.6 | Leave them redeemed, guys, that's my secret. |
| 0:39.2 | No matter what part of history. |
| 0:43.0 | Find it. |
| 0:44.0 | Five, four, three, two, one. |
| 0:48.0 | I'm John Batchelor with Christ, Abdullah Had. A stranger in your own city is his new book, |
| 0:56.0 | travels in the Middle East long war. The Iranians are on the battlefield. The Islamic State is now dominating Mosul. Islamic State has established |
| 1:09.6 | itself as a caliphate. What that means for the rest of Iraq is power in the northern part of |
| 1:17.9 | Iraq and Masoul and doubts about the Shia dominated regime in Baghdad. |
| 1:23.7 | The Iranians are present to help recapture cities such as Ramadi and Falusha |
| 1:29.5 | from the Islamic State. The reason the Islamic State gets so much attention these days still is that they practiced horrors. |
| 1:40.0 | Now at some point there was a recognition by the jihadis that we did it wrong the first time, |
| 1:46.5 | that we alienated the people by brutal and cruel. |
| 1:49.7 | We executed not only the person but his cousin and his cousin's cousin. We're not going to do that anymore. |
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