I found this excerpt powerfully depressing, illuminating, and important. It follows the theme of a discussion we had a while back on America Abroad about the Iraqi constitution, in which I argued what we needed most to know was what the Iraqi people think and several readers responded with links to blogs by Iraqis. I would also recommend Baghdad Diaries, by Nuha al-Radi, which describes her experience living in Baghdad during the first Gulf War and for the ensuing decade. The depressing part is how little we know, and worse, want to know, about an entire people and culture we sought to "liberate." Worse still, it didn't have to be this way; we have many diplomats and intelligence agents who know Iraqi culture and history and who would have been far more aware of the likely reactions of Iraqis; yet the State Department's plan for post-conflict reconstruction was tossed out the window early on by the State Department. And certainly there were many in the State Department and elsewhere in the government who understood that standing by and allowing the Iraqi national museum to be looted while we stood guard over oil installations and presumed sites of weapons of mass destruction was an unforgivable insult to an ancient culture that was, as every schoolchild knows, the cradle of civilization itself. It was also a world tragedy akin to the Taliban blowing up the ancient Afghan budhas.

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