Imperial Life in the Emerald City
Inside Iraq's Green Zone
by Rajiv Chandrasekaran · first published 2006
8mentions
5recommended by
7HN commenters
2010–2025first – last mentioned
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
An inside account of the US-run Green Zone in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion, showing how political appointments and ideology shaped decisions. It offers insight into that occupation.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
An unprecedented account of life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq.
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Terrorism all depends on the beholder, doesn't it? The forced restructuring of Iraq's economy along right-wing neoliberal lines by the occupying force was another war crime. Read "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Chandrasekaran.
"Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone" is an excellent book on the same topic. What is most staggering (to a foreigner like me anyway) is how the appointment of American administrators in Iraq was entirely driven…
on “How the Arab World Came Apart” ↗…Iraq's economy along right-wing neoliberal lines I don't think 'right-wing neoliberal' is the right term for what's basically a soft version of the Warsaw Pact's command-and-control economies. > Read "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Chandrasekaran. I did, and it's very good — excellent. The short, short version is that basically everyone is incompetent, time-serving, disinterested and/or corrupt.
More to your point, the book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a scathing indictment on this system, and how incompetent apparatchiks were chosen over less politically connected entities, and how this had a direct…
on “Sunken Moskva Could Be the Biggest Naval Combat Loss in 40 Years” ↗Yes. Saddam Hussein was one of the worst leaders in history and the neocons legitimately thought they could create a free market utopia in Iraq (lmao), check out Imperial Life in the Emerald City. They fucked up horribly and made Iraq worse because they were incompetent morons who fired the entire army and didn't bother to make sure people actually had basic services. Putin wants to reestablish…
on “Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations” ↗…that (1) is absurd because when violence increases, deaths increase and reporters' presence on the ground decreases dramatically. If you read journalists' accounts of their own work in Iraq (for example, Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran), you'll note that in many cases reporters simply never left the green zone. How could they possibly write stories about killings when they can't leave the green zone? We know…
on “The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years” ↗…unlike the Marshall Plan, although it was probably politically indefensible. (Wait until Americans hear that Iraq has universal healthcare.) I must admit I've read more than I care about the topic, like "Imperial Life in the Emerald City"[2] or Sarah Chayes' chapter about Afghanistan in her book about corruption, discussed in length in this article[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Life_in_the_Emerald_C... [3]…
on “TikTok Says It's Not the Algorithm, Teens Are Just Pro-Palestine” ↗I wonder what the situation in Iraq is like now... reading the book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone" 1), I got the impression Rumsfeld and Cheney metaphorically drove the car of US power into a concrete wall at full speed in Iraq, by bungling about what happens after they…
on “It doesn't cost much to improve someone's life” ↗