Chapter One

I Memory 622—1900

America’s war in Iraq, from its start, did not go as President Bush’s administration had predicted. Though the U.S. army captured Baghdad and Iraq’s other major cities easily enough, and encountered little resistance in abolishing the detested regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis did not greet America’s forces with the gratitude that they had been told to expect. Far from treating America’s soldiers as liberators, which is how they looked upon themselves, Iraqis regarded them as conquerors. It was a characterization for which most Americans were shockingly unprepared.

Frustrated, the American invaders believed they were being misunderstood. The leadership in Washington had proclaimed repeatedly that its quarrel was not with the Iraqi people but with Saddam’s regime. It had assured its soldiers of the nobility of their mission, not just to end a dangerous military threat but to wipe out tyranny and create the conditions for democracy. Wasn’t that why the armies of their fathers and grandfathers had disembarked in 1944 in France, to a delirious welcome by the local population? In 1945, moreover, the defeated Germans and Japanese, taking for granted the victors’ benevolence, willingly established free and democratic regimes. So why were the Iraqis so hostile?

Notwithstanding the political and cultural diversity among them, most Iraqis took the position that the American army was their enemy and placed serious obstacles in the way of its efforts to stabilize the country. This was the response of Sunnis and Shi’ites, Baghdadis and provincials, extremists an