The Bone Clocks

My head’s humming. After Holly’s ultimatum last night, I didn’t sleep so well, and I’ve drunk too much champagne. “Because the script was written referring not to Iraq as it was, but to a fantasy Iraq as Rumsfeld, Rice, and Bush et al. wanted it to be, or dreamt it to be, or were promised by their pet Iraqis-in-exile it would be. They expected to find a unified state like Japan in 1945. Instead, they found a perpetual civil war among majority Shi’a Arabs, minority Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. Saddam Hussein—a Sunni—had imposed a brutal peace on the country, but with him gone, the civil war reheated, and now it’s … erupted, and the CPA is embroiled. When you’re in control, neutrality isn’t possible.”

The band at the far end of the hall strikes up “The Birdy Song.”

Ruth asks, “So the Sunni are fighting in Fallujah because they want a Sunni leader back in charge?”

“That’s one reason, but the Shi’a elsewhere are fighting because they want the foreigners out.”

“Being occupied’s unpleasant,” says Austin. “I get that. But surely Iraqis can see that life’s better now than it used to be.”

“Two years ago your average Iraqi—male—had a job, of some type. Now he hasn’t. There was water in the taps and power in the grid. Now there isn’t. Petrol was available. Now it isn’t. Toilets worked. Now they don’t. You could send your kids to school without being afraid they’ll be kidnapped. Now you can’t. Iraq was a creaking, broken, sanction-ravaged place, but it sort of, kind of, worked. Now it doesn’t.”

An Arab-looking waiter fills my cup from a silver pot. I thank him and wonder if he’s thinking, This guy’s talking out of his hole. Sharon, meanwhile, a girl happy to discuss Middle Eastern politics over her wedding cake, asks, “Who’s to blame?”

“It entirely depends who you ask,” I reply.

“We’re asking you,” says Peter the groom.

I sip my coffee. It’s good. “The de facto king of Iraq is a Kissinger acolyte named L. Paul Bremer III. On taking office, he passed two edicts that have shaped the occupation. Edict number one ruled that any member of the Ba’ath Party above a certain rank was to be sacked. With one stroke of the pen Bremer consigned to the scrap-heap the very civil servants, scientists, teachers, police officers, engineers, and doctors that the coalition needed to rebuild the country. Fifty thousand white-collar Iraqis lost their salaries, pensions, and futures and wanted the occupation to fail from that day on. Edict number two disbanded the Iraqi Army. No back pay, no pension, no nothing. Bremer created 375,000 potential insurgents—unemployed, armed, and trained to kill. Hindsight is easy, sure, but if you’re the viceroy of an occupied country, it’s your job to possess foresight—or at least to listen to advisers who do.”

Brendan’s phone goes off; he answers it and turns away, saying, “Jerry, what news from the Isle of Dogs?”

“If this Bremer’s doing such an appalling job,” asks Peter, loosening his white silk tie, “why isn’t he recalled?”

“His days are numbered.” I plop a lump of sugar into my coffee. “But everyone, from the president to the lowliest staffer in the Green Zone, has a vested interest in peddling the bullshit that the insurgents are just a few fanatics and that the corner is always being turned. The Green Zone’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes, where speaking the truth is an act of treason. Bad things happen to realists.”

“Surely,” asks Sharon, “the truth must be obvious when they set foot outside the Green Zone.”

“Most staffers never do. Ever. Except to go to the airport.”

If Austin Webber wore a monocle, it would drop. “How do you run a country from inside a bunker, for God’s sake?”

I shrug. “Nominally. Sketchily. In a state of ignorance.”

“But the military must know what’s going on, at least. They’re the ones getting blown up and shot at.”

“They do, Austin, yes. And the infighting between Bremer’s faction and the generals is ruthless, but the military, too, often acts as if it wantsto radicalize the population. My photographer, Aziz, has an uncle in Karbala who farms a few acres of olive orchards. Well, he didfarm a few acres of olive orchards. Last October, a convoy was attacked on a stretch of road running through his land, so the coalition forces asked the locals for information on the ‘bandits.’ When none was forthcoming, a platoon of marines chopped down every last tree: ‘To encourage the locals to be more cooperative in future.’ Imagine the cooperation that act of vandalism earned.”

“It’s like the British in Ireland in 1916,” says Oisнn O’Dowd. “They repeated the ageless macho mantra ‘Force is the only thing these natives understand’ so often that they ended up believing it. From that point on they were doomed.”

“But I’ve been visiting the States for thirty years, on and off,” says Austin. “The Americans I know are as wise, compassionate, and decent a bunch as you could ever hope to meet. I don’t understand it.”