Joe Stanek

2 weeks ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Joe Stanek

It can be difficult now to recall the peaks and nadirs that defined each phase of America’s decades-long war in Iraq. The prevailing fatalism of hindsight bias makes it sound like the war was always lost from the beginning. Yet for many, the 2007 troop surge was a time of great hope and confidence that the American military strategy was working. Initial reports from NPR and The Guardian praised sharp decreases in the number of car bombings and overall deaths.

Feb 26, 2025 | chireviewofbooks.com | Joe Stanek

As a teenager born in Cairo and growing up in Doha, Omar El Akkad remembers, “I wanted for the part of the world where I believed there existed a fundamental kind of freedom.