Mismanagement?

My comments on the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

The fact that the Iraqi occupation was bungled is not in much doubt anymore, and Rajiv Chandrasekaran documents the mismanagement well. That said, any book that doesn't challenge America's divine right to interfere in the affairs of other countries and not letting them choose for themselves leaves a lot to be desired.

Mismanagement? Yes -- we can all agree on that. But there is a more fundamental problem that has nothing to do with whether the occupation (illegal, of course) was managed or mismanaged, and that is the problem of imperialistic, military aggression and preemptive wars based on highly dubious pretexts (mushroom clouds, democracy etc.)

As a simple thought experiment (not a perfect analogy, but close), imagine a British correspondent wrote a book about the brutal Indian occupation and about how it was being mismanaged. Yes, the British would spend endless hours debating how they were managing their Raj, but as an Indian bearing the brunt of the occupation, I would find the mismanagement arguments rather irrelevant and farcical.