What forces shape a nation's policies? Is it the will of its people bound together in common cause and cultural background? Is it the nation's media whose coverage of national issues helps mold the conversation? Perhaps it's the politicians who seek to satisfy all constituencies as a means of holding onto their preeminent power and influence. Most often, it is likely that all three primary forces have their role to play in the shaping of events, each balancing the other in a delicate dance of interlocking orbits the gestalt of which prevents a nation from skewing too far off course. But once in a great while, the dance is ignored, bypassed by a single force strong enough, clever enough, and manipulative enough to overpower the wisdom, the credulity and the common sense of a nation's leaders, all of whom should know better. Napoleon managed it through cunning and popular opinion. Hitler managed it through anger and manufactured outrage. Will the 21st century remember Ahmed Chalabi alongside these men of influence? Arrows of The Night suggests it well might.
Mr. Bonin, a producer for 60 Minutes, chronicles here the difficult, dramatic and destructive life of Ahmed Chalabi. The scion of a wealthy Iraqi family forced into exile by Saddam Hussein's rise to power in the 1960s, Ahmed weathered the isolation of boarding school in Britain, received his doctorate in mathematics in America, earned his financial stripes as a banker in Jordan and established himself as a man of intelligence and refined tastes all without a land to call home. Even more remarkable, he ascended to international success without the benefits of wealth his family had once enjoyed when, prior to Hussein's rise, they were allies of Iraq's royal family. Ahmed an exile, a self-made man, a success with a burning passion that no amount of personal achievement could sate. He wanted Saddam Hussein destroyed.
Setting out on a 20-year mission, Ahmed Chalabi rallied dissident Iraqis, seduced Neoconservatives, recruited US congressmen, and positioned himself for CIA assistance all in the singleminded desire to consign Saddam Hussein to history and replace him with a CIA-lead Iraq helmed by Ahmed Chalabi. Though his odyssey would experience numerous, ruinous ups and downs -- there appears to have been no bridge he was not willing to burn in the actualization of his goal, a fact which nearly found him barred from the halls of power --, he was ultimately successful in convincing the government of the United States to go to war in Iraq in 2003 and finish, there, what they failed to do 12 years earlier, to topple a tyrant from his throne and replace him with Ahmed Chalabi and the tenuous hope of democracy in the most unstable part of the world. He didn't sit in on the national security meetings; he didn't give the orders; he didn't have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks without which a war in Iraq would have seemed foolish. Nonetheless, he was there to capitalize on every opportunity, to push every button, to charm every powerbroker and to twist every arm in the realization of a dream 40 years in coming.
Arrows of The Night is a brilliant biography of an exceptional man and the flawed character that ultimately destroyed him. Drawing on interviews with Chalabi, along with conversations with politicians, powerbrokers and intelligence officers who dealt with him, Mr. Bonin paints a masterful and convincing portrait of a man so driven by a singular desire to restore his family's honor and position in Iraqi society that he is consumed by it. Ahmed Chalabi forgot need's most important lesson, that the stronger we want something, the more we are willing to compromise ourselves, our beliefs, our morals, even our friendships, in order to seize it. As humans, We are not strong enough, much less sufficiently self-aware, to indulge our needs without making sacrifices which is why we do not journey alone, why we have friends and allies to travel with us and keep us in line. Ahmed Chalabi was subsumed by his desire and there was no one there to stop him.
But as much as this work is a success as a biography, it is also a useful and potent glimpse into the workings of government and how it too is compromised by its wants. From the Neocons who believed so powerfully in their dogmas that they were willing to squander American lives and treasure to prove their eeeeerighteousness to the politicians who bring about so much destruction for the want to do half-hearted good, the government of the United States, here, is revealed to be a gigantic web of influence pedaling wherein each player does his level best to advance his own agenda by trading favors and capitalizing on alliances. To whatever extent this grim tapestry of government is authentic, it is utterly disturbing in its complete absence of decency and reason. Policy must be shaped by facts, not by factions and their dogmas. Allow oneself to be guided by the latter and he will quickly find himself mired in a calamitous war from which there is no fiscal recovery.
As disturbing as it is riveting. An excellent read. (4/5 Stars)
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