Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions (Hardcover)

The author, Dr. John Agresto, is a self-described neoconservative who spent nine months working in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority to revitalize higher education. The title of this book has long been a popular headline - The Economist is using it this week (22 March 2007) to describe the situation in Iraq, and the Hoover Institution's Policy Review used the phrase in 1997 in an essay on the crime epidemic. Feminists and others have also claimed that they have been "mugged by reality," and it seems one of liberalism's frequent laments when confronting the wider, less liberal world. The title, while a recycled one, is accurate when considering Agresto's driving contention: "In this age, we are all, all of us, seduced by hope but mugged by reality. And the pre-eminent reality of the day is a religious fanaticism, self-assured, unafraid of death, unafraid of killing, medieval in its outlook yet armed with powerful modern weaponry, growing in its mass appeal and able to co-opt democratic forms and elections." Agresto's authority and experience qualify him to write this book, and despite his identification with neo-conservatism, this book is neither Right nor Left in any orthodox sense. There is plenty herein to upset assumptions on both sides of the aisle. His intellectual honesty is evident in that he has not claimed to have found the easy answers too many pundits rave about: he supported the war; he acknowledges it has gone badly; he does not attempt to justify mistakes with intentions. As he describes the cardinal error, it was "hope triumphant over rationality," and Iraq has become more a tragedy than a mistake.
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