HW 25: Intro to Riverbend

In the book version of Bagdad Burning, Ahdaf Soueif provided a Foreword and James Ridgeway provided an Introduction to Riverbend’s blog posts on the war in Iraq. In the Foreword, Soueif gives an overall overview of the material that Riverbend will be writing about in her blog. Soueif uses many quotations from Riverbend’s blog. He says that “Bagdad Burning makes painful reading. It also makes enjoyable--even fun--reading.” He also states that “English-speaking readers are incredibly lucky that this young Iraqi woman has written her narrative straight into English…” This makes Bagdad Burning earlier to understand because us readers will not be caught in the translation problems and we will be able to understand Riverbend better (Soueif, ix). I just disagree with one of Riverbend‘s quotations in the Foreword, “Why does being anti-Bush and anti-occupation have to mean that a person is anti-American?” (Soueif, viii). I think that you can still be pro-American and anti-Bush. We live in a society that respects civilians even if they dislike their president. In the Introduction James Ridgeway speaks mainly about the history of Iraq. He splits up the history based on the influence that major wars have had on Iraq, including World War I and World War II ,the Gulf War , the Cold War, and the 2003 War. Ridgeway also speaks about Riverbend’s blog. From his opinion, “…her war becomes your war. You begin to see things through her eyes and those of her family..” (Ridgeway, xii). I thought this was a nice touch to the Introduction because Ridgeway does not just feed dry information about Iraq. Ridgeway also gives the reader harsh realities of Iraq, mortality rates and other statistics. “… [after the reconstruction] just 2 percent of the $18.4 billion earmarked for the urgent reconstruction of Iraq had been spent. Not a penny was spent on healthcare or water sanitation.” (Ridgeway, xvii) Thus soldiers were handing out $100 bills to civilian for helping out on street repair. Overall both the foreword and the introduction give helpful information about Bagdad Burning.