i teach middle eastern history at the university of california san diego i recently sat down and and had a long chat with anthony shadid and patient is a pulitzer prize winning middle east correspondent for the washington post pulitzer prize for his coverage of the iraq war and his several years spent in iraq covering the war from the perspective of the people most directly affected by the war in iraq use them selves we talked for quite a long time and covered many areas of middle eastern politics and history and the united states role in the region you know i'm going kind of i think a lot of you would really disagree with what i'm bout to say but i think a lot of it has to do with you know i think look you know it's it's an israel you know the lack of humanity they read into their opponents a lack of i think there's a certain prejudice the right word is dehumanisation is this kind of a certain condescension that they bring to the table when it when they deal with their opponents and i think to some forms a lot of what's going on but because we understand a very complicated complex relationship between is right i'll never forget again if i just changing countries and changing conflicts but it was iraq it was iraq and this is a few weeks after the after the fall of saddam hussein and i think the united nations ha israelis in the west bank and gaza and tearing down houses or what have you there are very very concrete images i think in the middle east of what occupation represents the americans were then in the business in those early weeks of their presence intentions of the americans at that point i'll never forget just as a journalist i know what overstate it was there were there were comp there was a it was a complex environment at that time but you most felt the mood shift right there when it was declared an occupation you felt the mood shift you felt people taking a different stance toward the united states toward the americans and you just i thought it was a again it was it was it was a very it was an insight into how little the americans appreciated the landscape they just inherited the rockies the lebanese they  see these conflicts and based on some things that happened to them before united states us policy makers continually talk about the second world war well i mean the second world war really didn't have much effect on iraq so i mean how much do any of the people who are in a policy on behalf of the american public how much do they actually know about this history and i think that's a great point i think is exactly right i think that as a reporter especially in iraq it struck me time and again how the americans basically thought they'd specific place i corrected it just weathered of course i mean we all and we know what saddam's dictatorship was like but also whether the devastating war with iran eight years that i mean was just the brutalized the country in so many ways a decade of sanctions that were backed by the united states that wiped out the middle class in iraq i mean the plea like this these forces that transformed iraqi society as a preamble to what the americans were going to do and having no notion of them i mean it's almost breathtaking  mean just just well for some reporters including my quit going to news conferences because it was the disapprobation was so deep that it just it served to compute you you know a little less sometimes at times i've seen the military taking a more ideologically opposed poised as as this is the civilian political side of it was the military sometimes going below to question their assumptions and question their preconceptions and you can sometimes see that work now not always obviously but there were instances here and there and i thought much more certainly in lebanon and so i wonder if you can if you can talk about were or relate stories or encounters you had with iraqis how informed are iraqi say of the role of the united states during the the american the american role in their history you know when you when you mention that it just brings to mind too that two almost quick anecdote that they'll never forget and the first was during the invasion itself we were just talking about how informed iraqis were of american intentions of w the americans were doing and i spent the day with an iraqi family this is the four or five days after the bombing had begun during the invasion back in march of two thousand and three and i'll never forget as we're sitting there before we had lunch there watching fox television there watching fox news basically bent on understand exactly what the americans were up to they were what they would weather this you know broadcast hour after hour when i can even handle you know sitting there struck me you know talking about the american kind of alliance with saddam i think it's mostly in the one nine hundred eighty s in the war with iran we were talking about that with a friend of mine a woman named yes meaningless a very interesting woman and she said you know this is what the americans won't ever understand is that you know back in the one nine hundred eighty s even in one thousand nine hundred it was saddam and then i think a lot of people united states would think it was it was you know the americans against saddam her notion of it was that it was the americans and saddam against us in other words the american the saddam one the same plane ramos in an alliance in a way and that the reason that the invasion happened is because saddam had run it was no longer useful to the americans as long as he was doing what they were doing he was in power the americans supported him americans held his you know his tenure would last longer than that it might have otherwise this is our notion as an iraqi i think is a very it was a widely held notion among iraqis that the americans were instrumental in saddam's power especially during the one nine hundred eighty s that's i mean that i didn't i don't think i'd appreciate the depth of that that understanding before i went there back and during the invasion but it was it was very much there i think he reckons i think most arabs in general bring a pretty sophisticated understanding of politics and of american policy in the region i think more sophisticated than we are cells do in the united states it's a notion that you know people often look for for hidden agendas for for sometimes people dismiss conspiracies but you know let's face it there have been conspiracies  consumers perhaps more credulous less sophisticated than the news consumers in the arab i think so i think it would it would not hurt americans to have that kind of critical approach most iraqis and arabs take to their news basically incredible generalization but i think often in the arab world up in iraq that people understand that media that information is a very political is a tool and it's often tool that is wielded by governments by people in power to further their own agendas and there's a very blunt understanding of that in the middle east i'm not sure i understand is quite as blunt over here in the united states those of us who are exposed precisely to this to the mainstream media would be forgiven from understanding  the principle sort of political and social consciousness of people in the middle east the center on the religious grounds sectarian identity and and at the same time we hear or or learned that for example fifty percent of the marriages in iraq before the war were intersected and so i wonder what i mean what what if any role has that sort of view of a middle eastern political consciousness on the part of americans what what what are the  results of that on the region i think it's a great point and i think that's one of you know in reflecting on my time in iraq as a reporter i think one of the i think one of the legacies of the american occupation of the american invasion of the american presence there today wh the u s government for the americans in the meantime are u s policy makers the bush administration i think the notion they had of iraq before the invasion was that this is a country simply comprised of shiite sunni and kurds and it was that in some respects it was much more than that i mean we had parties that didn't transcend sectarian boundaries and the very vigorous way the communist party for instance in the bath party you know i think it's rank and file the majority were probably shiite that when the party was it was a real party not just a tool of saddam  administration and what we see today is erect is in some ways mirror that misconception that preconception that we had before the invasion and they were very concrete steps the united states took willfully or not willfully but they were very concrete steps to help further the sectarian divisions in terms of how the government was a the record governing council how it was comprised in the very beginning quotas that were used in appointing ministers and point representatives in the ministry i mean these helped deep in those sectarian divisions in a very real way occupation ends should it yeah you know i have to say i was much i was the last time i was in iraq was a year ago and i was much more optimistic before that last visit you know it's hard to describe the devastation that's been infli d on iraq as a country as a body politic i do have hope that things may be ok in a generation as long as the country can stay whole but i'm not sure that's going to happen necessarily just it's a it's a  level of devastation that i would never have imagined when i when i first went to reckon one thousand nine hundred eight that that this could actually happen in this country and it's i think there is still the resilience there but i think that was illions in some ways has become the style jenna more than anything else know from psych speak on we've made we create so many problems in the middle east by drawing arbitrary artificial borders and we're going to try to solve another problem by creating more borders that are no less arbitrary and artificial and you know i think it's iraq is still considered i mean i think the kurdish north is different i have to say that it is with the said part at this point in that and in many respects it already is a a country in some respects what we talk about the rest of the country there still is i think there still is a very deep notion of being iraqi and there's not a there's not a groundswell of support for partitioning the country by any means i mean it in effect this is why the resilience you are talking about comes in most forcefully this idea that we are still iraqis that there is still a nationalism patriotism i want to describe of the notion that there is a country called iraq and i think if there is i think there probably will be some kind of the facto partition to be honest and i think the americans will will bless it at some level and i think they'll do it over the resistance of a lot of iraqis who who who see themselves as you know the see that the some of the parts of still greater than the individual parts but i do think we're headed in that direction it's in again it's you know i think it reflects the almost desperation this point to on the part of the of the bad boy from the perspective of american politics and so on in iraq and i wonder what were your impressions during this interview and how i mean how much heat he portrays himself i think it's kind of an  reporter for the a p and in two thousand and two with the boston globe and then the only thirty was well my third trip i went with the washington post before the invasion so here was in iraq and you know my third trip and i went to nudge after saddam had fall hours and and he received me it was a very interesting i had no idea i knew a little bit about us father had been assassinated that i didn't have an understood the depth of his father's following what his father really represented in a in a very interesting ways of is a populist movement still is i still am fascinated by that that phenomenon but i didn't understand then i said what saddam south of the sun was going to was going to mean for iraqi politics and i think the notion the impression i had back then is the impression i still have today and that is that saddam himself is a little bit out of his league that he's a little bit overwhelmed by the events that he's made he's not that the mind he's not the personality that his father was but the people he has around him are some the sharpest minds sharpest personalities in iraq today and they remain that way a very dynamic movement a movement that understands intuitively what a street movement is all about what populist politics are all about and those people around him have at this point managed to take somebody who was when i met him bashful ensue unsure of himself would speak when he's looking down at the ground ways about iraqi politics is what the side really represents i think a lot of people view him as is in some ways an instigator of some sectarian bloodshed has been going on here that often i've always been skeptical about i think there is i'm sure you know this is a loose movement has a lot of men that claim to represent him and then aren't necessarily under his control he may have instigated some of the sectarian bloodshed if you if you know if he needs to rally the street or do anything he needs to the rally history and there's no question about that all that said i think that that as you mentioned a little bit earlier souter does represent something different complicated figure more complex than a simple shiite cleric and i don't know enough i could just go back to one of the thing that always gives me a little bit of hope about the future of iraqi politics especially the americans will were not part of that the scene the americans and some of the occupation came to an end in some respects is that a good friend of mine who's a you know this is a kind of a politician more of an academic the respected sunni figure in baghdad you know all this bloodshed that's happened on a sectarian division sectarian hatred we're sitting in his house talking and he was wondering if there's still a way to restore the ties to solder the sunni shiite ties that had kind of coalesced around saluja back in two thousand and four there's a way to restore those ties in two thousand and six and good impression of him and he still you know the you know i think the folly of this entire american vision of what iraq was going to become could be told through the story of a child in a way and even  since two thousand and two on business in iraq after two thousand and three of you know of trying to become the american man and iraqi politics and of going over to solder thinking he could do so i could steer side in a different direction of just the sheer ego involved in thinking these things that you know he represented and now i'm sure you know i'm sure it's not the last we've heard of him i'll never forget it even after after all this had happened back in two thousand and five when you're talking about a prime minister tell he was not sure to lose one of the leading cynical and will do what has to be done and chalabi almost take pride in there was a kind of a and a the word kind of like a contrarian side to work i kind of classic and i don't know and child describe it exactly but you know knowing that but wanting to celebrate them anyway the shell of his intellectual in that and that's i'm not sure what was going on there but it always struck me as that that he knew he was on a stage in a way you covered the diplomatic b and and washington too and i it mentioned when i talked to some of his people but you know did it come from him did it come from somewhere else i'm not really sure it was a good question i wonder if the americans are even thinking of an exit strategy at this point i mean i think what the i mean this is this kind of veneration of general petra sense that we can keep you know that they can keep this kind of going until the end of the administration and then leave it to another mystery and to try to fix i don't think there's any long term or broad planning about how the americans withdraw themselves from iraq and and that's leading us even you know even quicker toward a disaster that you know when it the question is going to be answered nobody's talking about the question right now or the answer and when the answer comes it's probably going to be done in a very haphazard chaotic way and leave the situation even worse than it is right now have you seen these i mean we hear a lot about lines what have you seen along i mean have you seen the construction projects and that sort of thing you difference difference in the notion of permanent basis going on in iraq and i think that's the direction we're headed you look at the embassy itself and it was not a great story to write would be just the geography of the american the space they want to claim it pales before the american embassy in baghdad you know do you see is can we see a situation rising down the road in iraq of you know the country is largely chaotic there's no real central government countries dividing  are going to exert control but there are men and the oil is flowing and companies have you know they buy protection there's a forceful american presence there in bases that are that are pretty well guarded and the civil war hasn't spilled beyond our export as i mean could americans accept this i think not only could they accept this and this is probably going to happen in some ways so despite the fact that we're not talking about this that this is not being discussed publicly in the united states the administration and and even the administration's critics within the government have been i mean from your perspective it looks like they haven't really given up these these these goals and these kinds of directives oil permanent bases regional from you know from the four or five american policy but i mean if we can we can speculate i mean what what sort of what sort of prospects just allow for first verse stability and a decent life for the people in the region you know it's so it's so disheartening for me to say because you know i've been a reporter in the middle east for you ten eleven years now and we have ever been so discouraged you know in my life i mean in those ten or eleven years as i am now i'm just so pessimistic and weak about what's  because i don't think we've seen the fall and we have you know understood the full brunt of what iraq is going to represent for the region and i think we're also starting to see you know sort of the collapse of one order the new or another