Product Description
John Agresto spent a little over nine months in Iraq. His job, was to help Iraq rebuild its once highly regarded education system. As he left Iraq, Agresto was asked by the Pentagon to write a few paragraphs for the future about this formative and transitional time; from those paragraphs Mugged by Reality was born.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 16 reviews)

A must read this election year

It seems that many pundits and politicians visit Iraq only to add credibility to their pre-existing notions. It is a nice change to see someone who bases his views on reality rather filters facts to fit his views.
June 07, 2008

Not Enough

The author jumps around a lot making scattered points, starting from the premise that Saddam's tyranny was unlike any previous tyranny (Saddam himself had a Ph.D.) and chronicling the many deaths he saw (three dozen professors) while making passing observations about terrorist fanaticism (it's a form of love), intellectual prostitution (teaching), the Iraqi culture (lazy, untrustworthy, entitlement-driven), and USAID screwups. He warns America never to invade a country again "for" a people or in the name of freedom. He makes some small remarks about liberal arts and the lowering of educational benchmarks, but largely this book is a neoconservative recantation. I suspect the author was too closely involved in his topic to write a detached essay on the problems of higher education in post-conflict situations. Look elsewhere for that.
May 29, 2008

Mugged by Reality

If you truly want to understand the situation in Iraq, you must read this book.
February 13, 2008

An Innocent Abroad

The power of John Agresto's intellect comes across in this book, especially in the brief but clear discussion of citizenship and civil society. Agresto is a serious academic and thinker, who led one of the nation's top liberal arts colleges.

Unfortunately, the author seems unsure of how to handle himself overseas, in a bureaucracy, in dealings with foreigners, the military, etc. (you get the picture). In this slim volume, Agresto laments over and over about being blown off by junior U.S. government functionaries--seemingly an embarrassing admission of bureaucratic ineptitude, but serially prose-worthy for Agresto.

The author is also hopping mad that his $1.2 billion education mega-plan was not immediately funded and implemented during his brief stay in Iraq, showing perhaps less understanding of national level politics in the United States than one would expect from a political scientist. He's hopping mad that donor nations did not follow through on pledges to fund higher education in Iraq. Oh, and he's hopping mad, personally affronted even, that the problems of Iraq, decades in the making, did not yield to his energy and enthusiasm over a span of nine months, not including leave breaks. He's also hopping mad at the military. Perhaps some Colonel yelled at him in a meeting.

In the end, this book is less about higher education in Iraq, and more about the hopping mad author and his short stint as an innocent abroad.
January 22, 2008

A heart-breaking but necessary read for neoconservatives

I, like Mr. Agresto, believed that "liberating" Iraq from Saddam Hussein was in the best interest of Americans, Iraqis, and the world. As a neoconservative, I believed that the Cold War ethic of defending and exporting democracy was a moral cause; that every human being is born with an innate desire to live in freedom. Alas, I no longer believe this to be the case, primarily because this template did not/does not recognize the irreconcilable cultural differences between the West and the Muslim world.

"Mugged By Reality" is the latest in a string of books I've read over the last couple of years in an effort to better understand Islamic extremism in particular and Muslim culture in general. If President Bush had had the advantage of reading "Guests of the Ayatollah", "The Looming Tower", "America Alone", and "Infidel", for example, I beleive he would have better understood the depths of Islam's cultural disfunctions, and probably would have done things differently in 2003. These aforementioned works have led me to conclude that the Muslim world cannot be reformed (or liberated) from without, it's savior must come from within -- an Islamic Reformation led by an Islamic Martin Luther, if you will. Until then, we should avoid all but the most covert and defensive involvement with Middle East politics.

The saddest thing about the Iraq debacle is that we have expended so much American blood and treasure only to see that the "democracy" that has been birthed there is an Islamic one. As Agresto explains in heart-breaking detail in chapter 4, the Iraqi constitution, executive, legislative and judicial branches function less like our own and more like those of Iran's and Gaza's. That is to say that, yes, votes are cast democratically, but individual freedoms and laws are ultimately subservient to Islamic law (sharia).

As Mr. Agresto tells it, the reason this unfortunate and tragic result came about is due to the Bush Administration's reluctance to do what we did after liberating/defeating Japan and Germany in WWII: impose American-styled democratic values and laws. Why did Bush and Bremer not do this? It appears they were cowed, just as those on the left are, by a toxic combination of cultural relativism and fears of validating bogus European/UN charges of "imperialism". For this our brave soldiers have paid with their lives? Truly a tragedy, though a different one than the Left laments.

The one bright spot that illuminates Agresto's otherwise depressing tome is the success and prosperity that Kurdish Iraqis have enjoyed. Not surprisingly, this is because the Kurdish character is less intertwined with Islam and more comfortable with religious pluralism (Christians and Jews live freely among them).

What to do with Iraq now? I'm afraid our policy mistakes are already baked in the cake regardless of however we choose to disengage militarily. You can't unscramble an egg and you can't de-Islamify the Iraqi constitution and character. It is this reality that we must face.

October 22, 2007

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