What We Don’t Know About Iraq | by Philip Bennett

Flikr photo by Army.mil used under a Creative Commons license.  In the Sunday Outlook of the Washington Post, Philip Bennett brings up a compelling point that the war in Iraq has become an American story less concerned with the experience of Iraqi civilians: 

As the war has gone on, Iraqis' stories have been overshadowed by the towering drama of our own experience…

With U.S. forces set to withdraw from Iraq over the next 18 months, does it matter that we know so little about how Iraqis have understood and lived through the war? The invisible connection between the overlapping experiences of Americans and Iraqis -- and the blame, estrangement and hatred that has choked the air between them -- impairs our ability to see what will happen next. It also means that as U.S. officials apply the lessons of the Iraq war to strategy in Afghanistan, they risk missing a central part of the story.

Where does the experience of Iraqi civilians fit into the American narrative?  How intertwined is the success of the war in Iraq with the Iraqi experience?  Bennett takes a look at some of the more well known published accounts that have touched on the Iraqi experience, and in doing so, points out how little we still know about our lasting impact in Iraq.