Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World

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Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World

3.36 of 5 stars 3.36 · rating details · 28 ratings · 5 reviews

Nir Rosen’s Aftermath, an extraordinary feat of reporting, follows the contagious spread of radicalism and sectarian violence that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing civil war have unleashed in the Muslim world.

Rosen—who the Weekly Standard once bitterly complained has “great access to the Baathists and jihadists who make up the Iraqi insurgency”— has spent nearly a...more Nir Rosen’s Aftermath, an extraordinary feat of reporting, follows the contagious spread of radicalism and sectarian violence that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing civil war have unleashed in the Muslim world.

Rosen—who the Weekly Standard once bitterly complained has “great access to the Baathists and jihadists who make up the Iraqi insurgency”— has spent nearly a decade among warriors and militants who have been challenging American power in the Muslim world. In Aftermath, he tells their story, showing the other side of the U.S. war on terror, traveling from the battle-scarred streets of Baghdad to the alleys, villages, refugee camps, mosques, and killing grounds of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and finally Afghanistan, where Rosen has a terrifying encounter with the Taliban as their “guest,” and witnesses the new Obama surge fizzling in southern Afghanistan.

Rosen was one of the few Westerners to venture inside the mosques of Baghdad to witness the first stirrings of sectarian hatred in the months after the U.S. invasion. He shows how weapons, tactics, and sectarian ideas from the civil war in Iraq penetrated neighboring countries and threatened their stability, especially Lebanon and Jordan, where new jihadist groups mushroomed. Moreover, he shows that the spread of violence at the street level is often the consequence of specific policies hatched in Washington, D.C. Rosen offers a seminal and provocative account of the surge, told from the perspective of U.S. troops on the ground, the Iraqi security forces, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents that were both allies and adversaries. He also tells the story of what happened to these militias once they outlived their usefulness to the Americans.

Aftermath is both a unique personal history and an unsparing account of what America has wrought in Iraq and the region. The result is a hair- raising, 360-degree view of the modern battlefield its consequent humanitarian catastrophe, and the reality of counterinsurgency.

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Hardcover, 587 pages

Published October 26th 2010 by Nation Books (first published 2010)

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Mar 19, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

Rosen—who the Weekly Standard once bitterly complained has “great access to the Baathists and jihadists who make up the Iraqi insurgency”— has spent nearly a decade among warriors and militants who have been challenging American power in the Muslim world. In Aftermath, he tells their story, showing the other side of the U.S. war on terror, traveling from the battle-scarred streets of Baghdad to the alleys, villages, refugee camps, mosques, and killing grounds of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, an...more

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Nov 26, 2010 Zach Cohen rated it 1 of 5 stars

I purchased this book after listening to the author's interview on Democracy Now recently. Between what I heard there and the glowing endorsements from Noam Chomsky and Andrew Bacevich, both of whom I have immense respect for, I had incredibly high expectations for this book. Nothing could have prepared me for the utter holocaust of writing that is Aftermath. I only made it 25% of the way through before I was overwhelmed with intellectual pain and had to give up on it. I am a very patient and te...more I purchased this book after listening to the author's interview on Democracy Now recently. Between what I heard there and the glowing endorsements from Noam Chomsky and Andrew Bacevich, both of whom I have immense respect for, I had incredibly high expectations for this book. Nothing could have prepared me for the utter holocaust of writing that is Aftermath. I only made it 25% of the way through before I was overwhelmed with intellectual pain and had to give up on it. I am a very patient and tenacious individual, and I almost never bail out on a book I start no matter how bad it is, but I simply could not read it.

Aftermath seems like it could have been written by a strobe light. It is a constant stream of moments, illuminated with far too much intensity, appearing in disjointed sequence that confuse and overwhelm the reader. It almost seems like he published his field notes from his time as a journalist in the middle east, with absolutely no editing whatsoever.

After a long and meandering introduction to the first part of the book about the descent of Iraq into sectarian violence, Rosen states that despite conventional wisdom that sectarian strife has a long history in Iraq and has always been there, the civil war that eventually occurred subsequent to the occupation was entirely the fault of the US. He then utterly fails to demonstrate that in any cohesive way. He strings together seemingly random incidences of violence between sects, with almost no mention of the US. The writing style organizes information into small to medium sized paragraphs, each dealing with some specific moment or event, which may or may not be at all related to the paragraphs before and after it, and which have no transition or flow. There is no sense of narrative whatsoever. There is very little analysis or commentary, just a mind dump of information. There seems to have been little thought into considering what information is relevant to what the author is trying to say at any given time (if the author even knows what he is trying to say at any given time), and there is vast amounts of superfluous text.

If the information is coherent and interesting, I don't mind a boring book at all. However, the presence of vast amounts of irrelevant information (describing people's mustaches, passing comments about his friends that are not important in relation to the event he is describing, and other such frivolous details) makes it a chore to get to the interesting information. Given the disjointed structure I mentioned earlier, it's difficult to keep interesting information in context. The author constantly skips around geographical areas and does not keep a clear chronology. He often includes large portions of people's speech without putting it in context. After reading a section about events and speech towards the end of the sectarian violence in Iraq, he suddenly, with no preface, included a long speech about Muslim unity and predictions that there will be no civil war. This is confusing, given the previous discussion of violence, but a page or so later, you realize that he was quoting something someone said years earlier, without making that clear.

With his tendency to skip around with no transition or flow, it's very difficult to pick out the occasional insight or interesting informative text and incorporate it into some kind of coherent thesis.

Beyond the content, the style of the book was eminently unreadable. His tone was dominated by plain, short, repetitive sentences like "We saw Muqtada Speak. He said ____. We got in the car and drove to Baghdad. There was an Iraqi Police Checkpoint. There had been a Sunni attack". There were occasional variations in syntax, but some paragraphs read like that for some time, and I found it exceptionally dry, on top of all the other problems I've described.

Frankly, I am quite shocked at the poor quality of this book. It makes me question whether anyone who endorsed it actually read it. I simply can't understand how Rosen, a well regarded journalist with excellent credentials, could write anything so atrocious. I purchased this book on kindle, and perhaps the kindle version is an unedited manuscript or something? I'm also rather incensed that the kindle version cost twice as much as normal kindle books. I don't mind paying extra for quality writing, but overcharging me for such drivel is insulting. After forcing myself to read 25% of this book, my brain felt dirty and violated. I rarely drink, but I found myself needing to cleanse my mind of this atrocity with copious quantities of toxic chemicals. (less)

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Mar 08, 2013 Zeta Syanthis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

"Tough read, but worth it."

In 50 years, I fully expect this book will be used to teach the history of this conflict. It is a masterwork that portrays the conflict from all sides, including that of the innocent bystanders in many countries besides just Iraq. I'm deliberately avoiding talking directly about the specific conflicts in this review, but suffice to say it's very uncomfortable reading. (Not due to writing style as one of the other reviewers stated, but due to the sheer brutality of what...more

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Jan 15, 2011 Mike Pouraryan marked it as to-read

read excerpts and listened to him recently speaking @ Rice University...I think it is a must read for all who want to understand both sides..and not simply take the word of officialdom simply for granted)....

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Jan 04, 2011 Mitchell rated it 4 of 5 stars

kind of a long read, but overall it was well worth it...

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About Nir Rosen

Born and raised in New York City, Nir Rosen is a freelance journalist, photographer, and filmmaker whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Time, Harpers Magazine, The New Republic, Washington Post, Salon, and Rolling Stone. He has spent over three years working in occupied Iraq and four months in Afghanistan; he has also worked in Somalia, the Congo, Syria, Jordan, Egyp...more

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In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq

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