Wednesday, 10-06-2004

Inside Iraq: An Eyewitness Account (Lecture/Slide Show)

Driving and Parking Directions

The World Affairs Council is pleased to present an evening program with Karl Zinsmeister, Editor-in-Chief of The American Enterprise and the J. B. Fuqua Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Read Zinsmeister's commentary on Iraq in the The American Enterprise Online.

Read Zinsmeister's article "The Real Iraq Story" in the National Review Online.

PROGRAM SUMMARY

In the last year, embedded reporter Karl Zinsmeister has published one book describing American military operations in Iraq during the hot war and a second book that chronicles the guerilla war and reconstruction phase. Both books are based on firsthand observation of U.S. combat troops on the streets of Iraq over many weeks. He will give a slide-illustrated talk on his findings, including the prospects for success in Iraq, the nature of the insurgency, the role of media coverage, how the war is intersecting with U.S. politics, and other urgent issues.

In particular, he will discuss how the U.S. military is performing, and will present a kind of "profile of today's American soldier." Who is representing the United States in today's tough fights in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere? What are their backgrounds? What motivates them? How exactly are they conducting themselves? New York Times writer Chris Hedges says members of the U.S. armed forces are mostly "poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the Army because it was all we offered them." Filmmaker Michael Moore argues that our soldiers are mainly dispossessed inner-city left-outs, who are now occupying and terrorizing Iraq. Is this fair? How representative were the undisciplined MPs of Abu Ghraib's night shift? What is the truth about the way this war is being fought?

Following his presentation, Mr. Zinsmeister will take questions on any Iraq-related topic, and sign copies of his two books:
--Boots on the Ground: A Month With the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq
--Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq

BIOGRAPHY

Karl Zinsmeister is Editor-in-Chief of The American Enterprise, a national magazine of politics, business, and culture based in Washington, D.C. His latest book is Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq (June 2004). It presents a full-length chronicle of the guerilla phase of the Iraq war, and was researched when Zinsmeister re-embedded with U.S. soldiers in Baghdad and Fallujah in early 2004.

His previous work, Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq, was the first book published by a journalist embedded with American troops during the 2003 hot war in Iraq. It went into multiple printings, and may serve as the basis of a major documentary film Zinsmeister has been invited to produce for PBS.

Zinsmeister is also the J. B. Fuqua Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the major research institutes in our nation’s capital. His research and writing have covered a wide range of topics, ranging from economics, to cultural and demographic trends, to national security policy.

He has been published in many places, including The Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, National Review, and national newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Washington Post.

Zinsmeister is a graduate of Yale University and did further studies at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. During college he won national rowing championships in both the U.S. and Ireland. He was a U.S. Senate aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been an advisor to many research and policy groups, and has testified before Congressional committees and Presidential commissions numerous times. He originated a weekly radio commentary on social trends syndicated nationally to 100 stations, has written newspaper columns for the United Feature Syndicate, and even authored a five-part Marvel comic-book series presenting real-life tales of soldiers in combat.

Zinsmeister appears often on television and radio, including as a panelist on a forthcoming new PBS Friday night program, in regular FOX News interviews with Tony Snow and Brit Hume, and in periodic appearances on CNN’s Crossfire, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country and Hardball with Chris Matthews, ABC’s Politically Incorrect, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, PBS’s Think Tank, BBC World Service, and many others. His work has won several national prizes, and his writing has been published abroad into Japanese, German, Spanish, Arabic, Polish, Chinese and other languages. A sixth generation resident of his home region, Zinsmeister lives with his wife and three children in rural central New York.