To Be a Friend is Fatal; The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind
Language: English
Published by Scribner, New York, 2013
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Ground Zero Books, Ltd., Silver Spring, MD, U.S.A.Ground Zero Books, Ltd.
AbeBooks seller since August 14, 1998
Condition: Used - Very good
£ 26.93
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Add to basketItem description from seller
viii, [2], 338, [4] pages. Author's Note. Glossary of USGspeak. Further Reading. To Help the List Project. Index. Kirk W. Johnson is an American author and founder of The List Project, a not-for-profit organization that helps Iraqi refugees who previously worked for the U.S. government during the Iraq War. He served as the U.S. Agency for International Development regional coordinator for reconstruction in Fallujah, Iraq in 2005. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy, among other publications. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 2002, with a degree in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. In addition to studying in Syria on a Foreign Language Acquisition Grant (2001), Johnson received a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research on political Islamism in Egypt (2002-03). Johnson was opposed to the Iraq War, but felt an ethical obligation to help with the reconstruction efforts, which he supported as a way of righting a wrong. After returning from Iraq, he was contacted by his former Iraqi colleagues, who were running for their lives as a result of working for the U.S. Government during the war. In December 2006, he wrote an op-ed for the "Los Angeles Times" calling upon the government to open its doors to these allies. In response, he was flooded with petitions from thousands of refugees, leading him to found the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, a non-profit that marshaled hundreds of attorneys from the nations top law firms to represent their cases on a pro bono basis. Over the subsequent eight years, the List Project helped over 2,000 U.S.-affiliated Iraqis resettle to America. Johnson testified before Congress and worked closely with Senator Ted Kennedy toward the creation of the Special Immigrant Visa program, designated for Iraqis and Afghans that worked for the United States during the wars. His work was profiled in 60 Minutes, the Today Show, The New Yorker, and This American Life; it was the subject of his 2013 memoir To Be a Friend Is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated].…
Seller Inventory # 74518
- Title
- To Be a Friend is Fatal; The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind
- Author
- Johnson, Kirk W.
- Publisher
- Scribner, New York
- Publication year
- 2013
- Condition
- Very good
- Dust jacket
- Very good
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1476710481
- ISBN 13
- 9781476710488
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Seller catalogs
- Insurgency, Iraq, Refugees, Terrorism, United Nations
In January 2005 Kirk Johnson, then twenty-four, arrived in Baghdad as USAID’s only Arabic-speaking American employee. Despite his opposition to the war, Johnson felt called to civic duty and wanted to help rebuild Iraq.
Appointed as USAID’s first reconstruction coordinator in Fallujah, he traversed the city’s IED-strewn streets, working alongside idealistic Iraqi translators—young men and women sick of Saddam, filled with Hollywood slang, and enchanted by the idea of a peaceful, democratic Iraq. It was not to be. As sectarian violence escalated, Iraqis employed by the US coalition found themselves subject to a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and assassination.
On his first brief vacation, Johnson, swept into what doctors later described as a “fugue state,” crawled onto the ledge outside his hotel window and plunged off. He would spend the next year in an abyss of depression, surgery, and PTSD—crushed by having failed in Iraq.
One day, Johnson received an email from an Iraqi friend, Yaghdan: People are trying to kill me and I need your help. After being identified by a militiaman, Yaghdan had emerged from his house to find the severed head of a dog and a death threat. That email launched Johnson’s now seven-year mission to get help from the US government for Yaghdan and thousands of abandoned Iraqis like him. The List Project has helped more than 1,500 Iraqis find refuge in America. To Be a Friend Is Fatal is Kirk W. Johnson’s unforgettable portrait of the human rubble of war and his efforts to redeem a shameful chapter of American history.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
"I have long been an admirer of Kirk Johnson--for his humanitarian advocacy on behalf of forgotten Iraqis and for his honest and poetic writing.... His is a story that arcs from charity to futility to pain to charity again, and how much he needs to tell it equals how much it deserves to be read."--David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Good Soldiers
"[A] truly incredible story."--Ira Glass, "This American Life"
"From the ruins of the war in Iraq and his own broken body, Kirk Johnson made it his cause to redeem the one American promise to Iraqis that honor required us to keep. He tirelessly fought the political resistance and bureaucratic indifference of two administrations. His account is riveting, darkly funny, heroic, and shaming."--George Packer, author of The Assassins' Gate and The Unwinding
"It is difficult to imagine a book more urgent than this."--Rayyan Al-Shawaf "The Boston Globe "
"The well-written book - the author is an honest, engaging and indomitable guide - warrants a special place in nonfiction shelves."--John Kael Weston "The Daily Beast "
"This authentic patriot has written a must-read memoir."--Trudy Rubin "Philadelphia Inquirer "
"Kirk W. Johnson's rage-inducing account of government indifference is a tale of lost innocence that, in our American twilight, feels devastatingly allegorical."--Megan O'Grady "Vogue "
"Devastating . . ." the story of "interpreters and aid workers who risked their lives to work with the Americans, only to find themselves left behind as the United States pulled out, their lives in peril in a country that now regards them as despised collaborators."--Michiko Kakutani "The New York Times "
"What is so intriguing about this beautifully written book is that while it is a scathing critique of America's policy toward Iraq, it is not one of your usual policy books. To Be a Friend is Fatal is a deeply personal and poignant story about how one young American's passion and curiosity lead him to a distant and troubled land, where his empathy and sense justice prevent him from giving up on the people abandoned by the U.S. government."--Azar Nafisi, New York Times-bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
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