Crisis States Research Centre public lecture
Date: Thursday 31 January 2008
Time: 6:30-8pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
Speaker: Jonathan Steele
Chair: Professor James Putzel
Jonathan Steele will argue that the occupation has failed, not because of a lack of pre-war planning, but because of a lack of informed political analysis by US decision-makers and the British Foreign Office. They failed to see that Islamists, Sunni and Shia, would fill the post-Saddam vacuum and that most Iraqis would quickly come to resent yet another Western intervention in the Middle East.
Jonathan Steele is the Guardian's senior foreign correspondent and a veteran of eight assignments in Iraq since April 2003. Educated at Cambridge and Yale, he has covered conflicts in Central America, Southern Africa, Darfur, the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan and the Middle East. His book, DEFEAT: Why they lost Iraq, will be published on January 24.
Podcast
A podcast of this event is available to download from the LSE public lectures and events podcasts channel.