"The New Iraq" is a peculiar book, full of many legitimate, if fairly obvious observations -- for example, that "it does not matter how few or many Shi'is ... hold ministry positions [in the new Iraq] if the majority of Shi'is remain an impoverished, undereducated underclass" -- and barely relevant digressions -- a look at the Egyptian and Iranian film industries, and a chapter on Arabic pop music. Those digressions are transparent efforts to demonstrate Braude's youthful hipness, a key asset for a 28-year-old who is selling marketing advice to aging executives worried about losing touch with "key demographics."

What one lacks in experience one can make up in style, and so "The New Iraq" is written in prose coated with surface flash and bravado: belabored metaphors, cute section titles ("Iraq 'n' Roll"), and faux-bold pronouncements, such as "I am not so worried about how to stem American cultural imperialism in Iraq. Instead, I am trying to figure out how to foment Iraqi cultural imperialism in the Middle East and beyond. Anyone want some popcorn?" But underneath it all is the same weirdly spongy writing that business people are so prone to, the forceful vagueness, eager to inspire but terrified of offending, that always winds up communicating next to nothing.

There's also a moral haziness to Braude's assessment of the Iraqi situation, in which dismay over the lamentable state of the nation's justice system gets addressed with about the same concern as the discovery that, during the 1990s, "national branding campaigns were few and far between." (Certainly Iraq can have produced no ads as sophisticated as "The New Iraq.")

Describing his interview with "Dhiya," a resident in an Iraqi refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, Braude praises the man's "remarkable talent and experience at manipulating information informally" before acknowledging that in Iraq the guy was a government informant and, in the camp, he's still informing on his neighbors, though now to the Saudis. In order to improve conditions in the camp, Dhiya tells Braude, he had to "support the Saudi's quest for recalcitrants to lock up and question." Braude refers to this as one of the "moral sacrifices" Dhiya has had to make, as if Dhiya were the one to suffer most from his betrayals. But, Braude assures us, if Dhiya lived in "a functioning state" his "skills" could be "channeled to ruthless competition and revenue growth." Wouldn't that put your mind at ease?

Perhaps the dodgiest aspect of "The New Iraq" is what it doesn't say. A selling point of the book is that Braude has some special expertise, not just because he's worked in the Middle East, but because he is an Iraqi-American, born in the U.S. to the daughter of a venerable Baghdad family. In a fawning profile that ran in the Boston Globe, Braude is quoted likening himself to slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, as someone who feels a "'moral imperative' to fill the 'dangerous chasm of understanding' between Americans and Middle Eastern peoples ... 'I was in a position to gather information from inside Iraq in a way that others couldn't ... Nervousness, apprehension, fear -- all these things I've lumped into one category as useless.'"

How brave. And yet, about midway through "The New Iraq," the careful reader will notice that all of Braude's interviews and encounters with Iraqis take place outside Iraq itself, mostly in Jordan. The de rigueur scene-setting passages tend to be as shiftily worded as this one: "If you stand on the A'imma Bridge over the Tigris River, facing south on a Friday afternoon, Baghdad sprawls out before you." I'm sure if I stood there, it would. But I haven't. Has Braude?

A phone call to Braude's publisher reveals that the author never set foot in Iraq while researching this book, and the Globe profile says he has never lived there. (He does appear to have visited the country as a child.) His publisher explains that as an Iraqi-American Jew, Braude couldn't get a visa to enter the country, despite many efforts. Braude can't be blamed for the Iraqi government's policies, but he is responsible for how he represents himself and he should have been upfront about this. Instead, as in his dedication of the book to "Daniel Pearl, of beloved memory" -- a man who, it turns out, Braude never knew -- he fosters false impressions by artful omission.

The U.S. has made the decision to invade Iraq and eject its current government. (By the way, in another example of evasion posing as imaginative daring, Braude refuses to take a position on the action, dismissing those who do as paying "lip service" to an excessively "polarizing" discussion.) We're now obligated, by our own moral posturing and self-interest, to help that country pull itself out of the hole. Perhaps we do, as President Bush seems to believe, have many fine things to bring to the effort. But if a glib and opportunistic slickster like Braude is any indication of who's about to descend on Iraq, we'll just be adding insult to injury.

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