It is hard to recall a time when America's invasion in Iraq inspired hope. Yet millions of Iraqis welcomed the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and a precious few-often the most frustrated and educated-risked their lives to help the incoming soldiers. But the war has been unkind to the many Iraqis, translators and others, who worked closely with the American forces. They are threatened as traitors by their countrymen and then denied asylum in America. "America's failure to understand, trust, and protect its closest friends in Iraq is a small drama that contains the larger history of defeat," wrote one of the most prescient witnesses to the war effort, George Packer, in a long article in the New Yorker last March.
展开▼