HW 25: Leading Up to Riverbend's Blog

Reading the foreword and introduction in Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning gives you a great idea of what to expect from the author and what was happening years before the invasion of US troops. In the foreword Ahdaf Soueif paints a picture of reason behind Riverbend’s Blog and expresses what people outside of Iraq can understand from reading the posts that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to grasp. Soueif interprets the book, “ What they do lack is the voice of an “ordinary Iraqi, resident in Iraq, to tell us what the invasion feels like. This is the function that Baghdad Burning fulfills uniquely and with power and elegance”(Soueif pg ix). The introduction is much more history based and supply facts of what leads up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. James Ridgeway explains what issues were affecting Iraq politically and culturally and how they correlated with Riverbend’s life. He helps explain some of the more difficult terminology that the reader may come across once delving into the blog itself. Ridgeway gives information that informative Americans already know and lets Riverbend take over and give her side of the story. When the US invaded Iraq I was a freshman in high school with little to no political background or opinion. I had sided with our president and thought war was the right option. As the war progressed and my knowledge grows I find myself condemning the war and now greatly disagree with every aspect of it. My senior year was when I began learning the names that Ridgeway mentions and now I have the understanding of the issues and events that he conveys in the introduction.