After decades of documenting and decrying the human rights abuses of Saddam Hussein, Kanan Makiya is finally getting what he’s wanted. The Iraqi leader is gone, and Makiya is back in Baghdad helping draft a new constitution for his homeland.
In the lead-up to the war, Makiya helped pen a “blueprint” for a post-Saddam Iraq that became part of the Bush Administration’s war plan. He was an optimist then — someone who believed that the Iraqi people should be liberated — regardless of what argument was used, the cruelty of the leader, weapons of mass destruction, terrorist — and he is an optimist today. He is one of the leading figures in Iraq’s reconstruction; trying to grow democracy in a country that has no memory of that.
Guests:
Kanan Makiya, author of the “blueprint for democracy” for post-Saddam Iraq and the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University