Geert van Kesteren. Why Mister, why?

Iraq 2003–2004. Foreword Jan Gruiters. Introduction Michael Hirsh. (Texte in Englisch und Arabisch). Idea Books, Amsterdam 2004. 22 x 17 cm. Original-Broschur.- On May 1st, 2003 president Bush addressed his controversial ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech on the flight carrier USS Lincoln, 20 miles out of the coast of San Diego. In this speech, broadcasted worldwide, the war on Iraq was sold as a success story; the Saddam regime was ousted and major combat operations had ended. That same day I arrived in Baghdad to bear witness of a completely opposite reality. The cynical policy under the leadership of Bush and Cheney derailed Iraq completely. American soldiers and Iraqi society paid a high price for it, with casualties and consequences that last to this very day. A war with half a million causalities, that cost the US taxpayer 4 trillion dollars, and did not establish the so desired democracy in the Middle East. From the body of work from 2003 and 2004, I produced the photo book Why Mister, Why? to present in a layered documentary a complex portrait of Iraq during the U.S. occupation/liberation. It covers interrogations at prisons, excavations of Saddam’s mass graves, U.S. soldiers on patrol, and daily life in Iraq as families struggle to regain some sense of normalcy amidst the rubble. The book is designed as a kind of anti-coffee table book, it depicts over 250 photos printed on thin magazine stock with perforated edging. The images are intertwined with my personal experience of the situation in dairy-like notes in English and Arabic. To reveal how the US military came utterly unprepared for the chaotic instability of post-“Mission Accomplished”-Iraq.