agents of innocence

Next up in the World Book Tour: Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius.

While the setting (Beirut, 1969-83) is not in the path of the book tour's westerly migration, it was sitting on the coffee table, so figured I'd give it a go. I was hoping for 3 parts Looming Tower, 2 parts Ludlum, given the author's experience in the Middle East, but it more like 4 parts Diet Coke, one part Jim Beam. Flat, no kick. (My favorite: "He was picking the soft doughy bread out of the middle of a hard roll. It was one of the Director's eccentricities, the taste for soft bread from inside hard rolls." Huh?)

The premise is an Arabic speaking, idealistic young CIA man comes to Beirut as the city descends into a cycle of violence and civil war. It is the end of the 'Paris of the Middle East,' and the beginning of car bombing, Fatah, and the age of extremists. Along the way, we meet some paper thin characters, stereotypes, and cute aphorisms.

The author's final opinion is delivered by Fuad, a burned out Palestinian who has been happily working for the CIA: America's innocent idealism is disarming and contagious, but without the self-preserving weapons built up in the societal DNA in the Middle East, everybody gets dead.

Today, twenty years after this book was written, I don't think anyone in the world could sincerely posit that U.S. foreign policy is based on ideals. The book gave me a wave of nostalgia, not for Ignatius' Beirut, but for a U.S. that could be perceived as a well-intentioned actor on the world stage.