Word: klaus
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...While Klaus highlights the ambiguities of the U.S. presence in Iraq, he is even more painfully aware of the chance that his own presence there could do more damage than good. Is it imperialist, he asks, to be trying to spread the English language and American history during an American military campaign? Firmly committed to presenting an unbiased history of the U.S., he emphasizes the African-American experience of slavery and the struggle for civil rights. Yet Klaus also finds himself often defending the contemporary United States—and himself—against his students’ perceptions...
...Ultimately, his status as a target forces his early departure. As it turns out, Klaus is not your ordinary American in Iraq—at the time the book place, was Chelsea Clinton’s boyfriend...
...British tabloid discovers that he is in Iraq and, in an ironic turn of events, an Oprah episode featuring Klaus is broadcast in the Iraqi town of Arbil where he is teaching. Suddenly his relatively low profile is blown; Klaus gets a personal taste of the impacts of globalization...
...many East-meets-West exchanges that dot the book: Elvis and the movie Titanic are both well known in Iraq—select items of American culture that were readily available in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The memory of the former dictator is everywhere; as Klaus pushes his students to question globalization and its effects on culture, the overwhelming consensus is that being too open to the West is better than the isolating control endured under Saddam...
...These episodes offer a valuable portrait of the Iraqi Kurds, a more nuanced image than that projected by the American media. Klaus humanizes an Iraqi population so often represented as either a group of innocent civilians or a band of dangerous militants, a body count or terrorist network. Through Klaus’ anecdotes, which reveal much of the personal experiences, ambition, and outlook of his Iraqi acquaintances, we catch a glimpse of the way a war, so far removed from our own lives, personally affects millions of individuals...