Environment and Planning found the truth. Between 2003 and 2007, Iraq was ripped by a massive ethnic cleansing. The mixed Sunni-Shia areas were destroyed. By the time the surge started, there was nobody left to purge: the country was carved into ethnically homogeneous neighbourhoods. All the surge did was build vast concrete walls between the collapsing hoods, cementing the cleansing. That's success?" - Meaning and context.">
"What did we misjudge in 2008?", The Independent (18 December 2008).
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The outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe became a symbol of that country's collapse — but who noticed the spread of cholera across Iraq? The McCainiacs chorused that "the surge worked" — but a study by the journal Environment and Planning found the truth. Between 2003 and 2007, Iraq was ripped by a massive ethnic cleansing. The mixed Sunni-Shia areas were destroyed. By the time the surge started, there was nobody left to purge: the country was carved into ethnically homogeneous neighbourhoods. All the surge did was build vast concrete walls between the collapsing hoods, cementing the cleansing. That's success?

— Johann Hari

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe became a symbol of that country's collapse — but who noticed the spread of cholera across Iraq? The McCainiacs chorused that "the surge worked" — but a study by the journal Environment and Planning found the truth. Between 2003 and 2007, Iraq was ripped by a massive ethnic cleansing. The mixed Sunni-Shia areas were destroyed. By the time the surge started, there was nobody left to purge: the country was carved into ethnically homogeneous neighbourhoods. All the surge did was build vast concrete walls between the collapsing hoods, cementing the cleansing. That's success?" in the context of ""What did we misjudge in 2008?", The Independent (18 December 2008)." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Johann Hari" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Johann Hari

About Johann Hari

Johann Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a British journalist and writer. He was a columnist for The Independent, but left the paper in 2011 after admitting multiple charges of plagiarism and making malicious edits of several of his critics' Wikipedia pages using a pseudonym. He has also been a columnist for the Evening Standard and a regular arts critic on the BBC's Newsnight Review. He is a self-described "European social democrat". Hari won the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2008, but the award was revoked in 2011 after his plagiarism was revealed.