Keep in mind that "Fiasco" was given a Pulitzer after being published, and I happen to think that this one is slightly better. Essentially it details the military's decision-making process that lead to both the selection of David Petraeus as the commander of U.S. forces and the infusion of 30,000 additional combat forces to Iraq (a.k.a. the surge).Firstly let me say that I am amazed at the kind of reporting Ricks does. Normally a newspaper Pentagon correspondent doesn't get this kind of access to top officials, but he must have a way with words or something because the number of interviews and access to documents is amazing. The book has a lengthy appendix of documents, slideshows and letters from Pentagon archives that makes the U.S. military look eerily like a simple business enacting a change in policy. But of course it isn't as simple as that, they're dealing with policy of fighting an insurgency in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
In a way the book is a story of the U.S. Army modernizing itself. Military theory has never been a strong point of my studies, but somehow Ricks explains how they arrive at the strategy for the surge. It's eye-opening to read that the Army has actually done its homework and figured out how to fight a war in the Middle East.
I wish the book was as long as Fiasco, just because it's so interesting to read...surely Ricks had more information that he left out. But if it were longer I may not have finished it in the car...
As good a writer as Ricks is, his great flaw is that he doesn't argue for or against anything. In print anyway. A good reporter stays objective, yes, but I always think he purposely doesn't put his personal views in his books because of a fear that people wouldn't buy his books. He's a lot more credible than some people who have written books or articles about what's right or wrong to do in Iraq, but I think there were several spots in the book where he should have flat-out said "This was STUPID."
Where the book needed to be longer is toward the end, in which he brings out some of the current challenges for President Obama. "Fiasco" was great because he presented numerous outcomes for what the U.S. military was getting itself into. "The Gamble" just briefly mentions how Obama is going to have to be the one that pulls this thing out of the fire. I say this because on television, Thomas Ricks isn't gunshy about saying that he thinks the Army will be in Iraq for 10+ more years...which is true, but on a larger scale than what's being proposed. He's a little too much of the "worst-case" when it comes to political issues, but that's just because he has personal conversations with all of these high-up people, and I'm sure if it were me I'd come to the same conclusion. But based upon the information in this book, I'd wager that the current strategy is going to get us out of there by 2011 with a minimal force left behind for peacekeeping.
It's shorter, it's not as ambitious, and it's of course not as original, but this book is the best on the Iraq war that I've read yet.
*Sidenote* Michigan's own Juan Cole appeared on "The Colbert Report" last week!
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Juan Cole | ||||
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2 comments:
I would also suggest Bob Woodward's series of books on the Bush Administration (Bush at War, Plan of Attack, State of Denial, The War Within). Woodward focuses mostly on the civilian side of the issues that Ricks writes about, but his level of access is similarly impressive.
Of all the folks involved with the immediate and extended aftermath of 9/11, I think Sec. Rumsfeld came out really bad, at least from the military response side. When he got into office before 9/11, he was pursuing a fairly aggressive re-alignment of the military. He wanted to create a smaller, more efficient military that used more precise and powerful weapons and tactics on a per unit basis. Now, in the post Cold War and pre-9/11 world, this was not a bad way to go about business with the massive gap in military spending between the U.S. and everyone else.
Rumsfeld's folly came when he decided to use Iraq as the testbed for his new military theory. Rumsfeld's military would have worked great in the Gulf War where a long-term occupation wasn't in the cards. The Coalition deployed nearly one million troops for the Gulf War and less than 300,000 for the ongoing Iraq War. Rumsfeld's military theory would probably work well in a traditional war, but in the asymmetric, occupational wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, it didn't work out too well.
Juan Cole is great :)
Tee hee I know Cole's hair kills me. In my eyes it's Paul Wolfowitz, Steven Hadley and Douglas Feith that corrupted Rumsfeld, or at least swayed the President to make bad decisions. There's similar stories in "Gamble," detailing how these old crusty admirals tried to force out Petraeus and Odierno from changing to a strategy that worked simply because they didn't "get it." SIGH
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