Book Review: Wrapping up operations in Iraq

BOOK REVIEW: Wrapping up operations in Iraq

By Gary Anderson, Opinion Section, The Washington Times, August 24, 2009

Excerpt

THE SURGE: A MILITARY HISTORY

By Kimberly Kagan

Encounter, $25.95, 250 pages

Reviewed by Gary Anderson

In early 2006, the conventional wisdom was that the war in Iraq was lost. Today, the major debate is over whether we can wrap up successful operations in that country ahead of schedule. That raises the question, "Where did we go right?" Kimberly Kagan attempts to answer that question in her book "The Surge: A Military History." She largely succeeds.

Any understanding of the success of the surge has to take into account two separate but mutually supporting activities. The first is the influx of the extra troops that made the surge possible, and the second is the development of the Awakening movement that largely turned the Sunni population against the conglomeration of foreign jihadist fighters and home-grown fanatics known as al Qaeda in Iraq. The first was a top-down-driven movement that began under the leadership of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Gen. Raymond T. Odierno. The second was a bottom-up effort largely driven by tribal sheiks and relatively junior Army and Marine Corps officers.

Potential readers should understand that this is a military history that discusses the operational art and tactics of the overall phenomenon that we call the surge. Readers who are interested in the Washington- and Central Command-based discussions of grand strategy and politics should turn to Bob Woodward, and those interested in the personality side of operations should be referred to Tom Ricks. Ms. Kagan's book is straight military history from the mid-2006 origins of the surge to its climax in late 2007 and early 2008.

By mid-2006, it was apparent that the strategy of quickly handing the war over to the Iraqi government and its security forces was disastrously premature. The undisciplined Afghan National Police had become a virtual Shia militia that was enabling ethnic cleansing of the Sunni population while al Qaeda in Iraq terrorized the Sunni population that failed to show proper enthusiasm for radical jihad. All this simply was too much for the beleaguered Iraqi army, which was trying to fight the war literally as it was being born. The situation had become a disaster, and Ms. Kagan is not afraid to call the strategy an abject failure....

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