Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

This is one of the best overall accounts of the US' involvement in Iraq I have read. It is sober, precise and well paced. Furthermore Ricks seems to have excellent access to high level politicians and officials which helps document and claify his points.

How not to go to War...! (0/1 people found this helpful)

Traditionally the majority trust their government to make the right decisions based on the best information available. Oh, how the American Nation and wider world have been mislead.

For anyone keen to find out how not to plan a war and adversely affect geopolitics for the next few generations, this is a compulsory read.

This is a book that needs concentration to follow the thread through. Nothing is overly technical or jargonistic, but there is so much happening and so many "cast members" that it is not a book that can be left for a few days and picked up again later.

The sources used include some highly eminent members of the Bush administration, the planning teams and the Armed Forces. The candid accounts of the build up to war, its execution and the aftermath often leave you dumbfounded and frequently depressed, but always 'open-mouth' fascinated.

There were some good, principled people involved throughout the process. But all too often they were dismissed, ignored or left with no alternative but to resign because their version of events or planning was not in line with the Bush script. It is fascinating to identify the myriad junctions where a correct decision could have been made, but facts were ignored, distorted or invented to cause a different decision that fuelled the thirst for War.

This is a must read book. It does not detract from the bravery of many, but nor does it shield the incompetent and/or immoral. It is such a shame that the trust and optimism of so many was abused in order for a few to get a war they wanted.

A Surprising Misadventure Threatens to Ignite the Middle East's Oil Fields for Decades (0/1 people found this helpful)

Surely, you remember all of those Weapons of Mass Destruction that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Powell, Secretary Rumsfeld, and The New York Times assured us were being hidden in Iraq. If you have a short memory about what we were told, Fiasco will remind you what came out of those horses' mouths in 2002 and 2003.

If you think back even further, you may also recall an attack on the United States in New York and Washington D.C. that led to about 3,000 deaths caused by an outfit called al-Qaeda headed by a fellow named Osama bin Laden. We haven't found that fellow yet, and we've invaded at least two countries to locate him. He doesn't seem to be in Iraq, either. Fiasco points out that there never was an Iraqi connection to that group of terrorists, but in the aftermath of our invasion Iraq has become the headquarters and training ground for the most active and effective terrorists in the world. Maybe we'll eventually lure bin Laden there.

So why read this book? Well, Mr. Ricks does a superb job of tracking down all of the planning, training and preparation for the post-invasion period that did not occur. As a result, it seems like the United States made virtually every major mistake possible in turning a liberation into a heavy-handed, insensitive occupation that turned the majority of the Iraqi people into opponents of the United States from being favorably disposed. As early as five months after Saddam Hussein was captured, 55% of Iraqis felt that it was more dangerous having American troops in Iraq than to have them all leave immediately.

If you are like me, you'll be disgusted, appalled and ashamed at the travesty of how the United States mismanaged the reconstruction of Iraq. Who is at fault? Well, it's hard to find people who aren't at fault. Feel free to list the usual Republican and Pentagon leaders, but add those in Congress who backed off from providing civilian oversight.

Can you imagine that serious counter-insurgency planning only began in August 2004? And we lost ground in 2005 on that front.

So where are we now? Apparently, we're worse off than if we had stayed home in 2003. The book ends with several scenarios of what might happen next, all of which are even more unpleasant than the reality we have today. Tens of thousands more will die, including thousands of Americans. Power will shift into less friendly hands. More terrorists will be trained. Our supply of oil will be less secure. Gasoline will hit $9.00 a gallon in one scenario.

The book also upholds the honor of the ordinary soldiers and Marines who have done tough duty, far beyond what could have been expected of them . . . without the proper training, support, leadership and resources.

My sense from this book is that a sequel will be written ten years from now called Quagmire.

Why did I grade the book down? Despite doing a fine job of tracking down the untold parts of the story, I found that Mr. Ricks loves to editorialize a little too much before he proves his point. Here's an example in the first sentence of the book: "President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy."

So what are the lessons for us as citizens? It looks like we should be sure that no one (of either political party) ever gets enough power to head off on such ego trips again. Gridlock looks pretty good as our primary option for getting the government back under control.

THE INGENUOUS AND THE DISINGENUOUS (2/3 people found this helpful)

What this narrative emphasises to me is that we, the public, need to use our wits much more in assessing what our leaders tell us. They and we both want to be positive and encouraged, but they will hoodwink us wholesale when they see fit, either because they don't know the truth or because they don't want us to know it, and patriotism can be bad for the brain. Fiasco is a methodical analysis of what has gone wrong in Iraq. Its tone is measured and civil, and no reader with his emotions under control will find the 'venomous hatred of Bush' of which some of the president's votaries have a low threshold. Seekers after 'balance' may be disappointed. Credit is given where due, but the press would report the 'successes' if they knew what they were. Governments have enormous power over the flow of information, but the official assertions of success are notable for vagueness and generality -- acts of faith and hope with a few small petals of tangible success to weigh against the ton of lead weights on the other side of the scale.

Where officialdom has been outstandingly successful is in controlling the vocabulary of the discussion. Not even Ricks has wholly escaped this sleight of hand. For one thing, this is an 'insurgency' with a difference that he does not mention. Insurgencies, as in the former British colonies, are usually against an established order, not against newcomers, and Ricks doesn't note anything ridiculous in invaders from seven thousand miles away complaining of 'interference' from neighbouring states. Immemorial Persia had supported its Shi'a brethren on its borders for centuries before modern Iraq was defined after WWI by someone in a suit in London drawing straight lines on a map of the desert. Ricks also talks throughout about 'the insurgency'. How many insurgencies are there? Ba'athists are one group, Al Qaeda another, and the Mahdi army yet another: there are other rebellious Shi'a and Sunni formations, and it is normal in countries under invasion for the ordinary citizenry to take up arms. It is one thing not to be able to separate the threads of this tangle, but for the occupiers and their masters to lump them together under some convenient heading is culpable falsification.

One can credit some of the first movers with innocent ignorance. It was Dr Rice who told the British ambassador 'American ideas are universal', something it would take a certain type of American to believe. Dr Rice is loaded with academic distinctions, and so is Mr Wolfowitz, who believed that the occupiers would be welcomed and who could not understand for a long time why more forces were necessary to support the occupation than to win the first battles. Any reasonably bright schoolchild would have known better, and that should teach us not to trust people's judgment on the basis of academic brilliance. They can be as much the creatures of their background and conditioning as anyone else can, but as none of us has to be. In particular it should be a warning-sign when anyone plays the nazi card. The utmost respect is due to Mr Wolfowitz or Mr Feith or anyone whose families suffered as theirs did in the Holocaust, but when they use the conventional terms regarding Chamberlain, Churchill and appeasement they are talking stick-figures with labels round their necks and not history at all. 'Appeasement' was a very successful political slogan, and a case for using it can be argued, but cut-and-dried fact it ain't. It is also instructive to reflect that the most hideous atrocities of the Holocaust took place not when Hitler was supposedly being appeased but when he was under the greatest military pressure after Stalingrad.

Just as there are times for scepticism, it should also be obvious that expert knowledge and advice dare not be disregarded cavalierly, as Mr Rumsfeld and his Republican apparatchiks did with their commanders' counsels. This was the blindness of arrogance, and contemptuous treatment of questioning should also alert us that all is not to be believed. This is how we should recognise a Ruler of the Universe, come on earth to supplant all previous wisdom. However Mr Cheney's sudden new approach after 9/11 demands a different explanation. America had no parallel previous experience, Cheney sensed a public ready to believe almost anything, he took the initiative with assertions regarding intelligence reports on wmd's that he must have known were false, and I believe that the reason for this was that he saw a chance to drive through Rove's agenda for Republican supremacy (with some oil opportunities too). He kept his head when all around were losing theirs and the president was looking for his own.

Oddly absent from the narrative is Blair. One frequent apologia for this operation after the search for wmd's drew a blank is that we were acting on the best available information. Ricks's disclosure of the NIE report and the forcible suppression (together with wilful ignorance) of some of its contents does much on its own to explain Powell's disastrously misinformed address to the UN, but what Powell himself produced as his trump card was a British intelligence report which had been given much the same treatment by Blair. After an extraordinarily long honeymoon Blair had sunk himself at last. It didn't take Britain much time to damn him as untruthful, and that shows that nobody has to be duped for long. Another oddity is that there was a British report, cited by Ricks, on the successful quelling of the Iraqi uprising in 1920, and no sign that Blair mentioned it. Poodle indeed, wanting to be patted by his master.

There is much more on the nature of insurgencies, comprehensively mishandled by the dysfunctional forces involved. We can't take our rulers on trust, so we had better think for ourselves. 'Whither will it find its outcome, whither its cessation,/the rage of folly laid to rest?' asks Aeschylus, and Ricks closes with some scenarios, even attributing a victory of one kind, possibly unwelcome, to Mr Bush. Often repeated is the military wisdom that in dealing with an insurgency the local populace are the prize, not the battleground. It will presumably be a problem if the entire nation actually equates to the insurgency, supposing that is not the case already. Wherever we are going we wouldn't want to start from here, but we might as well do in our minds what the authorities have never even yet done in theirs and clarify what objectives we may be left with. We cannot just walk out on this chienlit, so one objective has to be some degree of order and reconstruction. This modest aim may not satisfy all, but even it looks difficult. The perception that matters will deteriorate if we withdraw seems to me to misstate the issue, which is that I see no real prospect of betterment if we stay. What we have is lions led by donkeys, told that they had come as liberators but now left fighting a whole population just because they are there. I have opposed this operation from day one, but I am with its supporters to the extent that I don't want America to lose any more face, having thoughtfully paraded its own shortcomings to its own bitterest enemies already. Extreme force will get us nowhere, because genuine terrorists willing to kill themselves are not going to be deterred by that, and Al Qaeda in Iraq are not going to be bombing America and Britain for the simple reason that they are busy in Iraq. It doesn't require many for the foreign suicide missions, and they can find any they need in more tranquil surroundings.

It will need some humility I'd say, and greater willingness to engage with other parties who have a close interest in the matter, Axis of Evil and all, and we can't expect them to make it easy for us. After the sickening civilian carnage and the desolation visited on Iraq, this may also offer some relief to the troops steadily exhausting themselves in a mission as unpromising as Conrad's warship firing blindly into the Congo jungle. Theirs not to reason why, maybe, but it's the right and duty of the rest of us.

Astonishing, fascinating and sad (7/8 people found this helpful)

I picked this book up in the airport on a whim, having promised myself many times that I would read something that would give me a better understanding of how this conflict was initiated and why it has gone so wrong.

This book is it.

It is not sensational or melodramatic. Nor is it a John Pilger-esk anti establishment conspiracy argument.

I thought it would be a bit impenetrable and heavy on inside Washington politics. Actually, it gives a clear account of the build up and the construction of the argument to waging this conflict, but in a very easy to comprehend way. By interviewing and quoting numerous people who were in meetings and worked on plans, it provides a very credible account of the personalities, motivations and rationales of people like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, plus numerous others. It is solid and fascinating. Surprisingly, for me, it was also a real page turner.

The biggest lesson I got from this book is this - It does not matter how big or respected an organization is - even the US government or the Pentagon, never assume leaders know what they are doing or are making decisions based on sound ideas. This book provides a fascinating insight into leadership and the decision making process in government and the military, when it works and when it does not, and the consequences - the destruction of a whole nation for no good reason.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

Thomas E. Ricks

Reader Reviews:

Full and to the Point (1/2 people found this helpful)

How not to go to War...! (0/1 people found this helpful)

A Surprising Misadventure Threatens to Ignite the Middle East's Oil Fields for Decades (0/1 people found this helpful)

THE INGENUOUS AND THE DISINGENUOUS (2/3 people found this helpful)

Astonishing, fascinating and sad (7/8 people found this helpful)

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