Customer Reviews

Dark Victory: America's Second War Against Iraq

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One of the most significant things about this book is its publisher, the U.S. Naval Institute Press -- apparently questioning the intelligence of particular military doctrines or wars is not anti-military or anti-patriotic.

Record has been a military analyst for many years, and the current analysis is a scathing critique of both the Bush Administration's military doctrine and the war on Iraq that flowed from that doctrine. Record forcefully and persuasively argues that the "Bush Doctrine" is totally open-ended and vague -- if the U.S. is really committed to a "war on terrorism" with no limits, then we are in big trouble. Record's position is that the U.S. should have "bounded" its objective and focused on Al-Qaeda. Launching the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which had no connection to either 9/11 or Al-Qaeda, has had several negative effects for U.S. national security, including: 1) it has stretched U.S. forces thin and diminished the forces available to fight Al-Qaeda or other serious threats (and Iraq posed no serious threat to the U.S. as the regime was contained), 2) it has outraged millions, leading to an increase in recruits to "Al-Qaeda-ism," 3) it has created chaos in Iraq and a prime area of operation for "Al-Qaeda-ism", and 4) it has damaged U.S. alliances that are critical to the long-term success of the appropriately limited "war on terrorism," in other words the police/military effort against "Al-Qaeda-ism."

Citizens of this country need to stop thinking in partisan terms and begin to think critically about U.S. strategy on its merits. DARK VICTORY is not part of a "liberal, Bush-bashing agenda." It does not include ad hominem attacks on individuals, but rather focuses on the dangerous consequences of current U.S. strategy. You don't have to agree with me that Bush has committed impeachable offenses in lying about the evidence and reasons for war (no WMD!) and leading us into an unnecessary war to see the need to change course. We owe it to the brave men and women sacrificing their lives for us right now to make sure their efforts are not in vain.

You can find the study that led to this book, called "Bounding the Global War on Terrorism," on the website of the U.S. Army War College.

With sound research and reasoning, Dr. Record shreds the Bush administration's strategy and tactics with respect to the Iraq war and the "war on terrorism". I particularly was impressed with his use of the quotes of those involved with Desert Storm, as to why the U.S. led coalition didn't invade Baghdad in '91; the logic that Cheney, Powell, Wolfowitz, Rice, Scowcroft, Schwartzkopf, and Bush the Elder used then was every bit as correct now as then. The limitations of the "Bush Doctrine", and its profound shortcomings are also fully examined, as is the now-fully discredited notion that Saddam and Osama were bedfellows, and the peril that this linkage causes to U.S. foreign policy.
This is no shrill screech. This is an articulate, well presented, and hard to argue with indictment of a dangerous turn in the history of our nation and the world. It deserves to be read-- in fact, it needs to be read.

In 1993, Record, a former Senate Armed Services Committee staff member, authored Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the Gulf War[1] in which he took President George H.W. Bush to task for not ousting Saddam Hussein. In the present book, Record takes George W. Bush to task for having corrected his father's mistake.

The new book, while well written, is reduced by the author's permeating antipathy for so-called neoconservatives, alleging without proof that a sympathy for Israel's Likud Party colors their view of the world. While it is true that neoconservatives tend to be staunch supporters of Israel, every president since Harry Truman has defended Israel's right to exist and to defend itself. Nor is there anything new about U.S. support for democracy or opposition to terror. The only recent development is a willingness of the U.S. government to reach out to new partners, even if this means working without traditional allies. Record further blames neoconservatives for "the president's controversial use-of-force doctrine," curiously overlooking the impact of 9/11 on Bush's thinking.

Record holds neoconservatives responsible for pursuing policies that cause many adversaries to dislike the United States. He laments "the Bush administration's foreign policy fails to grasp the fact that others do not see us as we see ourselves-that is, as a benign and historically exceptional force." But the Bush administration does grasp this; it just believes that being respected is more important than being liked. The costs of winning Syrian, North Korean, or Chinese favor for U.S. policy would be too high if it meant abandonment of democracies such as Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan. Conversely, Libyan strongman Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi may not like the United States, but it was his respect for the Bush administration's willingness to back force with military action that led to his decision to abandon his nuclear ambitions.

Record's style is confident and authoritative with plenty of facts cited and examples given. A close read, though, shows that Record ignores facts that undermine his arguments. For example, he trumpets a 1999 UNICEF report that relied on Iraqi government statistics to conclude that sanctions on Iraq killed 500,000 Iraqi children; he ignores a joint Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization study the following year that found that half the Iraqi population was overweight, and that hypertension and diabetes-not diseases of the hungry-were among the leading causes of Iraqi mortality.[2] Other facts he simply gets wrong. How could the Defense Department have airlifted Ahmad Chalabi into Iraq during military operations when Chalabi had returned to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq months before the war began?

Dark Victory has many other weaknesses. Record engages in one-man's-terrorist-is-another's-patriot moral relativism. He conflates the Afghan mujahideen with Al-Qaeda, an anachronism that ignores a decade-long fight between Al-Qaeda pan-Islamists and Afghan nationalists such as Ahmad Shah Masud. While determined to debunk any analogy between postwar Japan and Iraq, Record ignores the South Korea example, frequently cited by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Notably absent from a book about Iraq is any consideration of what Iraqis think; Record writes as if Iraqis do not exist.

A book should be more than a glorified op-ed. Unfortunately, Dark Victory is not.

Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005

Record, an American strategist with government experience, has written an important book on the 2003 war against Iraq. He concludes that the war was unnecessary and damaging.

He notes that US government aims to dominate the world through preventive wars. But, as he writes, "Preventive war ... is indistinguishable from aggression. ... it is a prescription for endless conflict", for `an endless series of wars to end all wars'. This is `both strategically and morally wrong'. It is `imperialism pure and simple'.

He urges that the US should wage war only against Al Qa'ida, not against terrorism in general, nor against Iraq: Bin Laden attacked the USA; Saddam never did. The notion of an undifferentiated terrorist threat is misleading, as it was in the 1960s when the US state wrongly saw Vietnam as an agent of China, which it wrongly saw as an agent of the USSR.

Of Iraq, Record observes that Cheney said in March 2002, "We will be greeted as liberators." Record explains why it is false to compare Iraq to post-war France, or Germany or Japan. Iraq is a quagmire, like the Lebanon was for Israel (1982-99), or as Palestine is for Israel now, or as Iraq was for Britain (1920-58).

The occupation of Iraq has cost more than $220 billion so far, paid for by Americans, not by Iraq's oil. American workers oppose an everlasting war of occupation: 60% of Americans opposed Bush's demand for another $87 billion for the occupation.

Record observes that it is wrong to dismiss attacks on US forces `as simply reactionary terrorist attacks having no legitimacy and requiring no response other than traditional counterterrorism'. They are guerrilla warfare: "assaults on U.S. troops, at least in Iraq, hardly qualify as terrorist attacks because those troops are combatants in an army of occupation'.

Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, has said that the war on Iraq was illegal, so the consequent occupation is illegal too, and US and British troops there are illegal foreign combatants. The Iraqi people are waging a just war of national liberation against the foreign occupier.

I liked this even less than the jingoistic, "glory of war" stuff. I'm still looking for the serious study that views the world as a hard place, recognizes that for a large part of the Middle East, America is a symbol of evil, and criticizes American public policy from the perspective of the tensions of imperfect knowledge and dire threat.

This book attempts to link disconnected half-truths with pseudologic to push an idealogical agenda. It is shocking an disappointing to me that in a time of war we allow enemy propaganda like this to demoralize our populace and troops.