Customer Reviews

The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I recommend the other reviews, including the negative ones, for they accurately depict a lack of balance that might normally cause me to give this book one less star. However, because it has first-rate personal perspective including extraordinary travel that most US officials and journalists cannot claim, it gets the full five stars. I especially liked the "cast of characters" at the end, with names and titles and dates. A fine review.

The book can be quickly summed up by a quote from page 7: "Insurgency, civil war, Iranian strategic triumph, the breakup of Iraq, an independent Kurdistan, military quagmire."

As the Administration continues to deny that Iraq is in a civil war, the author is compelling in citing the Iraqis themselves saying that they are--and that America lost it when it turned from liberator to occupying power. Two people come out of this book looking colossally ignorant: George Bush, who never heard of the Sunni-Shiite split before the war, and Paul "Jerry" Bremer. The author's basic proposition is that the American Republic has been undone by extraordinary arrogance, ignorance, and political cowardice.

The author is a good writer with a gift for clear phrases. He concludes that the White House and the Pentagon's politically-appointed leaders consistently "ignored inconvenient facts." He concludes that Iraq may actually be better off in the long run, but the US is clearly not--we have gored ourselves near fatally.

I agree with the critics that suggest the author is in love with Kurdistan and overlooking some of their less rosy realities. The book is a clearly partisan document that admires the Kurds and makes the case for a free Kurdish state within Iraq (three states, one nation, not a division of Iraq as some critics loosely interpret). He is considerate of Turkish concerns and how a Kurdistan inside of Iraq but independent within Iraq, can meet their needs for a secular buffer.

There are some gems in this book that I have not found elsewhere, including a detailed accounting of the atrocities committed by Hussein against the Kurds, the Kurds rebuilding including English-speaking universities and doctors certified by the British Medical Board.

I was shocked to learn that the White House employs a CANADIAN speech-writer (who may well be one of the new Canadian clandestine case officers they are starting to field), and that this CANADIAN inserted the "axis of evil" line (which the author points out is ignorant both geographically and historically).

Overall the author could help inspire the impeachment of the Vice President. His book complements that of Ron Susskind, "The One-Percent Doctrine" and is replete with lines like "logic and facts did not stop the Bush Administration..." (page 80), "wishful thinking substituted for knowledge" (page 88, describing Undersecretary Feith), "contrary views were not just rejected, they were banned" (page 89), and "the ignorant are always surprised" (page 101).

In terms of historical documentation, the author is strongest in his detailing the incompetence of the Bush Administration in failing to plan for the war, and he lays much of the blame on Cheney for falling prey to Ahmad Chalabi's lies. The author says on page 86 that Chalabi's role cannot be overstated.

He trumps that with detail on the idiocy and arrogance of Paul "Jerry" Bremer who decided to run Iraq as his own fiefdom, and in his first two decisions, banned all Baaths from leadership positions, and dismembered the army and all security services. If there is one man to blame for all the American dead and disabled since the war "ended," it is this well-intentioned but contextually inept person, who acted against the specific advice of the senior Army generals then serving in the field.

From an intelligence perspective, the author is credible when he points out that in the aftermath of the war and before the break-down of all order in Iraq, neither the Pentagon nor the CIA seemed to be aware of, nor interested in, the treasure trove of intelligence materials scattered in various locations throughout Iraq. This tracks with my own intimate knowledge of civilian and military intelligence, both preferring to stay in the Green Zone and not miss their evening cocktails, Robert Bauer and a few others excepted.

On page 118 the author absolutely floors me by pointing out that the Department of State spent an entire year creating a blueprint for securing the peace in Iraq, but the Department of Defense, which insisted on controlling "diplomacy" in Iraq, did not tell Bremer the detailed plan existed until a year after he arrived on the job. On page 117, the author details how the US inter-agency bureaucracy was and is out of control, with rival US factions pursuing policies that are diametrically opposed. He is particularly caustic in slamming the grotesquely incompetent manner in which the Administration threw together the nation-building team, including six young people from the Heritage Foundation who ended up running a $13 billion a year budget.

The author condems Bremer's gratuitous humiliation as having broken Iraq apart and spawned the insurgency. In the author's view, Bremer blew it in that he was a naked Emperor hiding in the Green Zone, and neither the Shiites in the south nor the Kurds in the north ever gave up their militaries or their power over their own terrain.

The book ends by stating that the US needs a strategy based on reality, not wishful thinking or ideological fantasy, and he concludes that three states comprising one nation, is the fastest way out of Iraq. I agree.

This is a solid professional account. I disagree with those critics who consider the author to be self-serving, embellishing, or otherwise deceiving the public. While he emphasizes some things more than others, and would clearly like an independent Kurdistan, on balance I consider this to one of the better first-person stories, right up there with "Squandered Victory."

The U.S. invaded Iraq with grand ambitions to bring it democracy, achieve good relations with Israel, and thereby transform the Middle East (eg. Syria and Iran would be the next market-oriented democracies). Instead the country is plagued by insurgency and is in the opening phases of a civil war. The difficulty in getting the factions to work together is underlined by the facts that fewer than one in ten voted for parties that crossed ethnic or religious lines, and after the election it took more than four months to choose the government's top officials.

Meanwhile, North Korea expelled the U.N. nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and reprocessed previously monitored plutonium into material for 6-8 nuclear weapons. This occurred after Bush II accused North Korea in '02 of violating the '94 agreement to freeze all nuclear activity (no uranium enrichment facility was operational at that time) and cut off fuel oil shipments. As for Iran, it had been coooperating with the U.S. in Afghanistan by sharing intelligence on al-Qaeda, preventing their entry into Iran, and allowing search-rescue efforts to use their territory - all that ended after Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech.

Two months prior to invading Iraq, Bush II met with three Iraqi-Americans. They reported he didn't even know about the Sunni and Shiite sects, or their strong hostility. Ignorance was further encouraged by prohibiting General Franks from contacting General Zinni for his ideas on post-war planning, and General Garner's staff was carefully vetted to ensure that only "right thinkers" were utilized.

Problems began immediately after Baghdad fell - despite administration officials being warned, the National Museum (its collections went back to the beginning of human civilization) was looted while U.S. forces watched; later Wolfowitz claimed all but 38 artifacts were recovered, ignoring thousands smashed and taken from storerooms. Similarly, the National Library - a repository of Iraq's recent history was burned. Elsewhere almost two tons of Iraqi yellowcake was looted post invasion, again while U.S. troops were nearby; Saddam's supposed recent yellowcake acquisitions were part of the justification for the invasion. Looters also took high explosives used to initiate nuclear explosions. Personnel files with names/addresses of Saddam Fedayeen (those attacking U.S. forces) were found and reported to Wolfowitz - again no action. The U.S. had simply assumed that Iraq's police and bureaucrats would report for work the day after Baghdad fell - despite the warnings of experts.

General Garner's arrival was delayed about two weeks by General Franks - regardless, upon arrival Garner quickly began efforts to turn over Iraq to Iraqis and hold elections. However, he was quickly replaced by Paul Bremer - one of his first actions was to cancel meetings on Iraqi elections, and most knowledgeable Iraq leaders cite that point as when Iraqis began to see the U.S. as occupiers instead of liberators.

Galbraith ultimately asks "What would an Iraqi government govern?" Answering his own question, he contends that it would not include the Kurdish area (Baghdad ministries are not even allowed to open offices there), the Shiite south (now run by clerics, militias, and religious parties as an Islamic state), nor Baghdad or the Sunni Arab heartland (will continue to be battlegrounds).

Galbraith's Recommendations: Help the Kurds rule on their own, pull out of southern Iraq (would also give us more military strength vs. Iran), and put Sunni army/police in charge of Sunni areas while maintaining U.S. emergency reaction forces in the Kurdish areas.

Having spent twenty-one months on the ground in Iraq with
Kurdish peshmerga, Kurdish artists, human rights activists,
teachers, lawyers, poets and businessmen, US Army Special Forces,
Delta Force, US Army paratroopers and light infantry,
US Marine infantry, US Marine scout/snipers, and
the Iraqi Army, I can do nothing but praise Peter Galbraith
for his extraordinary grasp of detail in this great book,
and his success at keeping his attention fully focused
on insights that he has gained on the ground in Iraq
and the Near East over two decades.

This is a magnificent and very timely book which will prove to be timeless.

This is a landmark book on the Iraq War. Peter Galbraith
does not hesitate to stand and deliver a radical and well-needed
plan for America's last best hope at victory in Iraq.

His criticism of Bush, Cheney and Paul Bremer echoes
that I recently heard in the field on a second
combat deployment, for seven months with
Marine scout/snipers, Marine infantry, and the Iraqi Army,
in Fallujah and Western Iraq---reading this book was like
being back inside the wire after a mission and talking about
the war with Americans and Iraqis. The symmetry between what
Galbraith writes and what men on the tip of the spear are
saying themselves in Iraq is eerie.

He is accurate on the Kurds. I have far, far less time with
the Kurds than Peter Galbraith does, but there is one huge
truth about the Kurds of Iraq: they are committed to a free,
democratic and independent Kurdistan and they are the only
people in Iraq who well and truly love democracy. Galbraith
gets that, completely, and is not shy about expounding
on that truth.

Bush doesn't get that, nor does Rice and so many other people in Bush's administration,
but the entire cabinet in the Bush administration has proven by their failure
to win the guerrilla war in Iraq that they all need to chain and leash seeing eye dogs, regardless.

Read Peter Galbraith's winning book for its unique insights
and instructive commentary. Read it if you want to understand
why the Kurds are the only true ally we have in Iraq. Read it
if you want to discover a bold, radical and well-needed road
to peace, an exit strategy rooted in what US Special Forces
define as "ground truth," what has gone down in Iraq, and
the cultural and historical truth of the terrain we are still
fighting on. Bravo, Peter Galbraith, and very well-done.

Mike Tucker
Author: THE LONG PATROL,
HELL IS OVER, & AMONG WARRIORS IN IRAQ

Topical books on controversial issues tend to inspire polemical reviews on this site, so in the interest of transparency, I should tell you where this reviewer comes from: I am a retired US diplomat, a lifelong Republican (though of late a former Republican, thanks to the current Administration), and was a strong supporter initially of the Iraq War. Now, to the book.

Peter Galbraith's core text is only 224 pages long, but it is packed with material, eminently readable, and amounts to the most devastating critique yet of the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq. It gains that stature first because Galbraith is an excellent writer (not unlike his late father, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith), and also because he has spent most of his life in the national security arena as a long-time Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, U.S. Ambassador to Croatia during the Balkan wars, and a professor at the National War College. He brings from those life experiences a temperament to match, so this is a clear-eyed, balanced, tightly analytical and dispassionate account--not the kind of hysterical screed produced by those who so detest George Bush that their temper gets the better of their objectivity and saps their credibility. And it is just such objectivity (coupled with Galbraith's longtime experience of the region and acquaintance with many key players in Iraq and in the Administration) which makes his book all the more effective as an indictment.

Galbraith reviews the twenty-year see-saw (and often cynical) history of U.S. relations with Saddam's regime, provides the best and most strategic critique of the rationale (including the intelligence rationale) for the war which I have read, and writes a detailed (and often first-hand) account of the occupation up to the last several months which highlights the gross incompetence and lack of advance planning which cost America whatever chance it might have had in the immediate aftermath of victory to reshape Iraq in a manner most congenial to us.

His basic conclusions are that Iraq was a British post-WWI Frankenstein creation cobbled together from three antipathetic Ottoman provinces, and that it always has been held together only by autocratic force and carried the seeds of its own dissolution. The US invasion and US mis-management of the occupation have now irreversibly catalyzed that process of civil war and state disintegration into the three major ethnic/confessional groups (Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis). Galbraith argues that we are best off accepting that inevitability, rather than perpetuating--and participating in--a civil war through attempts to impose a strong unitary state rather than giving each group its own "space" as permitted under the new Iraqi constitution which allows major regional autonomy (virtual independece) and a weak central government.

Honest that he is, Galbraith clearly acknowledges the biggest problem such a course and American withdrawal could entail: major ethnic cleansing and a period of sharpened civil war and bloodshed in Baghdad and several other areas of mixed composition if/when the various confessional groups have to flee and regroup to seek safety in uniform religious communities. He accepts that outcome as distasteful but implies that it is inevitable whatever we do, so there's no point in having American troops in the middle. He also sees as inevitable a heavily Iranian-influenced Shiite region in Iraq, and highlights that as one of the worst failures of strategic foresight on the part of the Bush Administration when it made the decision to dismantle Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.

I'm less sure of the inevitability of a broader civil war than Galbraith--thus less skeptical that some continued American presence could make a positive and ameliorative difference. Also, one cannot help but suspect that his advocacy of regional autonomy (virtual independence) for the major contending groups in Iraq is at least partially inspired by his 20-year association with the Kurds and his heartfelt support for Kurdish nationalism.

Nonetheless, this book is powerfully and fairly argued and is one of the very best accounts, and probably the best short bird's eye account, thus far to come out of the Iraq War and occupation.

As one reads this volume, there are some negatives: a tilt toward the Kurds, an almost excessive delight in criticizing the current American administration. However, the focus of the book is important--where is Iraq going?

The author is confident that Iraq as we know it is apt not to continue. Kurdistan will go its own way--whether within some sort of decentralized and weak central Iraqi government or as an independent country. The Shiite south, centered in Basra, will at least have considerable autonomy and develop an Islamic "republic" within its boundaries--possibly very sympathetic toward Iran. What happens with Baghdad and its mixed population and the Sunni areas such as Anbar province is not so clear.

Implications for the United States? A breakup of Iraq as hypothesized by Galbraith certainly complicates American policy in that region of the world. Kurdistan is likely to be an ally--a plus. The Shiite south? If it allies with Iran, not such a plus. What about Baghdad? If there is continued violence between Shiites and Sunnis, might this be destabilizing in the region, by enhancing tensions in other Middle Eastern countries with substantial Shiite populations?

Many unanswered questions emerge from this book--but the questions are important and Galbraith has done a service by forcing readers to address these.

Another in a line of excellent books on the mess in Iraq. I would rank this right up there with Cobra II. Peter Galbraith traces the history of the Kurds and his own ongoing involvement with them beginning in the later part of the `80's when he was a Senate staffer to build a picture of the complex creation that was Iraq. He also is able to give the reader a feel for just how artificial a nation Iraq really is. He writes on the planning - or lack there of - for the post-war transformation of Iraq. And he also exposes how terribly uninformed was the Administration's leadership. For example, when meeting with Iraqi leaders during the late Fall of 2002 Bush learned from them for the first time that there were two branches of Islam - Sunni and Shia. Up to that point Bush had though a Muslim was a Muslim. Shorter than Cobra II this book focuses mainly upon the political side of the subject and not on the military. In that respect the two books compliment each other.

This book may be the most important book yet to come out of the American experience in Iraq. I believe this for at least three reasons. First, the book orients us toward the future. The author impresses me with his background in the region, but the book's strength lies in directing our thoughts toward the probable and improbable outcomes of American influence. It addresses the question of where we go from here. Second, the author anchors his analysis with an understanding of religious alliances not seen in other writers except for Vali Nasr (The Shia Revival). Third, the analysis remains factual. The author's support for enhancing the role of a Kurdish ally in the region arises from behavior by the Kurds, not some preordained posture associated with political or religious ties. His description of Bush Administration errors may be seasoned with the salt and pepper of Democratic politics, but there is no blurring of fish with fowl. The screwups have been well documented; the context and perspective of this book makes their tragicomic character more apparent.

I believe this book will grow in importance, and the author will find a stronger voice on the book/talkshow circuit.

Peter Galbraith, the first US Ambassador to Croatia, has written a scorching indictment of the US/British war in Iraq. He describes "an Administration too arrogant to listen to experts, so at war with its own State Department as to ignore its professional guidance, and ignorant or indifferent to international law."

He writes of Bush, "It isn't that he failed to consider some possible adverse consequences of the war, but rather that he missed all of them. ... Insurgency, civil war, Iranian strategic triumph, the breakup of Iraq, an independent Kurdistan, military quagmire."

The unfortunate British and American troops are not doing any good there. The occupation is not succeeding. As Galbraith notes, "The Iraq War has failed to serve a single major U.S. foreign policy objective. It has not made the United States safer; it has not advanced the war on terror; it has not made Iraq a stable state; it has not spread democracy to the Middle East; and it has not enhanced U.S. access to oil. ... A war undertaken in part to undermine Iran's Islamic republic has given Tehran its greatest strategic gain in four centuries."

Galbraith concludes, "No purpose is served by a prolonged American presence anywhere in Arab Iraq." As Dick Cheney rightly warned in 1993, "Now you can say, well, you should have gone to Baghdad and gotten Saddam, I don't think so. I think if we had done that we would have been bogged down there for a very long period of time with the real possibility we might not have succeeded." The occupation's presence is worsening the Iraqi people's suffering: it is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

So what should we do? Galbraith suggests that Britain and the USA should stop pretending that they can create a unified and democratic Iraq. He urges them to withdraw their troops and hand over control of Kurdistan to the Kurds, of the Sunni governorates to the Sunnis and of the Shia governorates to the Shia.

Peter Galbraith considers it is time to break up a country which he describes as 'destabilised by efforts to hold it together.'

Firstly, he reminds us that Iraq's current form reflects borders drawn by the British when the Ottoman Empire was carved up after World War I. This is important in order to try to understand both the history of the disparate groups of people who inhabit Iraq, and the current situation in that country.

Secondly, Peter Galbraith is very critical of the Bush Administration's flawed invasion plans. This will probably polarise readers. I'd suggest that readers try to look beyond their own views about whether the invasion of Iraq was justified to whether the objectives articulated as a consequence of the invasion were ever realistic.

The real value of this book, though, is its interpretation of events in Iraq since the end of 2003. Those of us interested in the future of this part of the world need to try to understand the history of the peoples and the dynamics of power in the region.

Recommended as a good and accessible starting point for those interested in both the past and the future of this troubled region.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

A perceptive analysis of of the origins of the present chaos in Iraq with particular emphasis on the Kurdish dilemma, which reinforces my own conviction that the Kurds are our only reliable allies within that country, despite a history of being betrayed by the expedience of short sighted Western policy in the region. The author has recently appeared on C-SPAN before Senator Biden's committee and has offered, in my opinion, the only sensible plan for extricating U.S. forces from Iraq, as well as salvaging the most from a chaotic situation.