Customer Reviews

Ignorant Armies: Sliding into War in Iraq

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In Canada and around the world, journalist and military historian, Gwynne Dyer, is one of the most respected commentators of international and military affairs. This book is a prime example of his authoritative knowledge of what is going on the world.

This book reveals in intriguing detail and the chain of events that have lead the United States to fight a war against Iraq even when the original pretext of 9/11 seems have no connection. In doing so, Dyer notes that the standard antiwar perception of being only about oil is simplistic, since even Iran at its most hostile to the US has never hesitated selling as much oil to it as possible.

Rather, Dyer details the combination of US domestic political oppurtunism coupled with the current US administration's obsessions, Israeli diplomatic efforts to maintain US support and US corporate interests that have led to a war most of the world never wanted. Dyer can explain this better than I can and I invite you to explore for yourself.

The only drawback is that he fully admits that this book was finished in early Febuary this year and so he could only speculate as the possible consequences to the Iraq War. However, that itself is still intriguing for the paths current events could have taken, or indeed they still might.

In other words, if you are tired of the murky spin of Bush and the boys or the kowtowing American media, then this book represents a refreshingly sober and insightful alternative view.

Not emotional. Treats the people that he is writing about as intelligent individuals, which most of them are, even if you do not agree with the actions of the individuals.

Very enjoyable read.

Extremely prescient, considering it was written before the invasion of Iraq.

Rather than "leftist screed," this is a thoughtful and well-reasoned -- and convincing -- analysis. This is the analysis that traditional Republicans would embrace. The current (Bush II) administration apparently did not give half the thought to this matter in all the time leading up to the invasion that Dyer gave to it in writing this book. What a shame!

Read it if you thought this war was about oil. It gives the lie to that canard. This war is, more than anything else, about hubris and economic spoils for megacorporations. So many brave, irreplaceable, and fundamentally decent American soldiers are paying for this folly.

This book was written by Dyer just prior to the second Iraq war as a polemic on why the U.S. should not invade Iraq. In it Dyer provides a range of possible scenarios regarding the results of such a war, from the optimistic (i.e., the Bush administration's expectations) to a more "realistic" scenario (the U.S. being tied down for many years with severe casualties for both U.S. forces and on Iraq society combined with serious damage to the relations between the West and Middle Eastern Societies and increased terrorism) and a worst case scenario (serious uprisings in the "moderate" Middle Eastern powers [Jordan, Saudi Arabia], another Israeli-Arab war with Palestinians being "cleansed" from the West Bank). As it turns out it was his middle of the road realistic scenario that has played out, as he predicted.

The book also elaborates on numerous theories as to why the Bush administration wanted to invade. These include the need for oil (which Dyer thoroughly rebuffs - he argues that oil will continue trading regardless of who physically controls the fields [and he points out that the U.S. was even filling its strategic oil reserves by purchasing Iraq oil]), the belief that there were ties between Al-Qaeda and Hussein in the 9/11 attack which he describes as ludicrous (just as the facts have borne out), Bush Jr's psychological need to outdo his father in terms of "beating" Iraq, spreading democracy in the middle east and obtaining revenge against Hussein for his alleged attempted assassination of Bush senior during his visit to Kuwait and using the war for domestic political gain. With respect to the latter Dyer was quite correct in that the Republicans were able to use the war to consolidate and expand their power not only in the 2004 presidential election but to gain complete control of the legislature. The war was probably the one most important factor that contributed to this political success. Karl Rove worked political miracles with it.

The book also elaborates on why the invasion would be such a bad thing. This includes the not only obvious facts that the U.S. would be tied down in Iraq and suffer casualties, Iraq would suffer serious casualties and that relations between the West and the Islamic world would deteriorate but less obvious facts. Among the less obvious would be the damaging of the current framework of international relations (in particular that countries cannot, without impunity, unilaterally attack others without international sanction) and the fact that the neo-conservative's strategy to maintain U.S. worldwide military hegemony are doomed to failure (i.e., there are other up and coming powers that the U.S. is powerless to break such as India and China and the U.S. populace is unwilling to make the sacrifices needed to maintain the requisite military forces in terms of either higher taxes or conscription). He also points out that Cheney's "one percent solution", whereby the U.S. has the right to unilaterally attack any nation that has even a one percent chance of attacking it, is an invitation to disaster not only in terms of the perpetual conflicts it implies but in the counter-productive nature of such terms, especially regarding the damage it would do the relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world and the fact that the policy would probably not make the world safer for the U.S. by decreasing attacks against the U.S. and their odds of occurring but would probably increase them and their probability.

Last but not least Dyer puts forth some interesting ideas that are tangent to those discussed above. The most important of these is the view that a true independent mass media appearing in the Middle East, in the guise of cable networks outside the control of Middle Eastern despots, will put pressure on the states of the region to become eventually become more democratic. He draws the analogy of how, in the Europe, the invention of the printing press had a similar impact on autocratic states. Not everyone may agree with this last point but it is interesting nevertheless.

Save your money. This book has no neutrality, it's a pale disguise for a left-leaning liberal collection of rhetoric. Not that the read wasn't interesting, it was. This book is an example of what soldiers are fighting for: freedom of speach. Too bad Dyer is so concerned with the politics of the situation and not the reality of the world.

I don't recommend this book for anyone unless you are a political science major looking for liberal perspectives.