Customer Reviews

Iraq War

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Will Durant ended his history with 'The Age of Napoleon' because the correct treatment and understanding of historical events requires perspective. Simply put recent events are too clouded with emotions and opinions and rarely are all the verifiable facts known (or knowable)for objective analysis.
Keegan is an excellent military historian in my opinion. His book about WW1 is both gripping and well written. He has also written several books about the philosophy of war which I also recommend. I like his writing style, concise crisp there is alway a nice flow to the words, enjoyable and engrossing.
So, this book? Keegan does a good though brief review of basic 20th century Iraqi history and the rise of Saddam into power. The Iraqi-Iran War, the first gulf war(Kuwaiti-Iraqi war) are all covered and set the table for the present fighting. 9/11, WMDS and Saddam himself are all weighed objectively and the intense attempts by the US/GB to involve the UN make for good reading (French and German leaders' feelings about the US are both disturbing and disquieting)
The fighting (or lack of) by the the inital US/GB military units is both well written and informative (Keegan flat knows his military and his review of both the strengths and weakness of the US/GB forces during the brief period of the war itself is very good). But the book basically ends with the taking of Bagdad. The capture of Saddam and the death of his sons are included in the pictures but is not really covered in the text.
I think it was noted in another review that the war did not really start till 90-100 days after the fall of Bagdad. I'm not sure that I would go that far. I think that the fall of Bagdad was the end of phase one, the overt military phase. The Iraqi military was conscripted, woefully armed and poorly led. Overwhelmed outgunned the army simply 'melted away'. But the Irregulars (technicals) fought to the death. And still are.
So Phase two, the civilian insurgency is both ongoing and not covered by this book ---though hinted at in the conclusion section.
So if you want to read about the general buildup and initial phase of this war, Keegan is good.

Having read many books by Keegan I expected this one to be first rate. I was disappointed. It is not that this book is poorly written. Keegan writes with a good style. The problem is that -- with the exception of some background material -- I did not really learn anything about the Iraq War that I did not already know from watching the news, reading the papers, and reading a couple of the books by imbedded reporters.

Keegan begins with several chapters of background material on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. We follow Hussein from his time as a hack thug for the Baath party and follow his rise to ultimate power in Iraq. Keegan then provides a background that takes us up to the Iraq War. This section is clearly written and, thankfully, nonpolemic. As Keegan describes the events leading up to the war, you get the impression that he likely approved of the decision to go to war, but he is certainly no apologist for the War. But he does make clear that Hussein was not in compliance with the UN Resolutions.

It is when the book moves into the Iraq War that I started feeling deja vu. It was like getting the same information I had gathered while the war was going on. He covers the movement of U.S. and British forces in rather broad strokes. Episodes I had hoped to learn more about were glossed over with a sentence or two. One example is the apparently ill-fated Apache assault on the Medina Division. Though only one aircraft was lost, almost all were damaged and -- judging by news reports -- failed to accomplish their objective. I had hoped to get more information from Keegan about this assault and gain the insights of perhaps the leading military historian about the implications for modern warfare. But I did not.

All is not bleak. The book is a good overview of the war. There are some interesting points made about America's approach to logistics and Britian's approach to urban warfare. But the only reason I expended the money I did was because I thought Keegan would deliver more than he did.

John Keegan is the Defense Editor of The Daily Telegraph of London; he writes knowledgably and fluently about the second Gulf War and its antecedents.

The first half of the book is the history of Iraq from the time of Mesopotamia, with an emphasis on the origins of Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath party. There is a secular history of the modern Middle East, parallel to and different from the history of the rise of Islamic terrorism. In Iraq specifically, the secular history is more important to understanding the country's development and the people whom it is hoped will be able to create a stable and peaceful nation out of the rubble and turmoil that presently exists.

Keegan gives an interesting, offshore critique of the neo-con policies in this historical context, such as pre-emption, the belief in the salutary effect of implanting democracy, particularity (i.e., "A city that is set on an hill ...") and Zionism. He also provides a very interesting analysis of European attitudes toward the war. Eastern Europe supported US policy because they saw Stalinism in Saddam, which they knew and hated. Western Europe by and large protested, the root of their disagreement being what Keegan calls "Olympianism": the strong belief that supra-national institutions can provide the solution to conflicts between states, the EU locally and the UN globally. Keegan describes this as the belief that "laws will be obeyed by their mere promulgation".

Keegan gives a stirring description of Tony Blair's speech before The Commons in March 2003 that turned back a vote of no-confidence despite the defection of many in his own party and paved the way for Britain's active participation.

The second half of the book is a somewhat detailed description of the assaults by the US forces up the river valleys and into Baghdad, and the British forces investing and taking Basra. The difference in approach between the first and second Gulf Wars is analyzed.

Of more importance than the military maneuvers is the issue of the behavior of the Iraqi army and populace, which Keegan describes as "mysterious" and which he feels has an important bearing on the difficult security situation after the end of formal hostilities. The mystery is that the armies didn't really fight, they mostly deserted and vanished back into their homes; and the general population often behaved as though they were on a movie set, going about their daily business and ignoring the battles.

The decision to disband the military and the police and to exclude Ba'ath members is criticized and is held partly responsible for the effective morphing of the foreigners and fedayeen from irregular soldiers to looters to urban guerillas, recruiting numerous demobilized and unemployed soldiers. The British are credited with more experience in such situations based on their years of colonial rule, which led them to the more practical approach of establishing law and order rather than worrying about the ideological objective of immediately establishing democratic institutions.

The book is interesting and worth reading. It fails, however, to pursue the "mystery" which it introduces at the beginning; the book ends with very little thought given to its causes or its solution.

The book basically covers three subjects.

First, a political and historical background of Iraq and Saddam - Excellent.

Besides the history primer, Mr. Keegan also has some thought provoking, if negative, remarks about Islam (or at least some of its variants) which I may research later.

Second, the events leading to the second gulf war - Poor at best.

I agree that Saddam had to go, preferably sooner than later. Failing any political progress, war was a likely outcome. Having terrorized his citizens, started two major wars and having a record of NBC/WMD weapons research he wasn't someone anyone felt comfortable having around. The UN embargo wasn't working and medical/food shortages were killing up to 50.000 civilians a year, according to some pre-war estimates.

Mr. Keegan jumps firmly, but clumsily, into the pro-war bandwagon. The issue of missing WMD is never really addressed very well. Did the Western intelligence agencies really drop the ball? Or did the US and the UK lie to their citizens in order to drum up support for an unpopular military intervention? If it wasn't a lie, could the intelligence agencies have done any better? If not, what lessons to learn from that?

His characterization of opponents to the war is lame. Mr. Chirac? "A braggart". Europeans? "idealistic Olympians who do not recognize the need for force". And so on...

Now, I dislike Chirac myself. But a skilled author owes his readers some balance and, especially, more justifications. The French do have a long and shameful history in Iraq. Selling weapons. Having their defence minister, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, refer to Saddam as "a new Napoleon" (which is praise, in France at least) after 1988 (gassing of Kurdish villages). Looking happily to the end of sanctions to sell more stuff in an area without US competition.

Given all that, France deserves criticism, but Mr. Keegan doesn't bother to argue his case by mentioning any of it. The BBC also gets nailed for its "biased coverage", again without any arguments to support that position. Personally, I rather liked their coverage and thought its bias less visible than Keegan's.

And, no, I don't think that hoping for a future without wars is silly. It might not work out, and sometimes (Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia) it is better to go to war after all. It is necessary to resist dictatorships such as Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, North Korea. But you can't fault pacifism as being only for silly idealists. It has, for now, all but stopped wars among Western nations and it has instilled a healthy distrust of "colonial interventions" by most of those nations' citizens.

Third - the war itself - Not all that great.

There is some high level analysis of what units were moving where, and what they did. Some coverage of local action, plenty of other interesting stuff. Keegan is in in element here.

What there isn't is any interviews of Iraqis. Or any detailed info on Iraqi activity during the war. No Iraqi is mentioned by name outside the usual suspects covered by CNN.

Everything is from the Allies' viewpoint. I don't blame Mr. Keegan for staying out of Iraq right now. But it makes you wish that the book was written ten years from now, with Keegan having been able to do his usual world class research.

Nor is there any analysis of how the US should face the Iraq insurgency, despite the 2005 addition to the book. With current events being what they are, we need people like Mr. Keegan to reinvent themselves as analysts of low-level, guerilla warfare, terrorism, etc...

But this book is more informative about the perils of writing history books too soon, before the facts emerge fully.

John Keegan is an excellent historian, so I expected a good overview of the war that was not provided in other books written by embedded journalists. Unfortunately, Keegan did not have enough material to deliver the complete war story.

Keegan starts off with a short but excellent summary of the reasons for the war and his early and balanced analysis of them. The book then turns into a history lesson on Iraq, Saddam, and the political lead-up to the war. This background material takes up over HALF of the books 220 pages of text. Keegan's historical expertise shows through, as the various segments of Iraq's history are covered in a very complete and readable text. However, given that the book is on the Iraq WAR, the background material seems like padding for a lack of war coverage.

The actual war is covered in only 80 pages, split between the American drive-up, the British capture of Basra, and the capture of Bagdad. Here is where the historian suffers a lack of material which will come available in the coming years. The result is far too general. Much better material is found in "The March Up" and "In the Company of Soldiers", though the latter includes annoying political commentary. However, Keegan's British background makes for a more complete coverage of the British experience and gives a different perspective from American embedded journalists.

Given that the insurgency continues, the conclusion in the final section on the war's aftermath are premature, but Keegan's fine historical instincts and knowledge make for some interesting insights.

In summary, it is too early to develop an in-depth review of the war, without the help of the top commanders (Keegan had only a 2 hour interview with General Franks) and/or more material from army/marine sources. While the historical context and Keegan's insights are strong, the lack of material on the war is dissapointing.

I'm a big fan of John Keegan's books. His "Face of Battle" is one of the best books I've ever read. Keegan's appeal as a historian has been his objectivity and ability to present all sides of an issue. Unfortunately, "The Iraq War" was a big disappointment. The first chapters that provide a history of Iraq are unbiased and informative. The following chapters that describe the politics prior to the war and the war's justification are anything but. Furthermore, his description of U.S. and U.K. military forces resembles a recruiting poster more than it does a history book. While I was happy to see Sadaam removed from power and am proud of our armed services, I would have preferred to see a more balanced account of the conflict.

I just love military history books, and buy all I can get a hold of. What makes a good one is a sense of history and what brought the two combatants together, their armaments, their basic strategy, their generals, their soldiers, and then BAM-the battle begins and the fog of war, individual initiative, luck, and all the pieces come together or fall apart. This book had none of that set up and discussion.

It begins with superficial discussion of Iraq history, which aside from 2 stupid maps, told me very little and left me with many questions, and was either too basic, or presumed knowledge of other areas. The author next treats us to a recent and superficial history of Hussein. I've gotten more out of a Discovery Channel special.

He next moves to the actual war and aside from 2 stupid wide area maps doesn't address any of the key battles with maps and how the battle was won, either by encirclement or follow through. The Marine fake right and the 3rd ID punch up the middle was not dealt with either. I was very disappointed.

The book is not all bad, and if you know very little about Iraq, the history section is a nice 20 page discussion of Iraq from the dawn of time to now. If you've been living in a cave and know nothing about Hussein, then his biography of him will enlighten you. I can also say it was quick easy read, and I finished the entire book in a single 3.5 hour plane ride. I'm glad I bought it used and it was interesting and killed an afternoon for me, but I expected more.

I have long held a high opinion of John Keegan as a military historian, which is why this book comes as such a disappointment.

The first thing that you need to understand about this book is that as a military history - that is, a detailed account of combat and military movements - it begins on page 126 and ends on page 202. The remainder is mostly a sketchy outline of Iraq's history, which is much better done elsewhere by scholars with some actual familiarity with the region. Bizarrely, almost three pages are devoted to the history of the European Union.

Pages 126-202 actually form a passable military history, but given the sometimes spectacular errors and bizarre statements made in the text prior to page 126, one has little confidence in the text at this point. Another reviewer has pointed out the discrepancy in Keegan's description of the controversy at the center of the Iran-Iraq War. For a military historian, this is no minor blunder. But it is by no means alone in terms of quite extraordinary assertions.

For example, Keegan states that "Spain, an unlikely militant, supported President Bush, so enthusiastically that he chose to stage a summit meeting in the Spanish Azores on 14 March." While it may amuse critics of the Administration to think that President Bush chose to have the conference in the Azores in order to honor Spain, I feel confident that the President's advisors are aware that the Azores are Portuguese territory. Certainly a respected historian of World Wars I and II should be, given the role those islands played in ship and air traffic and U-boat operations. What is disturbing here is less that Mr. Keegan makes a factual error - though it is something of a whopper - but that he then goes on to ascribe motives to powerful actors based on it.

In another example, on page 136, Keegan says that after 1918, Turkey "evolved swiftly into a stable polity, free of internal racial or religious conflicts." This is a flabbergasting statement. Mr. Keegan's scholarship seems to have passed over Turkey's appalling treatment of Kurds, Armenians, and other minority ethnic groups; the religious tension that has been simmering - and occasionally boiling over - for decades; and three military coups since 1960, among other things.

An astute reader should be fairly wary of the narrator after more than a hundred pages of this kind of thing.

I am deeply dismayed that several readers have given this book a high rating based on the fact that the author's view is concordant with their own pre-formed political opinions. That may be sufficient grounds to judge a screed by Michael Moore or Ann Coulter. It ought not be the yardstick by which a military history is measured.

John Keegan is the preeminent military historian of our time and indeed one of the premiere contemporary historians of any sort, so I was glad to see him willing to tackle the volatile subject of the recent Iraq invasion. For the record I have been profoundly against the war from the beginning. However, it's best to see both sides of an argument, and unlike the vast majority of ignorant drivel that the right churns out to justify the war, Keegan has an impressive knowledge of the military and cultural history of the region. In short, the man knows of what he speaks (anyone who doubts it should read his A History of Warfare, one of the seminal works in the field).

Unfortunately, this is a patchy work. In part that is going to inevitably occur as a result of the book's focus on the invasion itself, a period of the war that at this point already feels something close to irrelevant. Keegan's analysis of the battle plan and its execution is tremendous, but by confining his gaze to the period of major military operation he does not properly consider the postwar ramifications of prewar decisions. And because the victory of American and British arms was never in question, the invasion sections have the feel of a technical exercise. There is useful information here, particularly in the early sections that detail the history of Iraq and of Saddam Hussein. And Keegan provides a useful but narrow analysis of the immediate run-up to war (while being very thorough in documenting Iraq's posturing in this period, he is curiously silent on the way in which America packaged the war, particularly as regards the repeated attempts to conflate Iraq with the September 11th attacks). In a recent re-release, Keegan has addressed the post-war insurgency and provides a thorough overview of the forces in the field without ever showing much insight on the broader ramifications.

This book is a concise and insightful overview of the U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein. The title, however, is misleading as only half of "The Iraq War" actually covers the run-up to the war, the war itself, and its immediate aftermath. The first half of the text - which runs less than 220 pages total - is about the creation of modern Iraq, the rise of Saddam, and the ruinous wars he fought with Iran and the U.S.-led coalition in the First Gulf War.

Nonetheless, Mr. Keegan brings his considerable expertise as a historian and a journalist to draw clear lines from Iraq's past to its present and cast current events in their historical context. As someone only passing familiar with Middle East history, the book provides a good refresher.

One of the most interesting sections deals with the cultural divide between the United States and Europe. Mr. Keegan holds that while 9/11 pushed the U.S. into a suspicious, defensive mindset, Europe remained in the grip of a political paradigm, characterized by the European Union, in which all dispute is resolved through negotiation, compromise, and the implementation of minute regulation. Yet the weakness of that system, according to Mr. Keegan, is that it lacks any means to enforce its will should some party decide to rebel. The book maintains a slightly chiding tone towards Europe and the media, and Mr. Keegan's admiration of American values and will is obvious.

The second half of the book deals directly with the conduct of the war itself. It is divided into four sections - the American war, the British war, the fall of Baghdad, and the aftermath. Many passages are devoted to detailing which division, battalion, etc went where. Mr. Keegan recounts several key battles, such as the intense fighting around the Moe, Larry and Curly overpasses in Baghdad. But many of these engagements were reported by embedded journalists at the time, and little new ground is covered here. Many details were provided by U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, who drew up the battle plans and directed combat, and who granted Mr. Keegan a 90-minute interview that the author praises as one of the most instructive he's ever received by a senior military officer.

Among the highlights are how the coalition, the Americans in particular, managed logistics, keeping supply chains running smoothly despite sandstorms and guerilla attacks. It is also interesting to read of the British tactics used in securing Basra, and their subsequent success in winning over the local population (which was already highly disposed to welcome the fall of Saddam and the Ba'ath Party). Mr. Keegan also does a good job of putting into context some decisions that seem ill-advised in retrospect, such as the disbanding of the Iraqi army. Although that move threw hundreds of thousands of men out of work in a labor market unable to absorb them, at the time it was deemed a bigger risk to have potentially unstable and unpredictable people in the military.

"The Iraq War" is not the book you want if you are looking for minute details of how the war was conducted, or if you want lots of eye-witness commentary and insider dirt on who did what. But if you want a solid but quick read-up on what is sure to be a key event of this decade, this could be the book for you.