Customer Reviews

On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom

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I've been waiting for a print version of this book to be available for some time, since the online version ( ... ) is hard to collect and read on the go. I was therefore thrilled to see the Naval Institute pick up the title and publish it.

While I am happy with the fact that I now have this report in one, bound copy, the printing of this leaves something to be desired. The entire book is black and white, and not a clear copy as it is, rendering many of the photos difficult to see or interpret. Grey boxes appear as they would on a poor copy machine.

The text is, for the most part, clear, and the story of course is as interesting as ever, but if you expect a high-quality reproduction of the online report, you likely will be disappointed.

To date, most of the published writing about the Second Iraq War has consisted of politcal/moral debates about the "rightness" of the war, or of first-hand accounts by soldiers and especially embedded journalists. Some of this work has been excellent--"Thunder Run" and "The March Up" come to mind-- and some have been self-serving, anti-war diatribes like "In the Company of Soldiers". "On Point" was commissioned by the Army as a history of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) through the fall of Saddam's regime in April, 2003, but despite the "official" stamp, and viewed in the context of the other books about the war, the book provides a refreshingly objective and highly informative analysis of the campaign.
The authors begin by outlining developments in US Army training, doctrine, logistics, and inter-service cooperation from the First Iraq War (Desert Storm) to Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and how these improvements made OIF (at least initially) such a success. The actual campaign description is minutely detailed, with numerous maps, charts and diagrams describing everything from unit manuever schemes and objectives, to logistics routes, even Iraqi deployments and order of battle. Army success and failures are clearly delineated, along with the authors recommendations for the future. Readers familiar with Bob Scales superb official history of Desert Storm will find the format and scope of "On Point" pleasingly famliar.
Unlike the Scales work however, unless the reader is comfortable with professional military writing, the prose of "On Point" may seem a bit intimidating. Sown thick with acronyms and abbreviations, I found the writing to be somewhat dry, and the battle descriptions and analysis almost forensic. The authors did thoughtfully include a complete glossary of military terms and acronyms, as well as the most complete US order of battle for OIF yet published.
Overall, the quality of this otherwise solid and informative work is diminished slightly by substandard priniting quality from the publisher, Naval Institue Press, whose standards are normally quite a bit higher. Hopefully, later editions of the book will correct this flaw.
While "On Point" is clearly intended for a professional miliary audience, the lay-reader willing to make the effort will find a clearer understanding of modern military operations and the institutional "lesson learning" process that make he US Army one of the premier fighting forces in the world.

Sensational video feeds and embedded journalist accounts shaped public perception of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S.-led military campaign to topple Saddam Hussein. Accounts by embedded journalists added color but did little to illuminate broader strategy and planning. On Point, the official U.S. Army history of the campaign, is therefore a welcome addition to those accounts. It is a masterful compendium of the planning and operations that ultimately led to the U.S. capture of Baghdad. In addition to chronicling each units' drive forward, the authors add needed perspective. They contextualize the Iraq mission within the history of U.S. military campaigns: with concurrent operations in Afghanistan, the Iraq campaign marked the first time since World War II that U.S. armed forces conducted major campaigns simultaneously in different areas of operation. Not since the Korean war had a combined and joint land component directed all ground operations. The authors place special emphasis on new developments in information-based warfare. Digital linkages and new technology enabled unprecedented air-ground coordination. The authors also describe what lessons influenced military planners. They describe changes in military doctrine in the twelve years between the liberation of Kuwait and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and include summaries of lessons learned from U.S. operations in Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Urban combat preoccupied the war planners. On Point describes various seminars, discussions, and exercises to prepare the U.S. Army to fight in Baghdad. Numerous photos, maps, and charts bring the descriptions to life. The authors offer considerable detail, not only of planning--training exercises in Germany, for example--but also describe how the U.S. military managed with very little public note to ready ports, airfields, and other infrastructure in the Middle East needed for its campaign. Subsequent chapters describe the drive north from Kuwait. Various battles are diagrammed and explained. A chapter on the fall of Baghdad gives behind-the-scenes detail on "thunder runs" probing the city, the much-photographed toppling of Saddam's statue in Firdos Square, and the final fighting within the city. On Point stops its narrative with the end of major combat. There is only the briefest discussion of the transition and no discussion of the start of civilian administration and the continuing insurgency. Some fleeting allusions beg more detail. While the authors mention that "the total number of FIF [Free Iraqi Forces, Iraqis trained in Tazsar, Hungary, before the war] was small, their strategic, operational, and tactical impact was significant," but do not elaborate on how or why. It is unfortunate that air force and navy operations remain outside the purview of examination, as some discussion of these would have illustrated force integration and given a better idea of the challenges and operations of modern warfare. While Operation Iraqi Freedom is generally a "good news" story--the authors identify areas for improvement: they argue that, in terms of combat service support and logistics, the army should not emphasize efficiency over effectiveness (when lives are at stake, duplication is sometimes necessary to ensure that missions succeed). Another lesson learned is that every unit should have the ability to fight and win; no longer are support units confined to the rear, out of danger. The capture of Jessica Lynch after the ambush of her 507th Maintenance Company convoy highlighted how speed and mobility precluded rear security. While Central Command headquarters in Qatar enjoyed the latest intelligence, the authors conclude that access to tactical intelligence among commanders in the field was too limited. Brigade leaders often did not have adequate information about the enemy in their immediate vicinity. Lastly, the authors suggest that the operations highlighted difficulties in the mix of active duty and reserve compo nents. On Point provides a major source for military history buffs, strategists, and general readers. Although technical, it should be required reading for every journalist, analyst, and academic who opines on the U.S. military in Iraq.

Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2006

Considering the political and bureaucratic pressure the authors may have faced, it is perhaps unfair to measure this book against "civilian" histories of Operation Iraqi Freedom (which are also horribly limited at this point, thus the temptation to try On Point). Therefore, I preface my comments with the caveat that the authors deserve praise for their service and hard work and my criticisms/comments are designed to help potential readers rather than take the author's to task.

The most glaring difficulty with On Point is in the news on a daily basis. Not so much that the book does not cover the insurgency (in doesn't), as that it does not cover the transition to an insurgency. It was the "conclusion" of OIF that will interest students of the conflict. It's no surprise the authors avoided this topic, but it does make the study much less interesting. I would have thought it better to have tackled this head on and at least set the tone for what promises to be a decades long debate, but clearly for reasons of time or politics the authors avoided this.

My second comment is more personal, and perhaps wiser minds will eventually disagree, but the too frequent mention of Carl von Clausewitz in the conclusion seemed to validate all my fears about what the military did not learn from the conflict. OIF studied without the insurgency seems to offer a clean validation of the Army just as it is (OK, with a couple minor improvement here and there...). Yet, nothing could be farther from the truth. The compelling lesson of OIF wasn't that "Carl von Clausewitz would find none of this surprising." (p 413) It was that there is no clear on/off switch for war. War, insurgency, peacemaking, terrorism, rebuilding, all seem to go on simultaneously. The day may come when the Army has to once again prepare to fight a clearly defined war, but recent history suggests that this is the exception rather than the rule. Clusewitz's "friction" doesn't cover the multilayered, contingent nature of most conflicts.

Ok, so these are serious issues, but not what everyone wants to read about. Some of us are simply looking for a good war story. The authors certainly weren't given the freedom to write this, so we shouldn't scold them for it. However, if this is what you are looking for, then this isn't the ideal source. The stories are there. Heroism, amazement, technology, you name it. The "problem" with On Point, is that just when the authors start to "get to the good stuff" they switch perspective and move to a new story or event. Again, not their fault. Just something to be aware of before making the choice to read.

A wonderful read about the success of the 3rd ID in Iraq. Excellent examples or courage and bravery by our soldiers.

First, on style and prose: horrible! Even by official army standards the writing is just dreadful. It is also poorly organized, makes jumps back and forth chronologically, and is very hard to follow. Some parts of text do not match up with the maps on the same page. The authors insist on only using the Army's objective names for key battles and locations, instead of the geographic (and easier to follow) terms. It would be like calling Vicksburg "Objective Skylark," or something.

Second: The sidebars often make no sense or are too brief, and the conclusions/statements in the text are often highly questionable. Ex., "Historians prefer to write about people long dead for a number of reasons. For one thing the dead can't criticize what is written." The authors make lots of universal statements that don't ring true. This is "instant history" at its very worst.

Poorly written and terribly illustrated with poor quality images and even worse maps, this book is deadeningly boring to read and takes all the action out of warfare. Side bars often make no sense and are at times irrelevant.