The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq (Hardcover)

~ Bing West (Author)
Key Phrases: quick reaction force, special operations forces, combined action platoon, Iraqi Army, President Bush, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by John A. Nagl

We interpret reality through the clouded prism of our own experience, so it is unsurprising that Bing West sees Iraq through the lens of Vietnam. He served as a Marine officer there, and he thinks politicians and the media caused the American public to turn against a war that could have been won. Now a correspondent for the Atlantic, West has made 15 reporting trips to Iraq over the last six years and is almost as personally invested in the current conflict as he was in Vietnam; this book, his third on Iraq, is his attempt to ensure that the "endgame" in Iraq turns out better than in his last war.

It is increasingly possible to believe that it will. The Strongest Tribe is the first overview of the entire course of the Iraq war to be published since Gen. David Petraeus implemented a change in strategy that is likely to be eternally, if incorrectly, identified as "the surge." West briefly invokes the familiar litany of American errors that nurtured the Sunni insurgency early in the war -- his first chapter is titled "How to Create a Mess" -- and he presents a biting analysis of the muddled strategy that marked the war's second and third years, when the United States rushed to hand over control to an Iraqi military that was not ready to assume such responsibility. He calls it "a hope posing as a plan" that committed too few troops to accomplish the tasks they had been given: a classic ends/means mismatch. When al-Qaeda in Iraq destroyed the sacred Shia shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22, 2006, civil war between the Sunnis and the Shia erupted, and the contradictions and likely failure of U.S. policy eventually became impossible to ignore, even for a Washington that was tragically disconnected from reality on the ground.

Enter Petraeus, co-author of a new field manual on counterinsurgency that focused on the protection of the population as the key to success in this kind of war -- the same mission West had emphasized in Vietnam 40 years earlier. With his deputy (and now successor), Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, Petraeus pushed U.S. soldiers in Baghdad out of the big Forward Operating Bases that had isolated them from the Iraqi people, stationing them in Joint Security Stations with Iraqi soldiers and police. This change in how the troops conceived of their mission was far more important than the relatively small increase in the number of troops that the "surge" label overemphasizes. Petraeus also took full advantage of the opportunity presented when the Sunni tribes of Anbar province attacked al-Qaeda in a turnaround that, as West argues, "was to change the tide of the war over the course of 2007." The military was learning that in counterinsurgency, persuading your enemy to stop fighting against you -- and, if possible, to start fighting alongside you -- can be even better than killing him.

West calls it like he sees it, and there is probably no American not wearing a uniform who has seen more of this war. A large number of senior (mostly Army) generals come in for scathing reviews in The Strongest Tribe, but West reserves his most critical assessments for politicians and journalists. Democratic Congressman and former Marine John Murtha of Pennsylvania was responsible, with the assistance of the media, for "distorting and deliberately exaggerating" the Marine killings of civilians at Haditha. In West's opinion, President Bush failed at his primary responsibility, which was "to persuade the American people to support the war," and also failed to spread the burden of the war equally on all Americans. Instead, the soldiers and Marines who do the fighting and the dying endure repeated tours of duty because we have more war than our too-small Army and Marine Corps can handle. West tells the story of their sacrifices better than anyone else, with an infantryman's keen eye for combat and a father's love for those who engage in it.

During the battle for Fallujah in 2004 (a fight West chronicled in an earlier book, No True Glory), an Iraqi colonel pointed at a Marine patrol and said admiringly, "Americans are the strongest tribe." But the American exit strategy requires that the government of Iraq earn that appellation from its own people, and in this reviewer's opinion the Iraqi government will become the strongest tribe in Iraq only if it enjoys the continued support of a U.S. advisory effort for a number of years. This was the course the United States adopted in Vietnam, but in the wake of Watergate, public support collapsed, advisers were withdrawn, and South Vietnam fell to the North.

That loss had catastrophic consequences for Vietnam, Southeast Asia and the United States. The consequences of defeat in Iraq, West argues, are similarly severe, entirely foreseeable and preventable at an increasingly bearable cost. "Reducing the U.S. force in Iraq can be done prudently, as long as we don't promise a total withdrawal that signals America has given up," he writes. "That makes no sense given the progress that has been made." Looking through the prism of my own experience, I find it hard to disagree.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist

This is West’s third book about the war in Iraq; his previous one (No True Glory, 2005) is an account of the ferocious battle of Fallujah in 2004. This one pivots on the war’s major strategic development since then, President George Bush’s December 2006 decision to reinforce American troops; describing the so-called surge—its political origin, strategic concept, and tactical implementation—is West’s purpose here. Subscribing to the general opinion that the initial occupation of Iraq was bungled, West briskly dispenses his critique of the years 2003–5 to intently examine the situation as of 2006. His inspection assumes the narrative form of accompanying American units on patrol, conveying a gritty sense of counterinsurgency war and the frustrations American officers have experienced conducting this one. West seems relieved to introduce the commanders of the surge in Iraq, Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno, and he unreservedly extols the courage of soldiers and marines who have carried it out. Arguing they have retrieved the situation, West encourages optimism about the outcome of America’s war in Iraq. --Gilbert Taylor

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Random House (August 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400067014
• ISBN-13: 978-1400067015
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #66,003 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #84 in	Books > History > Military > Iraq War
  #84 in	Books > History > Middle East > Iraq

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deeply insightful overview of the war in Iraq, August 18, 2008

By	maskirovka (Alexandria, Virginia) - See all my reviews

I purchased this book with some apprehension, because I was somewhat disappointed with the author's earlier book, "No True Glory." It rather annoyed me to read a whole slew of gunfights between the Marines and insurgents in Anbar Province but have no maps to give me some sense of how the engagements were unfolding.

Fortunately, Bing West's account of the war up to the present time in Iraq doesn't get down into the weeds like "No True Glory" so the handful of maps he provides are basically adequate for the narrative.

Reading "the Strongest Tribe," I find myself thinking two different things. One is "Finally! we're getting it right in Iraq!" The other is "Why did it take this long to get it right?"

I think West's book is invaluable for anyone who wants (as I so badly did) a good idea of the ebb and flow of the conflict and the various strategies that we employed before finally hitting (or should I say rediscovering) the methods that appear to be working so well over there now: using American soldiers to provide security for the Iraqi population and winning their trust and using that trust to get intelligence on the insurgents and terrorists.

I don't really have any major criticisms of the book. West might give the Marines more attention in his account than their actual share of the fight would justify. But if that is a bias, it's understandable since the Marines were at the forefront of the bloody fights in Fallujah and played the lead role in pacifying Anbar. Moreover, West is a former Marine himself and it is logical he would gravitate toward them and have his best contacts with there as well. In any case, if there's a bit of bias, it's only very slight.

Another thing I really wish would have been a more in-depth discussion of the so-called "Haditha Massacre." West spends about a chapter on the episode, but it's just a quick tour of that event. Those seeking to have better insight into it would do well to watch the Frontline documentary that was on PBS about incident. I do think that West is exactly on point in excoriating the press and politicians like Jack Murtha for rushing to judgment against the accused Marines. I look forward to the first serious book about what happened in that small Iraqi town, because something as complex as what took place there deserves a book.

A final nitpick is an error at the beginning of the book where West lauds General Eisenhower for making the hard call of resisting a British demand for a cross-channel invasion of Europe in 1943. West gets it totally wrong there. It was the United States that wanted this attack, not the British. But that's just a minor failing.

So I would strongly recommend "the Strongest Tribe" both to people in the military and the national security community as well as to Americans who want to have a good solid grasp of what's been going on in Iraq, the mistakes we've made, and the fact that we've turned the corner there.

One thing I can absolutely assure you of is that you won't get that sort of honest perspective reading "reviews" like the one star review someone gave to this book. That "review" has political agenda and close-mindedness written all over it.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Combat Journalism, September 7, 2008

By	Phillip Carter "Phillip Carter" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

No one does combat journalism better than Bing West, who has made something like 15 trips to Iraq since the 2003 invasion. He learned about combat in Vietnam, where he served as an adviser to Vietnamese forces, writing the counterinsurgency classic "The Village" about his experiences there. He has matured into one of the most astute combat observers we have, with a talent for getting inside units to tell the real stories about the men and women serving in harm's way.

The Strongest Tribe does a terrific job of telling three main stories: Iraq's descent into chaos in 2005-06, which I witnessed firsthand as an Army officer; the decision in Washington DC to deploy additional troops to Iraq as part of the "surge;" and the combat operations of 2007-08 where those additional troops fought to pacify Iraq. These three stories have never been told together with such force, insight and color.

Still, there is more to tell. West writes mostly about American forces, less about the Iraqi intrigues which played a major role in the Anbar Awakening and subsequent stabilizing of Iraq. And there is the larger story of how the success in Iraq fits into the larger American war on terrorism, and how the Army and Marines will learn from this war to reshape themselves for the wars of the future.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Educational Masterpiece on the Iraq War, August 13, 2008

By	Rudolf A. Enders (Merritt Island, Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Bing West's latest literary work, The Strongest Tide, follows in the footsteps of his other excellent books on the Iraq War, The March Up, and No True Glory. Besides allowing the reader to sense combat through the eyes of our brave warriors, the author's observations and comments unravel this complicated conflict from top to bottom across the entire military, political, and economic spectrum. The Strongest Tide serves as a educational masterpiece on America's involvement in Iraq. The author has impeccable military/political credentials. He writes from the front lines instead of the comfort and safety of the green zone. This book should be required reading at this nation's war colleges and every governmental component involved in the Iraq war I highly recommend it to anyone else interested in the truth of what's going on there.