The Vietnam War was the watershed event of my youth. The Liberal-leaning media elites of that era dedicated themselves to propagandizing the American people that: "We can't win in Vietnam because a guerilla insurgency can't be defeated by conventional armies."
The media libs started the propaganda up again during the Iraq War of 2001-2008 only to be proven abysmally wrong when the Iraqi guerilla movement suddenly folded under the "surge" of General Petraeus after wreaking a firestorm of terror for several years.
Because we Americans have our own revolutionary heritage of guerilla war in evicting the British from our territory, we like to imagine that guerilla movements are popular uprisings against oppression. We glorify the guerilla movements that succeed and forget the ones that fail. This often leads the left-leaning among our citizens to conclude that we are wrong by definition when WE are the power that fights guerillas.
We also tend to give guerilla warfare more credit than it is due.
We remember that American guerillas succeeded in freeing the American South from British occupation in the Revolution, but forget that Confederate guerillas entirely failed to break the Union's hold on the South in the Civil War. We remember that Castro's communist guerilla insurgency prevailed in Cuba, but forget that communist guerillas were defeated in every other country in our hemisphere, including our own Puerto Rico. We remember that Communist guerillas broke the will to fight of the French and later the Americans in Vietnam, but forget that the British colonial administrations quashed similar guerillas in most other de-colonializing Asian countries that went on to become anti-Communist and pro-Western. We remember the guerilla-like tactics of Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" character, but forget that the true end of Scotland's William Wallace was to be drawn and quartered by the victorious English and his dismembered body parts placed on display in a travelling circus.
Thus, it is important to de-romanticize guerilla movements and make clear that they come in all kinds. Some are noble, some are evil. Some win, some lose. Author Max Boot EDUCATES US TO THIS UNDERSTANDING by providing a synopsis of 64 episodes in the history of guerilla warfare --- from the dawn of civilization to the present.
A book this broad is by definition going to be hit-and-miss. Some of the early chapters are recaps of familiar history: Romans vs. Barbarians and U.S. Cavalry vs. Indians.
The chapters on the Vietnam War are excellent, but the book by its broad-based nature doesn't have room to expound upon them in great depth. Nevertheless it does cover the BASICS of our war against the Communist guerillas in South Vietnam, and explains why the effort went awry at an early date. I have to give kudos to Boot, who I believe leans to the right politically, for giving an absolutely objective account of our war in Vietnam, including an analysis of mistakes made by our generals. The only problem here is that the scope of the book naturally limits the amount of discussion that can be given to the Vietnam War.
The book was in general not as American-centric as I would have preferred. Nothing is said about General Winfield Scott's remarkable pacification of Mexican guerillas during the Mexican War. Likewise, not enough of substance is said about the suppression of Confederate guerillas during our Civil War. There is too much digression into John Brown's miniscule raid and the after-the-war Ku Klux Klan. Perhaps not enough is said about the Philippine-American war of 1899-1908 in which the American expeditionary army defeated a well-organized native Filipino insurgency in the northern islands and then defeated and pacified a Muslim insurgency in the southern islands. Nothing is said about the pacification of the incipient guerilla war in Puerto Rico in the 1940s and 1950s.
Likewise, some recent topics of nearby interest, such as the 40-year guerilla war in Colombia, are glossed over. This was a classic multi-faceted guerilla war in the planets' most guerilla-friendly terrain that was finally defeated by cooperation between Colombia and the USA. Or what about neighboring Mexico's contemporary war against the drug mafias? Is that a guerilla conflict against well-armed insurgents or a judicial process?
However, the book does give a good account of Fidel Castro's overthrow of the Batista Government in Cuba by guerilla tactics. It points out that Castro was a small-time operator whose tiny force succeeded because of Castro's sheer force of character and because the Batista government was a vacuous government that existed in name only. It likewise provides an enthralling description of legendary guerilla leader "Che" Guevera --- an even more forceful character than Fidel Castro, who was killed fighting the Bolivian government. This chapter proves that even the most legendary guerillas face long odds. Few die of natural causes.
The chapter I most liked was the inspiring story of how General Petraeus' leadership of "The Surge" turned a seemingly lost war against the Iraqi guerillas into a successful outcome:
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More conventionally minded soldiers harrumphed that Petraeus was turning soldiers into social workers, but that criticism was far off the mark. The number of insurgents killed or locked up soared in 2007 (U.S. forces wound up detaining 27,000 Iraqis) but without generating the popular backlash that had accompanied offensive action earlier in the war. The difference was that now troops living in Iraqi neighborhoods were able to gain tips from the populace that allowed them to pinpoint insurgents and avoid the sort of counterproductive roundups of young males that had occurred in years past.
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Max Boot does a fine job of covering a wide variety of guerilla war topics. He accomplishes his purpose of demystifying and de-emotionalizing guerilla warfare. Guerilla wars are shown to be common, not necessarily noble, and usually losing --- but winning enough times to encourage disaffected populations to keep waging them.
The critique is that in a book this broad-based it is to be expected that some topics will not be of interest to every reader. I was not much interested in the ancient history of guerilla warfare, nor of the contemporary Palestinian Uprising, of which I have heard way more than I want to already. However, that's just my personal preference. Other readers may enjoy these topics. I also think that people who aren't military history buffs and haven't encountered these topics before will find them more interesting than those who are already familiar with them.
A casual reader of history, and especially one who has not much studied guerilla warfare, is likely to thoroughly enjoy every aspect of this book. A military history buff will probably want to cherry pick it. Cherry-picking IS a great way to digest the book because each chapter can be understood independently. Among the wide variety of topics covered, I think most readers will find that enough are interesting to make the book well worthwhile their read.
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Top reviews from other countries
Randall
I would not recommend this book to other than seasoned readers of military ...
Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on January 1, 2015
Ian Houston
A good summary for both the student of military history and the general reader
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 29, 2014
Edward B. Crutchley
A magistral book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 6, 2014
