![]({"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/512SbvHiuGL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[231,346],"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/512SbvHiuGL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[333,499]})
This book is a good summary of the war on terror from the founding of al Qaeda in 1988 to just before the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, when this book was published. This book gets five stars for all the useful information it contains. It refreshes your memory on all the events and their chronology. Who remembers, for example, that after 9/11 the shoe bomber came first in 2001, the plot to down planes with on board liquid explosives happened in 2006, and in 2009 we had the underwear bomber.
The main problem with this book is that Bergen really has it in for Bush, but this is what you would expect from a CNN analyst. While constantly criticizing Bush, he glosses over important Bush accomplishments such as the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the killing of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Zarqawi in 2006. Needless to say, when later describing Obama's accomplishments in the war on terror, he has no criticisms.
But the Bush record has become news again with Trump's statement that Bush must share some of the blame for 9/11, and this why I read this book, to review all the details. The problem with the Bush administration was that it had a Cold War mindset and saw the main threats to America still coming from states such as Iraq. This of course was true of the whole country with only a few exceptions. What now seems evident in hindsight was not that evident in foresight.
As expected, Bergen criticizes Bush for the Iraqi War. What people fail to realize is that Iraq was the most dangerous state in the Middle East and the US did not know what would happen next after 9/11. Saddam Hussein came to power in a bloody power grab in 1979, invaded Iran in 1980, started a nuclear program which the Israelis destroyed in 1981, used chemical weapons of mass destruction on Iraqi Kurds and others in the 1980s, invaded Kuwait in 1990, used terrorists to try to assassinate the elder Bush in 2003, implied he still had nuclear weapons, and defied UN resolutions until the US invasion of 2003. What the critics basically mean is that Bush was supposed to ignore all this because in hindsight we now know Iraq's nuclear program never recovered. Bush took the dangerous situation around 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq and should be commended for his actions.
But Bush mishandled the Iraqi War and this is really what the criticism is all about. People love a winner and not a loser. First, Bush invaded Iraq with 150,000 troops when his father had used 500,000 to drive Hussein out of Kuwait, a much easier task. Nevertheless, the invasion was successful while the occupation became a disaster. It would have gone much better if there had been 500,000 troops in Iraq. But Bush followed Rumsfeld's theory that US technology was so great that it could control Iraq with a relatively small force. This was Bush's biggest mistake. Then there were disastrous decisions such as firing all the Iraqi government employees and all the military, which left hundreds of thousands Iraqis unemployed, many with weapons and military training.
But whether we are talking about Clinton, Bush, or Obama, they all take the same approach that Iraq must be treated as a nation like the United States. Iraq is basically a forced coalition of three separate groups who cannot live with each other: Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. The Turkish Ottoman Empire controlled what is now Iraq for centuries and had a much better approach. They divided what is now Iraq into three provinces representing the three groups. I have believed this is the best solution from the beginning when we first learned about the make up of Iraq.
- Paperback: 496 pages
- Publisher: Free Press; Reprint edition (June 28, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743278941
- ISBN-13: 978-0743278942
- Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Customer Reviews: 62 customer reviews
-
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#227,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #265 in Iraq War History (Books)
- #110 in Iraq History (Books)
- #204 in Afghan War Military History
Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?
