Review Saddam’s War, An Iraqi Military Perspective of the Iran-Iraq War

Woods, Kevin, Murray, Williamson and Holaday, Thomas, Saddam’s War, An Iraqi Military Perspective of the Iran-Iraq War, Washington D.C.: Institute For National Strategic Studies, 2009

 

Saddam’s War, An Iraqi Military Perspective of the Iran-Iraq War came about as part of a U.S. government program to understand Iraq after the 2003 invasion. The book is based upon 16 interviews with General Raad Hamdani in 2007 who served in the Iraqi army from the 1960s until 2003. Most of the discussion focuses upon the Iran-Iraq War but it also touches on the Gulf War, the U.S. invasion and the post-Saddam era. Hamdani’s main opinion was that Saddam undermined the Iraqi military and became more isolated as time went by to the country’s detriment.

 

Saddam’s War is divided into two sections. The first is a summary of Hamdani’s recollections. The second is transcripts of the interviews done with him while he lived in Jordan so you get an overview and then his actual words.

 

The Iran-Iraq War takes up most of the discussions. Hamdani believed Saddam decided to invade Iran for two main reasons. The first was that the Iranian Revolution was a threat to the Iraqi regime as Ayatollah Khomeini called for the overthrow of the Iraqi regime and supported the Dawa Party which was carrying out sabotage operations. At the same time Saddam believed Iran was weak after the revolution, its military was in disarray and that an invasion would lead to a revolt which would overthrow Khomeini. This repeats conventional wisdom on the war which has been discussed in many other books on the topic.

 

Hamdani believed the main problem with the war was Saddam. First he knew nothing about the military and didn’t want to learn. He thought Iraq would win because it had a warrior spirit. He rated units based upon their casualties believing that the more they suffered proved they were heroic in battle. That persisted all the way to 2003. As a result of that he had no strategy for the invasion of Iraq. He just believed all that was necessary was to push into southern Iran, Iraqi prowess on the battlefield would prevail, and the government in Tehran would collapse. Hamdani was part of a small core of Iraqi officers who tried to educate themselves and pushed history and training. They were undermined by Saddam’s second major flaw which was promoting officers based upon their loyalty to him. The general called them politicians not soldiers. Many of the divisional commanders during the Iranian invasion therefore had no real idea what they were doing. The huge losses Iraq suffered initially in the war eventually led Saddam to stop interfering and turn over more control to the military but it still suffered due to the lack of quality officers.

 

The book also deals with the Gulf War but more in passing. Hamdani said that Saddam believed he won the Iran-Iraq War and felt that God was on his side. He actually thought about attacking Israel. Instead he came to focus upon Kuwait which led to the disastrous Gulf War. Many writers on that conflict have focused upon things like Iraq’s debt after the Iran-Iraq War, the drop in oil prices, etc. Hamdani adds new information to Saddam’s overall mindset that made him feel ready for another war immediately after the last one.

 

That leads to the general’s overall opinion of Saddam. At first, he wanted to show that he was the man of the people and would tour the country, meet with the military, etc. The Iran-Iraq War made him feel invincible. After the Gulf War there was the 1991 uprising when Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north rose up. Hamdani thought Saddam lost trust in the Iraqi people afterward and became paranoid about another revolt. People were scared to give him advice because they could never tell what mood he was in. The general believed that led to few rational decisions. In 1995 his son in law Hussein Kamal fled to Jordan. This made Saddam’s world view even worse because he felt betrayed by his own clan. He became even more isolated and rarely went out anymore. He became focused upon building huge palaces and writing books and poetry wanting to solidify his place in Iraqi history. Hamdani felt Saddam was delusional by 2003. This is supported by CIA interviews with the Iraqi leader after he was captured by the Americans. They found that Saddam was barely involved with running the government by the time of the U.S. invasion as he was much more interested in his literary career. This is a far cry from the conventional American opinion that the Iraqi dictator was a totalitarian who was committed to confronting the United States. His interests lay elsewhere.

 

Hamdani’s observations about post-2003 Iraq should be taken with a much more critical view. He gave a long history of the relationship between Iran and Iraq believing that the two were always in conflict because of religion. He said that Iranian Shiites always wanted to expand into Iraq because that’s where holy sites were like in Najaf, Karbala, Baghdad and Samarra. To him, this was why Khomeini threatened Saddam and Tehran interfered in Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Many Americans and Westerners shared this view believing that Sunnis which ruled Iraq for most of its history were always in a sectarian conflict with Shiites. Of course the Shah of Iran was in power for 37 years and never wanted to take over Iraq which pokes a hole in Hamdani’s view. The general like many in the U.S. took the conflict between Iran-Iraq after the Iranian Revolution and projected that back into history.

 

Saddam’s War is a very interesting read. Iraqi voices are rare in Western books and here you have a senior general covering the country’s military and government from the 1960s to the 2000s. He gives his insider view of Saddam’s rule. His Arab nationalist and secular Sunni background also colored his opinion of Iraq after 2003. It’s a very short read as well so you get a lot of information in not much time.

 

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