Death, Dominance, and State-Building, The US in Iraq and the Future of American Military Intervention is a very detailed argument by MIT Professor Roger Petersen that America’s counterinsurgency and nation building strategies failed in Iraq. His point is that the U.S. was able to temporarily bring down violence during the Surge but failed to maintain the peace nor build a functioning Iraqi state.
Sara Daniel was a French reporter who went to Iraq at the start of the war. Each chapter in her book Voyage To A Stricken Land, Four Years on the Ground reporting from Iraq: A Woman’s Inside Story covers a specific time period and topic from the invasion to the insurgency to the Iraqi and American troops. She came away from her experience extremely cynical believing that Iraq was falling into a civil war due to the U.S. mishandling the occupation.
Aaron Glantz was a reporter for the San Francisco Bay Area’s Pacifica Radio. He went to Iraq from 2003-05 to report on the conditions of everyday Iraqis. He came away with two main impressions. One was that the Left and Right in America didn’t care about Iraqis at all just their own political agendas. The second was that the U.S. lost Iraq just a year into the occupation because of their misrule.
Anderson, Terry, Bush’s Wars, Oxford University Press, 2011
Bush’s Wars is an attempt to show what went wrong with President Bush’s War on Terror. Author Terry Anderson argues that the U.S. should’ve never invaded Iraq and that detracted from fighting Al Qaeda and the war in Afghanistan. He tries to put together issues that have been discussed before into one narrative but there are major problems with his history that undermines the work.
Baker, James, III and Hamilton, Lee, The Iraq Study Group Report, The Way Forward – A New Approach, Vintage Books, 2006
By 2006 the American political establishment finally realized that things were not going right in Iraq. Violence was going up and neither the Iraqis nor the U.S. seemed like they had any answers. That led to several strategy reviews including the independent Iraq Study Group whose main findings are contained within this book. Ironically rather than coming up with a course adjustment the group actually advocated for maintaining the status quo showing that many of the elites didn’t know what the actual policy was in Iraq.
Wilber, Del, In The Shadow Of The Swords, The Baghdad Police Academy, Casemate, 2020
In The Shadow Of The Swords by D.W. Wilber might be one of the only 1st hand accounts about the Americans’ attempt to rebuild the Iraqi police. Wilber was a former St. Louis police officer who volunteered to be a trainer. It’s a very interesting read even though less than half of it is about the actual police academy. It points out some of the major flaws with the strategy.
Schlosser, Nicholas, U.S. Marines in Battle, Al-Qaim, September 2005-March 2006, Marine Corps University, 2014
U.S. Marines in Battle, Al-Qaim, September 2005-March 2006 is one of the better volumes in the Marine history of the Iraq War series. That’s because it includes both background and the aftermath to the Marine deployment to western Iraq. It’s main argument is that how the Marines stayed in cities while working with the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and local tribes starting in 2005 created a new dynamic that would dramatically change the security situation in Anbar province in the following years.
Huesing, Scott, Echo In Ramadi, The Firsthand Story Of U.S. Marines In Iraq’s Deadliest City, Regnery History, 2018
Echo In Ramadi by Scott Huesing who was the commander of Echo Company of the 4th Marine Regiment in Anbar from 2006-07 provides what was probably a common view of Iraq by many American troops. He thought their main job was hunting down insurgents and killing them. Anything else was largely a distraction. He didn’t believe in working with Iraqis and had general contempt for the Iraqi government. Most of his book is committed to explaining what it was like to lead Marines.
Benson, Colonel Kevin, Expectation of Valor, Planning For The Iraqi War, Casemate, 2024
Colonel Kevin Benson who was the chief planner for the 3rd Army wrote Expectation of Valor, Planning For The Iraqi War in response to the conventional wisdom that the U.S. military did not prepare for postwar Iraq in 2003. The author writes that the army did spend time coming up with ideas on how to secure and stabilize the country after the fall of Saddam. However he blames Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, General Tommy Franks and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) for undermining the work that was done.
Aburish, Said, Saddam Hussein The Politics Of Revenge, Bloomsbury, 2000
Said Aburish’s Saddam Hussein The Politics Of Revenge is full of ups and downs. He makes some astute observations about Saddam’s assumption of power and the U.S. and U.K. policy of regime change in the 1990s. On the other hand, he was a Baathist sympathizer up to the 1980s having worked for the Iraqi government. Second, Aburish’s writing is full of Saddam gossip about his excesses. Most importantly almost all major issues are explained via Western conspiracies which robs Iraqis of any agency and responsibility throughout history. The problems with his writing end up undermining any good points the author might have made.
Rayburn, Colonel Joel, Sobchak, Colonel Frank, Editors, The U.S. Army In The Iraq War Volume 2, Surge And Withdrawal 2007-2011, Strategic Studies institute and U.S. Army War College Press, 2019
The second volume of the U.S. Army’s official history of the Iraq War covers the Surge of 2007 to the Americans returning to Iraq after the fall of Mosul in 2014. Three things stand out. First was how dysfunctional the Bush administration was when it rolled out its new strategy in 2007. The second is the details provided on how Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hallowed out the Iraqi Security Forces so he could take control of them which helped lead to the resurgence of the insurgency. Last, it touches on how paranoid Maliki was. The sheer length of the book at over 600 pages and its density makes it one for Iraq researchers more than the general public.
Agresto, John, Mugged By Reality, The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions, New York: Encounter Books, 2007
John Agresto worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority from 2003-2004 as the advisor to the Ministry of Higher Education. The book covers two themes. The main one is the author giving a neoconservative argument for why he supported the Iraq War. The second is what were the root causes for the failure of the U.S. occupation sprinkled with anecdotes about the people he met in Iraq. The book is about how the author struggled to hold onto his ideas as they were confronted by the occupation. Some of his criticisms are poignant but too many times he rambles on and contradicts himself.
Mowle, Thomas, Hope Is Not A Plan, The War In Iraq From Inside The Green Zone, Westport London: Praeger Security International, 2007
Hope Is Not A Plan, The War In Iraq From Inside The Green Zone is a very informative book about the lack of U.S. strategic planning and coordination from 2004-05. It’s an anthology with each chapter written by military officers who served in Iraq during that period. As the editor Thomas Mowle points out everyone should know that the Bush administration did not plan for the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion that led to looting and the collapse of the Iraqi state. What this selection tries to point out is that the Americans continued to fail at planning afterward.
Rogers, Paul, Iraq and the war on terror, Twelve months of insurgency 2004/2005, London New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006
During the Iraq War the Oxford Research Group would issue monthly reports on developments in that conflict and the state of terrorism in general. Iraq and the war on terror, Twelve months of insurgency 2004/2005 by Paul Rogers collects together several of those reports from 2004-2005. Those were probably very informative when they came out but today they are a bit dated.
Eisenstadt, Michael and Mathewson, Eric, Editors, U.S. Policy In Post-Saddam Iraq, Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2003
Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq the Washington Institute for Near East Policy realized the United States could learn a lot from the British time in the country starting in World War I. The Institute collected together a group of Iraq experts and had them write about the United Kingdom’s experience and then make suggestions for the Bush administration. The authors provided a good history and there were plenty of lessons for the U.S. to learn. As we all know the White House thought it had all the answers and carried out a costly and highly flawed occupation as a result.
871 Zanj slave rebellion returned to Basra city Offered amnesty to residents and then massacred them Survivors hid in city for weeks a...
