Book Review by Daniel Moran of The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military Lessons by Anthony H. Cordesman, and The Iraq War: A Military History by Williamson Murray and Major General Robert H. Scales
Abstract
The United States and its allies went to war against Iraq in 2003, as
Williamson Murray and Robert Scales reasonably propose, “to make an
example out of Saddam’s regime, for better or worse” (p. 44). Exactly what
the war exemplified, and whether the results are better or worse than might
have been achieved by other means, are, to say the least, matters of continuing
dispute. In the meantime, we might as well start getting the facts
straight, at least as far as military operations are concerned. The two books
above are both contributions to that necessary work. They are exercises in
bridge-building, reaching forward from wartime journalism and postwar
postmortems to the more mature scholarship of the future. Given the time
pressure under which they were prepared, they are far better than anyone
would have had reason to expect.
Description
Reviewed: The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military Lessons, by Anthony H. Cordesman, and The Iraq War: A Military History, by Williamson Murray and Major General Robert H. Scales
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
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