Product Description

The 2003 Iraq war remains among the most mysterious armed conflicts of modernity. In The Iraq War, John Keegan offers a sharp and lucid appraisal of the military campaign, explaining just how the coalition forces defeated an Iraqi army twice its size and addressing such questions as whether Saddam Hussein ever possessed weapons of mass destruction and how it is possible to fight a war that is not, by any conventional measure, a war at all.

Drawing on exclusive interviews with Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, Keegan retraces the steps that led to the showdown in Iraq, from the highlights of Hussein’s murderous rule to the diplomatic crossfire that preceded the invasion. His account of the combat in the desert is unparalleled in its grasp of strategy and tactics. The result is an urgently needed and up-to-date book that adds immeasurably to our understanding of those twenty-one days of war and their long, uncertain aftermath.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #417183 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-24
• Released on: 2005-05-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.com Review
John Keegan is recognized as one of the top military writers of his day, having authored comprehensive analyses of both World Wars and other significant historical events. In The Iraq War, he takes on a situation that was still murky and volatile at the time of publication. The result is a book rich with detailed information on the region and its key figures but somewhat hasty in its effort to provide a succinct history lesson. In the opening chapter, Keegan writes "The war was not only successful but peremptorily short, lasting only twenty-one days from 20 March to 9 April," and he later gives little mention to the protracted and amorphous violence in the region since Baghdad fell, characterizing as "aftermath" that which many see as the actual war itself. Between these sections, however, Keegan provides valuable insight into the geopolitical history of the region and provides an extensive biography of a ruler of whom most Westerners became aware only in the early 1990s: Saddam Hussein. Keegan presents Saddam as a brutal thug who is also possessed of a powerful and vicious political savvy, and charts his growth from Ba'ath Party muscleman to ruler of Iraq. Sections on the military efforts of the U.S. and British forces are extensively detailed and offer insight into not only what the plans of the coalition forces were but the strategic philosophies behind them as well. Keegan characterizes the war as "mysterious," seeking to understand why opposition forces seemed to disappear from active combat and why the citizens of Iraq paid the conflict little regard. And while such mysteries have not yet been solved, it is clear given the ongoing instability in Iraq that the final chapters of the Iraq War have yet to be written. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly
Ubiquitous military historian Keegan (Intelligence in War) offers a reportage-based account of a "mysterious war." Keegan addresses the war's anomalies—200,000 soldiers took a country of almost 30 million in three weeks; the war's justification (WMD) never materialized; the Iraqi army "melted away" and the populace tried only to stay out of the way—by surveying the post–World War I origins of Iraq, Saddam's rise to power, the nature of his rule and his external ambitions. The result is a work with broader scope than Murray and Scales's TheIraqWar (2003), and one that makes a case for the war as justified in moral, legal and practical contexts. Saddam emerges, predictably enough, as a particularly nasty regional despot and the architect of his own destruction through his intransigent failure to satisfy the demands of an increasingly frustrated international community. Keegan divides his account of the campaign itself into "American" and "British" chapters, and he praises the skill of the planners and commanders of both armed forces. His accounts of British operations in the Shiite south and the U.S. drive on Baghdad affirm the high morale and fighting power of the troops involved. Keegan in particular demonstrates the U.S. mastery of mechanized maneuver war, but underplays the problems of control and pacification that have been making headlines since the turn of the year.
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From The Washington Post
Amid the painful news from Iraq, it's comforting to cast one's mind back long, long ago . . . a year ago, to be precise, when Anglo-American arms appeared triumphant, the Baathists were defeated, and a bright new day was dawning for a long-oppressed people.

John Keegan takes us back to the not-so-long-ago world where it could reasonably be said -- as he says on page one -- that "The Iraq War of 2003 was exceptional in both beginning well for the Anglo-American force that waged it and ending victoriously." True enough, if one defines the war in narrow terms, as the 21-day period between March 20 and April 9, 2003, when coalition forces raced from Kuwait to Baghdad. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way that U.S. military planners defined their task, giving insufficient thought to what would happen after Saddam Hussein fell. We still don't know the answer to that question, and, while it's possible that everything will work out fine, it seems less probable today than it was when the world watched Saddam's statue fall in Firdaus Square.

Keegan provides a vivid account of how we got here, emphasizing the coalition's successes, though he touches upon some failures in a concluding chapter. Unlike many other authors of instant histories of the Iraq War, Keegan was not embedded with the allied forces. What his account lacks in ground-level details, it more than makes up for with a panoramic perspective befitting the best-known (and perhaps the best, period) military historian in the world.

He does not get to the actual Iraq War until more than halfway through The Iraq War. The first part of the book is devoted to a summary of prewar Iraqi history -- a task that no one has undertaken more elegantly or intelligently. He begins with ancient Mesopotamia and marches briskly through Ottoman rule, the British creation of Iraq from three Ottoman provinces in the 1920s, Iraq's peaceful days as a constitutional monarchy, the 1958 military coup that inaugurated a time of troubles, the rise of Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, his wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait and his comeuppance in the 1991 Gulf War. Keegan is unsparing in his depiction of the "violent and self-centered" dictator who was "a monster of cruelty and aggression." He then spends a chapter chronicling "The Crisis of 2002-03" which preceded Saddam's final downfall, in which the author's sympathies clearly lie with Tony Blair and George W. Bush, not with Jacques Chirac and other opponents of the war.

All this is by way of appetizer. The main course is three chapters chronicling the three weeks of major combat. Keegan provides a fluent narrative, informed by a lengthy interview he conducted afterward with the coalition commander, Gen. Tommy Franks. The blow-by-blow account of how the 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force blitzkrieged their way to Baghdad does not contain much that is new for those who closely followed press coverage of the war. The chapter on "The British War," on the other hand, does contain a good deal of information that will be fresh to most American readers.

Keegan is properly laudatory of the capabilities of the U.S. armed forces, many of which, he points out, cannot be matched by their poorer British cousins. But he also stresses that the British played an integral role, contributing "almost a third of the coalition force deployed," as well as with "their long experience of pacification operations." That knowledge was put to good use by the British commander, Maj. Gen. Robin Brims, in his handling of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. He cleverly avoided a block-by-block fight, choosing instead to cordon off the city while compiling intelligence on the exact location of Baathist fighters. By the time a full-scale assault was launched on April 6, 2003, Basra fell with little damage to civilians. The British immediately "began to adopt a postwar mode": "they took off their helmets and flak jackets, dismounted from their armoured vehicles and began to mingle with the crowds."

That soft approach is relatively easy to follow in an area populated by friendly Shiites; it's much harder to act that way in the Sunni Triangle, where the U.S. military has suffered the bulk of its casualties in the past year. While Keegan is mildly critical of some U.S. missteps, he ends the book with a ringing defense of the war, which, he writes, made "the world . . . undoubtedly a safer place." Let us hope that subsequent events do not invalidate that cheerful conclusion.

Reviewed by Max Boot
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Nice read....for what it is
Will Durant ended his history with 'The Age of Napoleon' because the correct treatment and understanding of historical events requires perspective. Simply put recent events are too clouded with emotions and opinions and rarely are all the verifiable facts known (or knowable)for objective analysis.
Keegan is an excellent military historian in my opinion. His book about WW1 is both gripping and well written. He has also written several books about the philosophy of war which I also recommend. I like his writing style, concise crisp there is alway a nice flow to the words, enjoyable and engrossing.
So, this book? Keegan does a good though brief review of basic 20th century Iraqi history and the rise of Saddam into power. The Iraqi-Iran War, the first gulf war(Kuwaiti-Iraqi war) are all covered and set the table for the present fighting. 9/11, WMDS and Saddam himself are all weighed objectively and the intense attempts by the US/GB to involve the UN make for good reading (French and German leaders' feelings about the US are both disturbing and disquieting)
The fighting (or lack of) by the the inital US/GB military units is both well written and informative (Keegan flat knows his military and his review of both the strengths and weakness of the US/GB forces during the brief period of the war itself is very good). But the book basically ends with the taking of Bagdad. The capture of Saddam and the death of his sons are included in the pictures but is not really covered in the text.
I think it was noted in another review that the war did not really start till 90-100 days after the fall of Bagdad. I'm not sure that I would go that far. I think that the fall of Bagdad was the end of phase one, the overt military phase. The Iraqi military was conscripted, woefully armed and poorly led. Overwhelmed outgunned the army simply 'melted away'. But the Irregulars (technicals) fought to the death. And still are.
So Phase two, the civilian insurgency is both ongoing and not covered by this book ---though hinted at in the conclusion section.
So if you want to read about the general buildup and initial phase of this war, Keegan is good.

A Broad Overview that Lacks Soul
Having read many books by Keegan I expected this one to be first rate. I was disappointed. It is not that this book is poorly written. Keegan writes with a good style. The problem is that -- with the exception of some background material -- I did not really learn anything about the Iraq War that I did not already know from watching the news, reading the papers, and reading a couple of the books by imbedded reporters.

Keegan begins with several chapters of background material on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. We follow Hussein from his time as a hack thug for the Baath party and follow his rise to ultimate power in Iraq. Keegan then provides a background that takes us up to the Iraq War. This section is clearly written and, thankfully, nonpolemic. As Keegan describes the events leading up to the war, you get the impression that he likely approved of the decision to go to war, but he is certainly no apologist for the War. But he does make clear that Hussein was not in compliance with the UN Resolutions.

It is when the book moves into the Iraq War that I started feeling deja vu. It was like getting the same information I had gathered while the war was going on. He covers the movement of U.S. and British forces in rather broad strokes. Episodes I had hoped to learn more about were glossed over with a sentence or two. One example is the apparently ill-fated Apache assault on the Medina Division. Though only one aircraft was lost, almost all were damaged and -- judging by news reports -- failed to accomplish their objective. I had hoped to get more information from Keegan about this assault and gain the insights of perhaps the leading military historian about the implications for modern warfare. But I did not.

All is not bleak. The book is a good overview of the war. There are some interesting points made about America's approach to logistics and Britian's approach to urban warfare. But the only reason I expended the money I did was because I thought Keegan would deliver more than he did.

Historical Perspective and Military Details
John Keegan is the Defense Editor of The Daily Telegraph of London; he writes knowledgably and fluently about the second Gulf War and its antecedents.

The first half of the book is the history of Iraq from the time of Mesopotamia, with an emphasis on the origins of Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath party. There is a secular history of the modern Middle East, parallel to and different from the history of the rise of Islamic terrorism. In Iraq specifically, the secular history is more important to understanding the country's development and the people whom it is hoped will be able to create a stable and peaceful nation out of the rubble and turmoil that presently exists.

Keegan gives an interesting, offshore critique of the neo-con policies in this historical context, such as pre-emption, the belief in the salutary effect of implanting democracy, particularity (i.e., "A city that is set on an hill ...") and Zionism. He also provides a very interesting analysis of European attitudes toward the war. Eastern Europe supported US policy because they saw Stalinism in Saddam, which they knew and hated. Western Europe by and large protested, the root of their disagreement being what Keegan calls "Olympianism": the strong belief that supra-national institutions can provide the solution to conflicts between states, the EU locally and the UN globally. Keegan describes this as the belief that "laws will be obeyed by their mere promulgation".

Keegan gives a stirring description of Tony Blair's speech before The Commons in March 2003 that turned back a vote of no-confidence despite the defection of many in his own party and paved the way for Britain's active participation.

The second half of the book is a somewhat detailed description of the assaults by the US forces up the river valleys and into Baghdad, and the British forces investing and taking Basra. The difference in approach between the first and second Gulf Wars is analyzed.

Of more importance than the military maneuvers is the issue of the behavior of the Iraqi army and populace, which Keegan describes as "mysterious" and which he feels has an important bearing on the difficult security situation after the end of formal hostilities. The mystery is that the armies didn't really fight, they mostly deserted and vanished back into their homes; and the general population often behaved as though they were on a movie set, going about their daily business and ignoring the battles.

The decision to disband the military and the police and to exclude Ba'ath members is criticized and is held partly responsible for the effective morphing of the foreigners and fedayeen from irregular soldiers to looters to urban guerillas, recruiting numerous demobilized and unemployed soldiers. The British are credited with more experience in such situations based on their years of colonial rule, which led them to the more practical approach of establishing law and order rather than worrying about the ideological objective of immediately establishing democratic institutions.

The book is interesting and worth reading. It fails, however, to pursue the "mystery" which it introduces at the beginning; the book ends with very little thought given to its causes or its solution.