{"product_id":"the-iraq-war-isbn-9781400079209","title":"The Iraq War","description":"The 2003 Iraq war remains among the most mysterious armed conflicts of modernity. In \u003cb\u003eThe Iraq War\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003eJohn 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing 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.“A vivid account of how we got here [by] one of the best known (and perhaps best, period) military historians in the world.” –Max Boot, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Nobody does it better. The narration is clear and exciting. Everything moves; the author has you in his grip.” –David Fromkin, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Highly readable. . . . Contains both plenty of tactical detail . . . and ample historical insight.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Authoritative. . . . A useful addition to our knowledge.” –Walter Laqueur, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A must-read. . . . Illuminating. . . . He provides exceptional detail . . . that will enthrall military buffs.” –\u003ci\u003eFort Worth Star-Telegram\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Highly readable. . . . One of the best brief guides to the history of this whole confusing field.” –\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A superb strategic overview. . . . Concise and well-written. . . . Keegan provides a basis for understanding the embers of the insurgent conflagration.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A remarkable achievement.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Spectator\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Comprehensive. . . . It is in his examination of the military campaign itself that the insight really surfaces. He cuts directly to the heart of the mystery and questions surrounding this operation. . . . His analysis . . . is sound and enlightening–from the political to the tactical level.” –\u003ci\u003eNew York Post\u003c\/i\u003eJohn Keegan’s books include \u003cb\u003eIntelligence in War\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe First World War\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Battle for History\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Face of Battle\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eWar and Our World\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Mask of Command\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eFields of Battle\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003cb\u003eA History of Warfare\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e. \u003c\/i\u003eHe is the defense editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Daily Telegraph \u003c\/i\u003e(London). He lives in Wiltshire, England.chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Mysterious War\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome wars begin badly. Some end badly. The Iraq War of 2003 was  exceptional in both beginning well for the Anglo-American force that  waged it and ending victoriously. The credit properly belonged in both  cases to the American part of the coalition. It was the Americans who  provided the majority of strength on the ground and overwhelmingly the  majority in the air and at sea. The British contribution was important  and warmly welcomed by the Americans but it was that of an esteemed  junior partner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe war was not only successful but peremptorily short, lasting only  twenty-one days, from 20 March to 9 April. Campaigns so brief are rare,  a lightning campaign so complete in its results almost unprecedented.  For comparisons one has to reach back to the ‘cabinet wars’ of the  nineteenth century, Prussia’s victory over Austria in six weeks in 1866  or over the French field army in less than a month in 1870. Walkovers,  as by the Germans in the Balkans in 1941, do not count. The Iraqis had  fielded a sizeable army and had fought, after a fashion. Their  resistance had simply been without discernible effect. The Americans  came, saw, conquered. How?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile reporting the war in The Daily Telegraph I frequently found  myself writing that its events were ‘mysterious’. It was a strange word  for a military analyst to use in what should have been objective  comment. Even in retrospect, however, I see no reason to look for  another. The war was mysterious in almost every aspect. Mystery  shrouded the casus belli, the justification for going to war. The war  was launched because Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, refused to  co-operate with United Nations inspectors in their search for his  forbidden weapons of mass destruction. Yet even after his defeat laid  the whole territory of Iraq open to search, such weapons eluded  discovery. Mystery surrounded the progress of operations. Iraq fielded  an army of nearly 400,000 soldiers, equipped with thousands of tanks,  armoured vehicles and artillery pieces. Against the advance of an  invading force only half its size, the Iraqi army faded away. It did  not fight at the frontier, it did not fight at the obvious geographical  obstacles, it scarcely fought in the cities, it did not mount a  last-ditch defence of the capital, where much of the world media  predicted that Saddam would stage his Stalingrad.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  The régime, so bombastic in speech before and during the conflict,  mysteriously failed to take elementary defensive precautions. In a  country of great rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris pre-eminently but  also their tributaries, it failed to destroy the bridges, or even in  many cases to prepare them for demolition. While the regular army and  the vaunted Republican Guard apparently demobilized themselves, the  soldiers disappearing to their homes at the appearance of the invaders,  their place was taken by mysterious ‘fighters’ of the skimpiest  military training, devotees of the ruling Ba’athist party or foreign  Islamicists with an urge to die. Perhaps most mysteriously of all, much  of the population of Iraq, the ordinary town dwellers and country  people, exhibited a complete indifference to the war going on around  them, carrying on their everyday lives apparently oblivious of its  dangers. To the bewilderment and fury of the coalition soldiers,  traffic often travelled as normal, civilian cars and trucks proceeding  headlong into the middle of firefights and stopping only if shot at, by  young soldiers terrified that the driver might be a suicide bomber.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMystery ultimately enfolded the fall of the régime. Following the  capture and occupation of Baghdad on 9–10 April, no trace of the  government could be found. Not only was there no large number of  prisoners of war, the usual index of victory, there were equally no  captured generals or staff officers nor, most puzzlingly of all,  politicians treating for peace. The Ba’ath leaders and their party  officials had disappeared, just as the army and the Republican Guard  had disappeared. The disappearance of the soldiers was easily  explained. They had taken off their uniforms and become civilians  again. The disappearance of the leaders was baffling. It was  understandable that, fearing retribution for the crimes of the régime,  summarily at the hands of the population, judicially by process of the  conquerors, the principal perpetrators and their associates should seek  to make their escape; but where had they gone? The American high  command distributed packs of cards, each bearing the photographic image  of a wanted man. The distribution yielded results. The owlish Tariq  Aziz, Deputy Prime Minister, was arrested. So were a number of other  important if less prominent Saddam apparatchiks. On 22 July 2003 Saddam  Hussein’s sons Qusay and Uday, both steeped in the brutality against  political opponents which was their father’s trademark, were betrayed,  by the inducement of a $15 million reward, and killed during a gun  battle in the northern city of Mosul. Kurdistan might have been thought  an ill-chosen hiding place for the dictator’s sons. One of the most  extreme Islamicist terror organizations, Ansar al-Islam, had however  set up what amounted to a ‘liberated zone’ in Kurdistan, so perhaps  encouraging the two thugs – whom Saddam had hardened to their  inheritance by sending them to witness torture and executions – to seek  refuge there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe final mystery of the whereabouts of the dictator himself persisted.  In the immediate aftermath of the defeat rumours circulated that he had  made his escape to a friendly Muslim country. The rumours were  cumulatively discounted. Such stable régimes, Libya or Syria, as might  have been willing to welcome him were also prudently cautious of the  danger of offending the United States. Countries where anti-Americanism  flourished, such as Yemen or Somalia, were judged too unstable for  Saddam to risk his survival in their turbulent politics. The occupation  authority in Iraq eventually concluded that he remained within the  country, probably hidden by family or tribal supporters in his home  area around Tikrit. Frequent searches were mounted without result. A  more methodical procedure proved productive. An intelligence team, by  working through his family tree, identified the whereabouts in the  Tikrit neighbourhood of residents who might be sheltering him. On 13  December 2003 a party of American troops from the 4th Infantry  Division, revisiting a farm already searched but now with better  information, uncovered the entrance to an underground hiding place.  When the trapdoor was lifted, a bedraggled and heavily bearded Saddam  was found cowering inside. He held up his hands and announced, ‘I am  the President of Iraq and I am ready to negotiate.’ He was swiftly  transferred to American military custody.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSaddam’s arrest put an end to the last contingent mystery of the war. A  greater mystery remained, attaching not to the war’s events but to its  fundamental character. How had it been possible to fight a war which  was not, by any conventional measure, really a war at all? All the  components of a war had been in place, two large armies, huge  quantities of military equipment and, that most essential element of  modern hostilities, an enormous press corps, equipped and alert to  report, film or broadcast its slightest incident. Beyond the  battleground, moreover, the world had been transfixed by a war mood.  Governments had been thrown at loggerheads over the war’s rights and  wrongs, the workings of the great international organizations had been  monopolized by debate over the war, populations had marched against the  war, the world’s religious leaders had uttered the direst warnings  about the war’s outcome, the international media had written and spoken  about little else but war for weeks before, during and afterwards. Yet,  when war engulfed their country, the people who ought to have been most  affected by it, the population of Iraq itself, seemed scarcely to give  it their attention. American cheerleaders had predicted that the  invading army would be overwhelmed by the gratitude of the liberated  once it appeared on Iraqi territory. Opponents of the war, particularly  in the media, puzzled at first by the lack of opposition the invaders  encountered, consoled themselves with a prediction of their own: that  when the American army reached Baghdad, it would be resisted block by  block, street by street. There would be a Stalingrad-on-Tigris and the  West would regret that it had ever flouted high-minded opinion by  mounting such an expedition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the event, the invaders found the population largely absent from the  scene of action. There were no crowds, either welcoming or hostile.  There were scarcely any people to be seen at all. In the countryside  the mud hut dwellings of the cultivators displayed at best a scrap of  white flag, flapping from a stick, as a sign the occupants recognized  that a war was in progress. Often they gave no sign at all. Herders and  ploughmen wended their heedless way about the landscape. Mothers shooed  their children to shelter at the sight of military vehicles. Camel  drivers stood to gaze. Otherwise the dusty countryside lay empty under  a pall of apparent indifference at the world crisis that had come to  visit Iraq.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCivilian unwillingness to engage with the war was matched, and more  than matched, by that of the rank and file of the Iraqi army. Saddam  commanded some 400,000 men in uniform, 60,000 of them in his loyalist  Republican Guard. Few were well trained and most of their military  equipment, once of the Soviet first-line, was now antiquated. The  coalition high command nevertheless expected them to fight. Its  soldiers, particularly the younger men who had never been in battles,  were spoiling to meet the challenge. They were to be largely  disappointed. Here and there they found spots of resistance, Iraqi  infantrymen who manned their positions, tank crews who exchanged fire.  In most cases as the invaders advanced to places where defences had  been prepared, however, they found them abandoned, often clearly in the  last minutes before action threatened. Pathetic scraps of evidence of  occupation lay about, pots of rice, packets of tea, newspapers,  discarded clothing and even abandoned boots and weapons. The owners had  fled, not to better positions or to regroup, but to go home. Western  military intelligence officers identified two waves of desertion: the  first following coalition air attack preceding the advance, a second as  the sound of approaching coalition armour was heard. By the time the  coalition forces actually appeared, the Iraqi soldiers were gone, to  disappear into the civilian population and not to be seen again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe phenomenon was disconcerting, particularly to military theorists  committed to the view that war is animated by politics. Such theorists  expect the defenders of a country under attack to resist, because the  attack threatens the essentials of their society. They accept the  reality of collapse, such as that which overwhelmed France in 1940, but  associate collapse with objective military events, such as encirclement  or deep penetration of a flank. Failure to fight altogether defies  their theories, particularly their central theory that military  structures are an amalgam of army, government and people. The  circumstances of Iraq in 2003 demonstrate that classical military  theory applies only to the countries in which it was made, those of the  advanced Western world. Elsewhere, and particularly in the artificial,  ex-colonial territories of the developing world, usually governed as  tyrannies, it does not. Iraq is a particularly artificial construction;  three former provinces of the Ottoman Empire, each inhabited by  disparate populations, ethnically and religiously separate from one  another. The central and southern regions are respectively Sunni and  Shi’a Muslim Arab, the north, though Muslim, not Arab at all but  Kurdish. The Ottoman Turks had not treated the three regions as a unit  but ruled them separately. It was the British, exercising a League of  Nations mandate, who had attempted to unify the country and bequeathed  their shaky creation to the successor governments. It had worked  erratically at best and only by according dominance to the Sunni of the  centre. Monarchy had been supplanted by dictatorship, eventually, in  its most ruthless form, that of Saddam Hussein.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSaddam had tested his dictatorship to its limits. Had he been content  merely to modernize, spending his country’s vast oil revenues for the  benefit of all, he might have made Iraq a successful country. Modernize  he did, but out of megalomaniac ambition he also attempted to establish  Iraq as the dominant Middle Eastern state, a regional military  superpower. He waged internal war against the Kurds. He dragooned his  population into a costly invasion of neighbouring Iran over a trivial  border dispute. He finally provoked a war with the world by an  aggression against Kuwait designed to pay his debts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDefeated and humiliated, he persisted in playing the big man, refusing  to demonstrate to the United Nations that he had desisted from  developing the weapons of mass destruction with which he had buttressed  his ambition. For twelve years, between 1991 and 2003, he fenced with  the United Nations and its supporters, the United States foremost, over  inspection and disclosure. Eventually, having exhausted American  patience, he was confronted by the challenge of war again. He declined  to offer the facilities and guarantees that would have staved off the  consequences of his intransigence. He thus brought war on himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was not a war into which the peoples of Iraq would follow him. In  one sense Western military theorists were right. Ordinary Iraqis ought  to have been willing to fight to defend their homeland, as theory  dictated, had Iraq been an ordinary country. Iraq, however, was not an  ordinary country. It was not merely an artificial creation; it was also  a monstrosity. Artificial states, of which there are many in the world,  can survive for long periods through the medium of carefully calculated  concessions by the dominant centre to the minorities. Saddam did not  concede. He brutalized. Not only were individual opponents of his  régime tortured and murdered; whole sections of the population were  murdered also, while those not currently chosen for Saddam’s cruelties  were held in check by fear of his disfavour.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUltimately there is no mystery about the collapse of Saddam’s régime  and the failure of his people to fight his last war. Saddam had waged  war against Iraq itself, repeatedly, relentlessly, revengefully. He had  exhausted the will of the population to do anything for him and it was  entirely appropriate that he should have been driven as a last resort  to seek refuge underground in the soil of his tortured country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIraq Before Saddam\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Iraq’ in Arabic means the shore of the great river and the fertile  land surrounding it. The word has been used since at least the eighth  century ad to describe the alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates  valley, known in Europe since Antiquity by the Greek term  ‘Mesopotamia’, the land between the rivers.With a New Preface","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300494463205,"sku":"NP9781400079209","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400079209.jpg?v=1767739978","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-iraq-war-isbn-9781400079209","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}