Review of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq

YOU see the daily reports on the cable news channels. You read the headlines in newspapers and online. You feel the anger exerted by impassioned bloggers. The evidence is clear: Iraq is in a state of failure and its society is on the brink of civil war. In Fiasco, Thomas Ricks explains how this quagmire came to be.

Regardless of your opinions regarding the war, Ricks’ research is thorough. Quotes from high-level military officials, including generals and colonels, are included. The results are profound: the emergence of the current insurgency could have been prevented had the military followed counterinsurgency tactics that have been in place for decades.

However, after the fall of Saddam’s Hussein’s Baathist government the Bush administration did not anticipate a popular insurgency and so many of these tactics were unknown to the leadership. Ricks cites two critical decisions made by L. Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority administrator in Iraq. First, Bremer conducted an aggressive de-Baathification policy that alienated the middle- and lower-level Baath Party members and didn’t allow any amnesty policy. Having no option to participate in the new Iraq, these middle managers of the Baathist regime had no other choice but to join the insurgency. Second, Bremer dissolved the Iraqi army. Already short of the boots-on-the-ground that were necessary to occupy Iraq, the U.S. military could have used the Iraqi army to secure the country and restrain the insurgency. Instead, Bremer embittered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers by placing them out of work.

These early mistakes were critical because it led to more mistakes that fueled the insurgency. For example, since the military did not have enough boots on the ground, U.S. soldiers adopted a security strategy based on speed, which involved convoys rushing to secure an area and then abandoning it. The speed with which the convoys rushed to the area frightened the indigenous population, causing damage to life and property, and effectively giving Iraqis reasons to want the U.S. out of their country. Soldiers also rounded up anyone who was even remotely considered to be part of the insurgency and, because they didn’t have the soldiers to detain and interrogate prisoners, simply shipped them out to Abu Ghraib, the notorious detention center that was already filled to capacity. Studies indicate that at least 80% of Iraqis who were detained by these raids were innocent of any insurgent activity.

Overall, Fiasco is a fascinating and critical account of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Whatever the future of Iraq may be, this will become the definitive volume of the events that unfolded and gave rise to the insurgency in the post-Saddam Iraq.