The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq

I am a fan of Michael Yon and have written a review of his book Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New 'Greatest Generation' of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope. This book is quite similar in that Bing West is an old Marine in far better shape than I could be and has spent months with the troops beginning early in the war. His book goes beyond Yon's book in that he has a background of strategic thought going back to Vietnam and a book he wrote about that war. It is not better, just more complete and I recommend both. He is harsh in his criticism of the army in the early days of the war, as is Yon. Both believe Fallujah to have been a mistake. West is also very critical of President Bush and his failure to take control of overall strategy when it became apparent that the army was drifting and had lost the initiative. Both Yon and West are very critical of General Sanchez. West doesn't say so but hints at something I have been aware of; the Marines were far better prepared for this war than the army was. They have been training for COIN tactics for a decade. The book goes into almost mind numbing detail on units but will be very useful to families and veterans who will want that detail about their own service or that of loved ones. His last few chapters detail exactly how we won and why. He has harsh criticism for John Murtha and some of the other sunshine patriots in Congress. This will be the definitive book on Iraq for some time and is a classic. I have already passed it on to some Marine friends for their reading. I recommend it.

The Strongest Tribe is likely the best military and political history so far available on the Iraq war, and Bing West is also likely the most qualified person to write this history. Mr. West is a former infantry officer with the Marine Corps in Vietnam, where he learned first hand the lessons of counterinsurgency serving in combined action platoons in the second half of that war, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, and as someone who has been to Iraq at least 14 times since the start of the war. Each trip has been weeks to months long and has taken him to all corners of the country, where he has been given unprecedented access to US and Iraqi forces. His connections range from corporals on the ground, fighting IEDs and snipers in arid desert, urban jungle and dense palm thickets, through battalion and brigade commanders in the provinces, to the generals in the Green Zone, and all the way to senior policy advisers in Washington D.C. As such he brings unmatched experience, breadth, and depth of access to write what I believe will be the watermark history of the Iraq war, and the first major history written after the success of the "surge." It is also written in an extremely straightforward, just the facts manner, which bequeaths it with an unbiased (although not uncritical) and honest tone. This history corrects so many of the faults of the rash of books rushed to the printing presses shortly after the invasion ended and the insurgency began.

Mr. West's account of the war is long and detailed, without being bogged down in unnecessary tangents, and flows seamlessly from the terror, heat, and gore of room to room fighting in Fallujah to the oak paneled offices of the Capital. Like the war itself it is broken into roughly two parts, the first half being the struggles America dealt with in failing to protect the population and fight the insurgency before late 2006, and the second half chronicling the turnaround brought on by Petraesus' strategy shift, coincident with and augmented by a "surge" of five brigades whose largest impact was to signal to Al Qaeda, the Iraqis, and indeed the World, that America wasn't quiting the fight. Many figures come in for deserved and thoroughly explained criticism. Bremer and General Sanchez completely mismanaged the early days of the occupation, turning chaos into disaster and squandering opportunity at every turn. General Casey comes off as a decent general but one pursuing a disjoint and unworkable strategy of trying to get America out as quickly as possible, protecting the force by keeping it isolated from the population vice risking the force to protect the population, and defeating the insurgency with raids that didn't stem the source of the takfiris swarming over the country. Bush is a man of principle and faith trying to do the right thing, and who has generally made the right calls, eventually, but whose intellectual lack of curiosity, slowness in enacting policy changes, and ineffectual leadership style have cost the strategy pursued, and the men and women charged with carrying out on the ground, dearly. The constant themes throughout the book are the bravery and honor of our fighting forces, and the extreme complexity of the situation on the ground.

Mr. West explains the tortured tribal, ethnic and religious makeup of Iraq, and the festering cauldron of sectarian hate and violence that was unleashed when the oppressive lid of Saddam's regime was removed and then stoked by the incompetent early rule of the American occupation. He also drives home the complex lessons and sometimes uncomfortable necessities of fighting insurgencies throughout the text, and summarizes his expertise with a useful appendix outlining his rules for counterinsurgency.

America has turned the corner in Iraq with a new counterinsurgency strategy, and because our men and women on the ground are the "Strongest Tribe." But Mr. West also sees a disturbing disconnect in American society, with one half of the political spectrum placing opposition to the war for political gain above the national interest, and an uninformed and uninvolved society (which Bush tragically and shamefully made no effective attempt to explain the war to and call to action / share the burden of the war amongst, in other words, lead) losing the martial virtues which have allowed us to win our wars in the past. He rejects completely and convincingly the notion that the country can support the soldiers but not the mission, and delivers a poignant cautionary warning about how American society has reacted to and inexorably influenced the war in Iraq.

Highly recommended. Not quick or comfortable reading, but necessary if you want to know what has actually happened in Iraq, why, and what to do carrying forward from here.

Bing West's The Strongest Tribe is a balanced and insightful examination of the US involvement in Iraq. It is a must read for any student of recent political and military history. I would recommend this book to anyone concerned about our global role and the role of the valiant US military.

Bing West's latest, THE STRONGEST TRIBE:WAR, POLITICS, AND THE END GAME IN IRAQ, gives a year by year "Boots on the Ground" view of the war in Iraq. Normally, I am reluctant to read history in real time but I took a chance with West's latest. This was a good decision. Rather than the view from Washington or the Green Zone, West clearly brings the war to the reading public from the ground up. Vietnam is compared to the present conflict with regard to lessons learned. West's background from his Marine Corps infantry experience in Vietnam and his relationships with the war fighters from the ground up makes for very informative reading. This book is highly recommended.

The author, a counterinsurgency expert, documents the "hundred things" that had to be done by the Marines and the Army to turn around a war that was declared lost by Senator Harry Reid. The fiendish complexity is explained province by province battle by battle. And how this complexity had to be dealt with from the bottom-up with bribes, Iraqi partners, barriers and many more tactics like that that made the turn around possible. But the turn around is reversible. On page 375 Bing West suggests a pullout of all combat units in sixteen months (the Democrats position) could lead to catastrophe in Iraq. Defeat ordered from the top down, in spite of all that has been sacrificed, is still possible. We will see how great that possibility is after November 4, 2008.