Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Thomas E. Ricks. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. 416 pp. Maps. Illus. Notes. Index. $27.95.
Reviewed by Robert Little
Saddam Hussein liked to think of himself as Iraq's new Saladin, the 12th-century Kurdish warrior who defended Jerusalem during the Crusades. He commissioned statues and postage stamps to propagate the comparison, promoting himself as the next legendary leader of the Muslim world.
But at the end of Fiasco, a devastating account of the United States' preparations for and prosecution of the war in Iraq, author Thomas E. Ricks imagines a worst-case outcome in which Saladin's true modern-day counterpart rises from the political and cultural rubble that the war has wrought. Unlike Saddam, this ruler would have pan-Arab support, the legitimacy of public opinion, and the battle-tested nerve to take on the West. And, if the United States were to wage a preemptive war to remove him, the weapons of mass destruction it could face might not be just myths and shadows.
The power of Ricks' book-the importance of it, even-is that after 400-some pages of precise and meticulous reconstruction of the United States' involvement in Iraq, such a disastrous scenario seems hardly impossible.
The title of the latest offering from Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, certainly betrays the book's less-than-latent conclusions about the enduring conflict in Iraq. Parts of Fiasco amount to a brutal assault on the White House and the Pentagon, including descriptions of the "incompetence and arrogance" of President George W. Bush and "perhaps the worst war plan in American history."
But Fiasco is much more than simply a blunt condemnation of the war's military and civilian leaders, and its depth of reporting and detailed reconstruction of recent history should make it hard to ignore. Based on hundreds of interviews, and benefiting from the particular insight of retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni and retired Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner, the book offers a sober and enlightened account that deserves to be taken seriously.
Much of the story has already been told, of course-about the vague pre-war intelligence, the inattention to post-war planning, the questionable decisions to "de-Baathify" Iraq and disband its military-but rarely with such informed perspective. The book explores, for example, whether the Clinton administration's four-day Desert Fox bombing campaign actually achieved most of what today's war initially sought, despite being dismissed in 1998 as an election-year stunt. It shows that seemingly everyone in the global intelligence community knew then-secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony before the United Nation's Security Council in early 2003 was a near-total fabrication. And it blasts the tenure of former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose combination of intelligence, deep conviction, and gross miscalculation seem to be gelling into one of the great tragedies of the history of the war in Iraq.
At its most damning Fiasco does little more than allow the government's actors to speak, with the context of time to reveal how spectacularly wrong they were. Ricks reminds us, for instance, of the Bush administration's $1.7 billion estimated price-tag for Iraq's reconstruction, or Wolfowitz' characterization, in June 2003, that American troops were engaging "the last remnants of a dying cause."
As a veteran Pentagon correspondent, Ricks understands the American military better than most authors, and can call on a depth of contacts and sources that might be unrivaled. He is the rare writer who bothers to distinguish between the deft street-level diplomacy of the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul and the harsh, door-kicking attitude of the 4th Infantry Division inside the Sunni Triangle. He conveys the frustration of the Marine Corps commanders in Fallujah when they received a directive, imposed from above against their advice, that amounted to little more than an order to "go in and clobber people."
While Fiasco is respectful of the military, readers looking for a compelling narrative about the men and women fighting the war would do better to read an account such as Michael M. Phillips' The Gift of Valor. Ricks' book is lacking in the kind of battlefield drama and personality that can make books about war so haunting and memorable. But what Fiasco offers is perhaps the most authoritative account yet of the planning, execution, and management of the war, and its conclusions are bleak. About the closest it comes to optimism is found in the words of a group of soldiers gathered near Baghdad after a memorial service for four dead colleagues.
The war "seems to be getting better, but you really can't tell," one soldier said. "I think we're getting better, I do," another added. But "is it too little, too late?"
Editor's Note: For an excerpt from Fiasco, see the August 2006 Proceedings.
Mr. Little is a national correspondent for the Baltimore Sun who writes about military affairs and covered the early days of the war from the Pentagon. He has written several award-winning stories about advancements and deficiencies in combat medical care and recently returned from a reporting assignment in Iraq.
The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose
General Tony Zinni and Tony Klotz. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 256 pp. Illus. $24.95.
Reviewed by Mackubin Thomas Owens
General Tony Zinni has had an extremely distinguished career as a Marine and diplomat, who, to use his terms, has seen the world from both the foxhole and the command post. Unfortunately, he may best be known as a vociferous critic of the Bush administration's foreign policy, especially the decision to invade Iraq. General Zinni has described the actions of the Bush administration as ranging from "true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility" to "lying, incompetence, and corruption." He has called Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "incompetent strategically, operationally, and tactically." One has to go back to 1862 to find a senior military officer condemning a civilian superior so harshly. And even then, most of the criticism was transmitted privately.
Those expecting the same sort of fireworks in The Battle for Peace will be disappointed. The criticism of the Bush administration is still there but muted, especially when compared to his public pronouncements earlier this year. The book represents a practitioner's view of U.S... foreign and defense policy. In general, the tone is practical. As one who has spent time in the foxhole, General Zinni understands that war, like most human enterprises, creates unintended consequences.
The practitioner of war knows that it is affected by chance, uncertainty, ambiguity, contingency, and danger arising from the complex interplay of decisions, actions, and events. He also knows that similar causes do not always produce similar effects; that initial conditions offer only a glimpse of the possible outcomes; and that as long as war is a human undertaking, such phenomena as friction will persist. His main criticism of the Bush administration's conduct of the war is that it discounted these factors.
General Zinni's description of the emerging security environment-the weakening of the state, the increasing role of non-governmental organizations, the changing character of conflict, i.e. the likelihood that future adversaries will avoid traditional military confrontation, opting instead for asymmetric approaches, the increasing military involvement in humanitarian operations-is not particularly original. But unlike many who theorize about fourth-generation warfare, General Zinni has actually experienced it.
The Battle for Peace is less a memoir than a set of proposals to improve the ability of the U.S. government to secure its interests in a hostile world. For the most part, these proposals are sound.
The biggest problem with the book is that General Zinni, like many senior U.S. officers these days, seems uncomfortable with the relationship between U.S. principles and U.S. power. The essence of this is captured in an epigram at the beginning of the book, which he attributes to Alexis de Tocqueville (although there is no evidence that Tocqueville wrote it): "America is great because she is good, but if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
What does it mean for the United States to be good? General Zinni, like many critics of the Bush administration, seems to believe that to be good, the United States must always cooperate with others, no matter the circumstances, and defer to international institutions such as the United Nations to preserve peace. This has things backward.
In reality, the Bush doctrine is based on hegemonic stability theory, which holds that a liberal world order does not arise spontaneously as the result of some global invisible hand. Instead, such a system requires a hegemonic power, a state willing and able to provide the world with the collective goods of economic stability and international security. The United States, as Great Britain before it, took up the role of hegemon not out of altruism but because it is in its national interest.
The doctrine is based on the assumption that U.S. power is good not only for the country but also the rest of the world. The argument is that the United States can be fully secure only in a world where everyone else is also secure. A liberal world order is possible only if the United States is willing and able to maintain it.
The Battle for Peace seems to indicate that General Zinni, like many critics of the Bush administration, doesn't understand that the alternative to American power and hegemony is a more disorderly, less peaceful world.
Dr. Owens, a Marine infantry veteran of Vietnam, is an associate dean of academics and professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He currently is writing a hislory of U.S. civil-military relations.
Grumman F-14 Tomcat: Bye-Bye, Baby . . . !
Dave Parsons, George Hall, and Bob Lawson. St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2006. 160 pp. Illus. $40.
Reviewed by Captain E. T. Wooldridge, U.S. Navy (Retired)
"Mr. Chairman, all the thrust in Christendom couldn't make a Navy fighter out of that airplane." When Vice Admiral Thomas F. Connolly addressed a hearing on the TFX/F-111 fighter before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1967 with those words, he shot down the Navy's overweight and underpowered F-111B (TFX) and laid the cornerstone for the F-14 Tomcat program. In Grumman F-14 Tomcat, professional photographers and authors David Parsons, George Hall, and Bob Lawson have assembled a memorable collection of stunning photographs and graphic, first-hand accounts of the Tomcat to document the successful 35-year service life of the Navy's premier fighter, which will come to an end in September 2006.
Over those three-and-a-half decades, the Tomcat emerged as one of the most memorable, as well as visually appealing, fighters in U.S. Naval aviation history. As one pilot put it, the airplane had "heart, personality, and character." Hollywood became enamored with the aircraft. The movies Final Countdown and Tap Gun displayed the aircraft at its best, while Tom Cruise advanced the image of F-14 pilots as fearless, adventurous swashbucklers. (There really was a "Viper," and a poignant tribute to him is one of the high-points of the book.) The television series JAG presented a more straight-laced David James Elliott as a Tomcat pilot/lawyer, but the aircraft often stole the show.
Notwithstanding the positive image of the Tomcat presented to the public, the superb performance and excellent flying qualities that eventually became its trademark were not readily apparent during the early days of the program. The 1970s-vintage Tomcats were plagued with fires, electrical problems, engine compressor stalls, and failures of its Pratt & Whitney TF-30 engines. All of these combined with supply problems to frustrate and hound the air crews and maintenance people in the first fleet squadrons.
Eventually, however, the TF-30 engine gave way to the General Electric F-110, a change that provided increased power and reliability. New computers, digital flight controls, and systems rejuvenated the Tomcat, and culminated in the F-14D "Bombcat," which first deployed in 1996. The Bombcat became, in the minds of many, ". . . the finest striker the Navy has ever owned."
The heart of this book is a collection of riveting one-page anecdotes and quotes from flight and ground crews, each told in the vernacular of the ready room and the back bar, replete with acronyms, jargon, and colorful "pilot speak" that are essential to the story, though a few tales might leave the layman feeling like an outsider. A glossary of terms would have been a handy tool to help the uninitiated comprehend what is written. Nevertheless, the reader's patience will be more than rewarded as the Tomcat's story unfolds. Each segment is told with typical fighter-pilot bravado and self-deprecating humor as they weave tales laced with moments of stark terror, tremendous courage, and the extreme mental and physical demands of combat, night carrier landings, and "routine" training flights.
The tales are complemented by the finest, most comprehensive collection of Tomcat photographs ever assembled in one book. From the front cover (a real grabber) to the last colorful page, each image in this oversized, coffee-table book is a work of art. Few aircraft were as photogenic as the Tomcat, particularly with its wings swept back and free of the external paraphernalia required to perform its mission. The Tomcat is a large aircraft, and could by turns be sleek and beautiful, or menacing and ugly. The authors have done an outstanding job of covering the entire gamut of the Tomcat's moods.
In the words of one of its pilots, ". . . whether as an interceptor, dogfighter, reconnaissance platform, or strike fighter, the F-14 was a resolute warrior and important national asset." Grumman F-14 Tomcat is a dramatic and fitting tribute to the aircraft, the flight crews who flew it, the maintainers who kept it flying, and the people who worked behind the scenes at Grumman and the Department of the Navy to bring the Tomcat to the Fleet.
Captain Wooldridge retired from the Navy after 26 years of service and pursued a second career as curator of naval aviation and Ramsey Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum. Since retirement from the museum in 1990, he has served as a volunteer at the U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive.
Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion
Stephen Johnson. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. 292 pp. Illus. Bib. Index. $25.95.
Reviewed by Captain James B. Bryant, U.S. Navy (Retired)
The year 1968 was a bad one for submarines. In January the Israeli and French diesel-electric-powered submarines Dakar and Minerve were lost at sea with all hands. The nuclear-powered fast attack sub USS Seawolf (SSN-575) was significantly damaged after hitting the bottom off the coast of Maine. In March the K-129, a Soviet Golf II diesel-electric-powered ballistic-missile boat, sank north of the Hawaiian Islands. Then there was the loss of the Scorpion (SSN-598), the subject of Silent Steel.
The Scorpion replaced the Seawolfon a 90-day deployment to the Mediterranean starting in February 1968. Her last mission before returning to homeport at Norfolk, Virginia, was to monitor Soviet Navy operations in the Atlantic Ocean near the Canary Islands. The Scorpion sank with all hands on 22 May 1968 shortly after completing this mission. This was the second and, to date, last U.S. nuclear-powered submarine lost at sea. The USS Thresher (SSN-593) sank in April 1963.
Unlike some books on Cold War submarine events, Silent Steel is extensively documented. It is not about conspiracy theories; it is a search for the truth. The author's analysis of official records and interviews with family, former crew members, and others involved with this boat provides a fascinating, never-before-revealed insight into this mystery. Johnson is a hard-nosed, fearless investigative reporter, formerly with the Houston Chronicle, and a master at getting to the bottom of controversial and complex stories.
In 1987 he received a call from Daniel Lee Rogers, a former Scorpion crew member, who was enraged at Dr. John Craven's overly dramatic explanation of how a torpedo explosion sank the sub. Craven's theory received much attention in the best-seller Blind Man's Bluff by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew. Rogers requested transfer off the boat because he believed poor morale and equipment problems made her unsafe. He was one of five crew members who narrowly avoided going down with Scorpion. After getting to know the ship's background and many of the Scorpion families, the author dedicated himself to separating fact from fiction.
Johnson's research rejects any possibility of a Soviet attack. He documents that a 1970 Navy report, declassified in 1998, concluded that a torpedo explosion was unlikely. There is no visual indication of an explosion in the photographs or audio clues in the analysis of acoustic recordings. A weapon exploding at or near the hull should penetrate it. Sea pressure would equalize inside the boat by collapsing the internal bulkheads, which are much weaker than the pressure hull. The pressure hull wouldn't have imploded as seen in the wreckage photographs. Despite this evidence, Craven repeated his theory in his 2001 book, Silent War.
The author looks at a wide range of contributing factors including crew morale, the short (many say inadequate) shipyard "Restricted Availability" in 1967, lingering engineering problems, and deferred SUBSAFE work-significant alterations to prevent and improve recovery from flooding.
During a 1964 overhaul, an emergency main ballast tank blow system, a key part of SUBSAFE, was installed but wasn't functional. Its repair and other important work were deferred. With about 40 percent of its nuclear submarines in shipyards in the late 1960s replacing reactor cores and completing SUBSAFE work, the Navy was strained to keep more operational. Was the Scorpion returned to service with defects and/or deferred work that caused or contributed to the sinking?
For a reporter with no technical background, Johnson did a superb job in learning and clearly explaining the engineering and operational details of submarining, with the help of many old salts. Submariners will find some technical errors, but his in-depth analyses of the many factors involved are key to better understanding this tragedy.
Captain Bryant was assigned to the Pentagon after commanding the USS Guardfish (SSN-612). He was the action officer responsible for declassifying in October 1993 that the Scorpion sank with two torpedoes with nuclear warheads. Tn June 1993 he met a Russian Navy captain who claimed he saw the Scorpion's periscope while in the Echo II-class submarine involved with the Soviet operations monitored by the Scorpion.