Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi’s Long Journey to Triumph in Iran
Richard Bonin. New York: Doubleday, 2011. 304 pp. Notes. Bibliog. Index. $27.95.
Reviewed by Captain George Galdorisi, U.S. Navy (Retired)
An enormous amount of ink has been spilled about Operation Iraqi Freedom. An informed public knows, generally, what happened in this conflict. Fewer understand the full range of policy decisions that occurred in the years and months prior to this war. And only a handful, those in the top policymaking positions in the U.S. government during the years—even decades—before Operation Iraqi Freedom, comprehend why the United States ultimately went to war to depose Saddam Hussein. Until now.
In Arrows of the Night, CBS News 60 Minutes producer Richard Bonin has answered that question in a compelling and fast-moving book. The 266-page narrative reads like a novel. It is engaging and extraordinarily difficult to put down. Bonin recognizes that the factors leading the United States to go to war in Iraq a second time—again during a Bush presidency—are complex; but he offers in two words the most convincing reason for this war: Ahmad Chalabi. For many, he is the leading figure in the Iraqi opposition movement.
The book’s subtitle, Ahmad Chalabi’s Long Journey to Triumph in Iraq, signals the author’s intent. Bonin’s book builds on multiple 60 Minutes segments on the Iraq War in general and Chalabi in particular. It is based on Bonin’s ten-year association with him, including several trips to Baghdad and more than 60 hours of interviews with him as well as other major figures in the Iraqi conflict.
Told largely from Chalabi’s perspective (which Bonin acknowledges), Arrows of the Night takes the reader on a half-century odyssey, starting with his 1958 exile from Iraq, through the American invasion in 2003, and to his work in the post-Saddam country. The journey is both complex and absorbing, as the main character has a larger-than-life résumé of triumphs and scandal, including a degree in mathematics from MIT, a doctorate from the University of Chicago, jobs as a university professor and a wildly successful banker, a conviction for embezzling, and work as a CIA operative.
Throughout his travels, in all his occupations and avocations, Chalabi maintained a singular focus. As Bonin describes it, he was obsessed with overthrowing Saddam’s Baathist regime and returning to his Iraqi homeland in a blaze of glory. This was his strategy; everything else was tactics.
In recounting Chalabi’s voyage Bonin also, importantly, helps the reader understand how one man can literally alter the course of history. He asserts, and backs up with exhaustive primary and secondary research, that while the United States ultimately might have gone to war in Iraq again under George W. Bush to finish what his father’s presidency had not, without Ahmad Chalabi, the past 50-year relationship between the United States and Iraq—and indeed the entire Middle East—would likely have been vastly different. If this very complicated man had never been exiled, or if he had merely lived quietly in that state, the world today would be different.
The book’s title originates from Shia “prayers and execrations [at night] sent up to heaven by the oppressed and the innocent” and “returned like arrows directed at your enemies.” This, in a nutshell, describes Chalabi’s journey, which began when his wealthy Shiite family was banished after the revolution that ultimately put Saddam Hussein in power. It describes how the young Ahmad devoted his life to restoring his family to prominence. His first coup attempt was in 1963 when he was 19, on a school break from MIT. His next was aided by Iranian intelligence. But as the years passed and Saddam remained in power, Chalabi came to realize that he needed the United States to help him. Only the world’s superpower could rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein.
Bonin’s description of how Chalabi used all the levers of power in the United States is breathtaking. From the executive branch—including the Department of Defense, State Department, CIA, and the closest advisers of many presidents—to members of Congress, industry, academia, and opinion leaders, he deftly manipulated them all. Bonin paints a picture of how only someone with such a single-minded devotion to his cause, Machiavellian willingness to exploit anyone he considered useful, and, if necessary, fashion his own reality, could have stayed this course for more than a half-century.
Read Arrows of the Night. It is not hyperbole to say this is a necessary book to fully grasp the United States’ as-yet-unfinished mission in Iraq.
Undefeated: America’s Heroic Fight for Bataan and Corregidor
Bill Sloan. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012. 416 pp. Illus. Maps. Notes. Bibliog. Index. $28.
Reviewed by Mark Felton
Japanese Lieutenant-General Susumu Morioka described General Douglas Mac-Arthur’s withdrawal into the Bataan Peninsula as “a cat entering a sack.” Although trapped, that animal still had claws, but it was a doomed fight. “Against an onslaught of tanks, artillery, mortars, bombers . . . we had about as much chance as a snowbell in hell,” said Sergeant Clem Kathman, who was surrounded and starving on Bataan toward the end (and died in November 2011 at age 95). “From where we sat, it looked like another Custer massacre, but by now, we’d committed ourselves to extinction.”
Undefeated tells the story of America’s reversal in the Philippines at the hands of the Japanese in 1941–42, and it is a vivid and fascinating retelling. There is no happy ending, as Sloan details the brutal imprisonment of starving and ill American and Filipino troops by the Japanese following an ignominious surrender.
The author paints a revealing picture of life for soldiers, airmen, and Marines in the pre-war islands, a plum posting at the tail end of the Depression. But the halcyon days of bars, beaches, pretty girls, and light duties came to a shattering end in December 1941. Sloan brilliantly captures the wrenching shock of this transformation from peacetime paradise to wartime maelstrom, interweaving the personal accounts of servicemen and women and bringing the horror of the conflict alive for a modern audience.
Although Undefeated is huge in scope, the book remains an intimate portrayal of combat from the perspective of ordinary service personnel. Based on the author’s extensive interviews with veterans, we are able to follow each character through the panorama of the campaign. This produces a strong human narrative that makes the book a compelling read. Overlaid onto the harrowing personal stories of human endurance and survival is the wider strategic story of MacArthur’s efforts to stave off defeat. From the initial withdrawals across Luzon, Sloan takes us into the hell of the Bataan Peninsula, the last stand on Corregidor Island, and the final surrender.
He is clear that much of the fault for the American defeat lay with MacArthur, who arrogantly underestimated the Japanese, a problem shared with the British in Malaya. But Sloan also highlights the failings of the U.S. government in creating the conditions that led to the defeat, citing the poor quality of Army Air Corps equipment, the brave but poorly trained Filipino forces, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Europe first” strategy that denied Far Eastern units up-to-date tanks, planes, and weapons. But MacArthur bears the brunt of the blame in Undefeated.
The human disaster at Bataan could have been avoided, Sloan suggests, if MacArthur had properly supplied the peninsula before he pulled his army back into it. And his refusal to launch an agreed-upon offensive designed to throw the Japanese off-balance contributed to the culture of withdrawals that ended in the erosion of morale and ultimate destruction of his army. Sloan masterfully makes these important points, and many others, with subtlety and with an eye to the experiences of ordinary soldiers.
This is not the story of a defeated army, but rather an inspiring account of courageous military personnel who did not expect to lose and who fought to the bitter end, even when Washington had clearly abandoned them. The author does not ignore the other side of the story, demonstrating that the Japanese missed many opportunities to defeat the Americans sooner through their own hesitancy, bad communications, and often-suicidal tactics. MacArthur clearly had some lucky breaks. The often-harrowing personal stories of the men who defended Bataan and Corregidor, and their even more heartbreaking fate as prisoners, make Undefeated a compelling, informative, and illuminating read from a master historian of the war in the Pacific and of combat narrative.
The New Legions: American Strategy and the Responsibility of Power
Major General Edward B. Atkeson. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. 211 pp. Notes. Index. $35.
Reviewed by Captain Stanley D. M. Carpenter, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Retired Army Major General Edward Atkeson sets out an intriguing strategic concept for the future of American military power: the establishment of an American Foreign Legion whereby the United States would employ non-U.S. troops for operations in their regions as the ground force that was trained, supported, advised, equipped, organized, and commanded by the U.S. military. In troubled areas or states with interests common to those of the United States, these foreign-legion forces would provide security and stability. The concept is not novel; Atkeson cites the French and Spanish Foreign Legions, the Dutch East Indies Army, and the British Gurkha regiments. Highlighting the advantages of language, culture, societal influence in their regions, and so forth, the author advocates granting U.S. citizenship as an inducement to serve, along with the obvious economic advantages.
Had Atkeson remained with this line of argument, he would have been on solid ground in proposing an innovative, alternate strategy in an era of increasing U.S. foreign military intervention handicapped by a stark drawdown in military resources, budgets, manpower, and capabilities. Unfortunately, much of the book is a diatribe against the Iran and Afghanistan operations and the war on terrorism policies, strategies, and actions of the George W. Bush administration. The author provides a litany of opposition sources such as The New York Times to bolster the anti-Iraq argument. Had the book focused on the argument against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this might have been appropriate. However, as an analysis of a potential future strategic direction, the vitriolic anti-Bush sentiment undercuts any forward-looking, dispassionate strategic analysis.
Indeed, the entire first two chapters are likely to generate antipathy in a large portion of the potential audience, to the point that the power of the actual thesis is undercut. References to “Bush and his neoconservative henchmen” are not likely to promote calm consideration of a novel new strategy. In short, the book is highly subjective when it needs to be objective and nonpolitical.
The text is also marred by a travelogue-guide approach to regions and specific states in which U.S. military intervention might be required. This contextual and historical narrative, while interesting, is not useful or supportive of the author’s central argument for an American Foreign Legion. The chapter on Cuba is particularly distracting and has little relevance to the central thesis; the author acknowledges that future U.S. military action in Cuba is highly improbable.
As to the essential proposal, there are counter-arguments that he fails to address. For example, there is the timing factor. The book was clearly largely written in 2009, meaning that many of the Iraq dynamics have become dated. Atkeson argues for a U.S.-Iraq Foreign Legion, a concept that today has become irrelevant. Additionally, he does not account for international opinion on imperialism in this post-colonial era. Would not an American Foreign Legion strike many native peoples and former colonials as imperial troops of an oppressive distant power? Would the legion simply conjure an image of the United States as the next conquering power, already a concern in the current Afghan effort? The author did not ponder this and numerous other counter-considerations.
Interestingly, he provides little analysis of one of the most prominent uses of foreign forces in the service of a great power: the Roman Empire. Two examples could have been addressed, one to support his proposal, the other as a counter-argument. How does the great power ensure loyalty from the legion forces? The potential for disaster is illustrated by the AD 9 massacre of two Roman legions in the Teutoberg Forest by Germanic tribal forces led by Arminius, who was an officer in the Imperial Army. To counter this weakness in its defense scheme, Rome typically sent forces recruited from non-Roman or barbarian tribes to areas far from their homes for long-term service to diminish their cultural and ethnic attachments. Had Atkeson undertaken an analysis along these lines, he would have been able to address potential problems with loyalty in the American Foreign Legion.
As a proposal for an alternate future U.S. strategic model, Atkeson’s concept of a legion comprising non-Americans who are led, supported, trained, organized, and disciplined by the U.S. military is a thoughtful proposition that should be considered. Sadly, The New Legions is so marred by political-agenda emotionalism and by organizational, technical, and structural problems that it does not make a persuasive argument.