The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan
Bing West. New York: Random House, 2011. 336 pp. Intro. Maps. Illus. $28.
Reviewed by Lieutenant General David W. Barno, U.S. Army (Retired)
Bing West has written a superb new account of the platoon and company war in Afghanistan during 2009 and 2010. Beyond being a rousing good war story, his book paints a disturbing portrait of the internal discontinuities of our application of counterinsurgency doctrine. He forcefully conveys the collision of theory with reality that our young troops and junior officers face in carrying out their orders at the “sharp end.” This unvarnished outlook alone makes the book a “must read” for every American senior officer and policy maker involved in this ten-year war.
West, a Marine infantryman in Vietnam and former assistant Secretary of Defense, brings his gritty grunt’s viewpoint to the brutal and largely unchanged world of infantry combat in Afghanistan. It remains dirty, exhausting, exhilarating, and deadly work. The British described their infantrymen in World War II as the PBIs, or “poor bloody infantry.” But in West’s unflinching account, there is no reason to see these remarkable self-selected warriors as anything other than inspiring examples of the unrelenting courage that can still be found across American society.
The book’s somewhat unfortunate title actually conveys West’s conclusions: not that the United States is fighting in the wrong country (he supports a long-term U.S. presence in Afghanistan), but that over the past ten years the United States has chosen to prosecute the war incorrectly. West faults the population-centric counterinsurgency strategy for both gutting the U.S. military’s fighting spirit and muddling its mission into that of an armed Peace Corps. He argues such an approach is both beyond the capabilities of our military and wrong-headed, when it involves fighting an implacable enemy.
West proposes a provocative solution: Our military should abandon its attempt to secure population centers and large swaths of dispersed Afghan villages and its attendant nation-building effort. Instead, it should concentrate on a focused advisory effort to encourage Afghan forces to take the fight to the Taliban, while employing the high-end capabilities of airpower, logistics, and intelligence to support this effort.
West argues that only by persuading the Afghan army to take ownership of the fight against the Taliban can the war be won—or at least sustained long enough for the enemy to be worn down and for better Afghan governance to emerge. He is sketchy on the modalities by which this improved security would be accompanied by improvements in the vital remainder of the equation: good governance and economic growth. This is the biggest flaw in his otherwise sensible suggestion to shift the “main effort” of the war to Afghan forces (rather than to U.S. battalions) conducting counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban while our residual forces focus on advisory, support, and counterterrorism missions. Narrowing the military mission without shifting adequate resources to the other vital components essential to lasting success seems highly unlikely to achieve U.S. policy objectives.
The most disconcerting aspect of West’s book is his depiction of the stark contrast between the staff officers and senior commanders sitting in remote headquarters dispassionately parsing ground commanders’ requests to attack targets and the urgent pleas of troops in contact. Technology in this instance has produced not speed, but initiative-robbing micromanagement. My own contacts with junior officers serving in Afghanistan in recent years support the general accuracy of West’s descriptions of risk aversion and endless bureaucratic stonewalling over use-of-force decisions. Few Americans reading this account at home will find the actions of these higher headquarters comforting, knowing that young Americans at the other end of the radio were taking fire.
At its best, The Wrong War brilliantly unfolds story after story of American courage under fire. These amazing accounts will inspire awe and pride, as well as a few tears. We have warriors who are meeting the highest standards of American arms in this long, difficult war. Yet we are obviously failing to recognize and reward their valor appropriately. During the Vietnam War, the United States awarded 246 Medals of Honor. In ten years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have awarded this generation only eight of our highest awards for valor, despite frequent actions involving desperate close combat. West’s stunning account of the fight of Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer at Ganjgal is only one of many reasons to ask—“Why?”
In all, this is excellent frontline reporting of infantry combat in what is soon to become our longest war. Its strategic recommendations are much less compelling than its tactical narratives but should provoke some worthy debate. Most important, the book calls out the stunning and largely unrecognized courage of our young Soldiers and Marines taking the fight to the enemy under staggeringly tough conditions. For that reason alone, The Wrong War deserves a place on every military professional’s bookshelf.
It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine’s Path to Peace
Rye Barcott. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. 352 pp. Maps. Prologue. Epilogue. $26.
Reviewed by Dave Danelo
Compartments exist for protection. Whether watertight doors on board ships or psychological barriers inside the minds of the crew, those who are acculturated to life in the sea services build impenetrable walls around physical or mental spaces considered necessary for survival. At a practical and spiritual level, these boundaries are what keep ships afloat and warriors alive.
It Happened on the Way to War is the story of Rye Barcott, whose journey to manhood evolved amid conflicting and unconventional ambitions. As a midshipman at the University of North Carolina, Barcott divided his summers between training at Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia, and doing volunteer work in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum. Barcott rose to captain and completed three deployments, including a 2005 combat tour in Iraq. Simultaneously, he founded Carolina for Kibera, an international humanitarian nongovernmental organization whose participatory development model has been lauded by philanthropists (Bill and Melinda Gates), celebrities (musician Sarah McLachlan), and journalists (ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson). The dueling nobility of these professional passions sustains this powerful, compelling, and genuine story.
As the only child of two Rhode Island college professors—his father, a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran; his mother, a nurse and anthropologist—Barcott embodies the contradictions of the war that defined his parent’s generation. The book’s first 200 pages focus on Barcott’s college experiences and friendships, especially with the Kenyans whose sacrifices and efforts bear fruit in what eventually becomes Carolina for Kibera. This section reads more like Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin’s book, Three Cups of Tea, than Nate Fick’s One Bullet Away, and Barcott wisely avoids spending too much time on Officer Candidate School, instead immersing readers in the details of life in African slums and nonprofit politics.
For military officers, the interesting part begins with Barcott’s first deployment to Bosnia. His mentor, Colonel Tom Greenwood, encourages the Kibera connection to enhance his Marine Corps career, but Barcott copes with the tension by “compartmentalizing”—refusing to allow one world to influence the other. Many of his fellow officers do not know of his work in Kenya, and he is similarly circumspect in the international aid community about his life as a Marine. The dichotomy between Barcott’s warrior and humanitarian identities becomes a “trichotomy,” as he also pursues a romantic relationship with his future wife, Tracy Dobbins.
Although his trained eye for culture appears to make him the ideal candidate for counterinsurgency operations, Barcott writes about dividing his time and energy between two worlds, suggesting the irreconcilability of institutions with opposing core competencies. Barcott is particularly critical of the U.S. military’s role in the Horn of Africa, where he suggests American armed forces should avoid military assistance. “The larger issue [in Africa] was one the military couldn’t overcome,” Barcott writes. “It was the fundamental impossibility of empowering a community through armed intervention. As long as we wore uniforms and carried weapons, we would be seen for exactly what we were—a foreign military.”
Few officers seeking to learn counterinsurgency could match the résumé of a man equally fluent in combined arms and Swahili and whose middle name, Mead, pays homage to a world-famous anthropologist. Consequently, Barcott’s attitude about counterinsurgency, which continues during his deployment to Iraq, is intriguing. Although he does not build a case against COIN, his anecdotes do not argue in its favor. This silence speaks volumes, perhaps in ways he did not anticipate while penning his narrative.
In his Wikipedia profile Rye Barcott’s vocations are listed in the following order: humanitarian, U.S. military, writer. Given his openness about his aid worker-Marine conflicts and his evident literary skill, Barcott’s reticence about personal matters, especially the influence of his wife—a pediatric psychologist—on his competing priorities, remains the book’s only notable weakness. Readers will regret that Tracy’s voice, which Rye hints at strongly but does not develop, has been omitted. Nevertheless, this silence remains an understandably discreet choice, especially given the rigors of combat and separation on any relationship. In the end, whether in Kibera or Iraq, we all need our compartments to survive.
I-400: Japan’s Secret Aircraft-Carrying Strike Submarine—Objective: Panama Canal
Henry Sakaida, Gary Nila, and Koji Takaki. Manchester, U.K.: Crecy, 2011. Softcover. 144 pp. Illus. Maps. Index. $19.95.
Reviewed by Norman Polmar
Generally a paperback edition of a hardcover book contains new information uncovered by the authors and corrects earlier mistakes. This paperback version does neither and, remarkably, has major portions of the original book deleted.
The I-400 class submarines were the largest non-nuclear submarines ever constructed and the world’s largest submarine aircraft carriers. Thus, it is strange that it took more than 60 years for a comprehensive book on the I-400 submarines to be published.
The hardback edition, published in 2006, provided an excellent account of the mission, design, construction, and operations of the two completed submarines of this type, the I-400 and I-401. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet at the start of World War II, directed that a class of 18 of these large, long-range undersea craft be built for the purpose of attacking American cities on the East Coast. After Admiral Yamamoto’s death in April 1943 the size of the program was halved and, in the event, only two of the class were completed.
Beyond their size and aircraft capabilities, the I-400s were fitted with a snorkel system and with radar and radar-warning equipment. The massive hangar, which permitted the aircraft’s engines to be preheated while the submarine was submerged, could accommodate three partially disassembled aircraft.
The description of these submarines and the photos contained in the original large-format book are admirable. Of particular note are the discussions of and comments by the officers who manned the submarines, details of the Aichi M6A Seiran attack aircraft that they carried, and the planning for their missions. With the changing of the tide of the war, the Japanese naval high command shifted the target for the I-400s to the Panama Canal. Destruction of canal locks would slow the movement of U.S. warships from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Even that plan was soon abandoned, as the Americans continued to push toward the Japanese home islands and completion of the submarines was delayed. Five of the underwater giants were launched and three were completed—the I-400 and I-401 as submarine aircraft carriers and the I-402 as a submarine tanker. (The last, completed in late July 1945, was to have transported oil from the East Indies, through the U.S. naval blockade, to Japan; she did not become operational.)
Air attack operations were planned for the first two I-400s. The target selected for their first attack was Ulithi in the Caroline Islands, an advanced base for the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Two smaller submarines, the aircraft-carrying I-13 and I-14, carried high-speed reconnaissance aircraft to the island of Truk, where they would take off for a last-minute look at the Ulithi anchorage. Then the I-400 and I-401 would arrive within range of Ulithi, and each would launch three Seirans carrying bombs to attack U.S. carriers. To increase their payload, the Seirans would be launched without their floats—on one-way suicide missions.
The Ulithi raid was planned for the night of 14-15 August 1945. That was the date of Japan’s surrender, and the Ulithi attack was aborted. Thus, the I-400s never saw combat.
The book also describes the surrender of these submarines to U.S. forces, the assignment of prize crews, and their subsequent journey under the American flag to Pearl Harbor. There they were minutely examined, with some of the resulting reports reproduced in the book and then scuttled at sea.
Unfortunately, both editions suffer from several factual errors when discussing U.S. naval forces. For example, no U.S. submarines carried 5.5-inch guns; the TBM Avenger did not have three .50-caliber machine guns; and the submarine Tench (SS-417) was not 27 1/4 feet long. One also wonders why the authors compared the I-400 with the latter submarine, even though they were of contemporary construction. More meaningful comparisons would have been with the British submarine M-2 (launched in 1919) or the French Surcouf (N-N-3), launched in 1929, both large aircraft-carrying boats preceding the I-400. Another disappointment is the section, with photos, of the I-400’s American prize crew. It is incomplete and of little if any value; the space could have been better used to address Japanese topics.
The book’s other problems include the lack of consistent style, the qualification “all measurements are approximate” when the exact data are known and readily available for the submarines and aircraft discussed in the book, and an incomplete and inaccurate index.
Despite these numerous shortcomings, the book I-400 is an important and long-awaited work—but don’t purchase the paperback edition.