Confronting Iraq

"Based on a unique set of interviews and British and American documents, this book examines the motives for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, examines the decision-making inside the Bush administration, and assesses the reasons for the chaotic, bloody, and costly occupation. The attack on America on 9/11 by al Qaeda terrorists transformed the thinking and actions of Bush and his top advisers. Bush conceived the administration's response. Fear, power, and hubris shaped his approach - fear of another attack; pride in American values; and confidence in America's ability to effectuate change. Worried about another attack on American soil - this time with biological or chemical weapons - Bush turned his attention to Iraq because of Saddam Hussein's history with weapons of mass destruction and because of his record of aggression, brutality, and duplicity. To achieve his goals, the American president embraced a strategy of coercive diplomacy. If Iraq faced a military threat, Bush hoped Hussein would open his country to inspections, relinquish his alleged weapons of mass destruction, flee, or be toppled. When Hussein admitted inspectors yet remained obstructive, Bush denounced the dictator's defiance and believed America's credibility was at stake. Without resolving the ambiguities and inconsistencies in his strategy of coercive diplomacy and failing to assess the consequences of an invasion or to plan effectively for its many contingencies, Bush ordered U.S. troops to invade Iraq. Friction and acrimony within the administration turned the occupation into a tragedy, the consequences of which we are still living with"--

Although Iraq remains hostile to the United States, Baghdad has repeatedly compromised, and at times caved, in response to U.S. pressure and threats. An analysis of attempts to coerce Iraq since Desert Storm reveals that military strikes and other forms of pressure that threatened Saddam Husayn's relationship with his power base proved effective at forcing concessions from the Iraqi regime. When coercing Saddam or other foes, U.S. policymakers should design a strategy around the adversary's center of gravity while seeking to neutralize adversary efforts to counter-coerce the United States and appreciating the policy constraints imposed by domestic politics and international alliances.

David C. Hendrickson and Robert W. Tucker examine the contentious debate over the Iraq war and occupation, focusing on the critique that the Bush administration squandered an historic opportunity to reconstruct the Iraqi state because of various critical blunders in planning. Though they conclude that critics have made a number of telling points against the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war, they argue that the most serious problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers -- criminal anarchy and lawlessness, a raging insurgency, and a society divided into rival and antagonistic groups -- were virtually inevitable consequences that flowed from the act of war itself. Military and civilian planners were culpable in failing to plan for certain tasks, but the most serious problems had no good solution. The authors draw attention to a variety of lessons, including the danger that the imperatives of "force protection" may sacrifice the broader political mission of U.S. forces and the need for skepticism over the capacity of outsiders to develop the skill and expertise required to reconstruct decapitated states.

A shattering journey of revelation, pain, and betrayal, Mission Rejected takes the reader deep into the turmoil of U.S. troops confronting the Iraq War.

In The Threatening Storm, Kenneth M. Pollack, one of the world’s leading experts on Iraq, provides a masterly insider’s perspective on the crucial issues facing the United States as it moves toward a new confrontation with Saddam Hussein. For the past fifteen years, as an analyst on Iraq for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, Kenneth Pollack has studied Saddam as closely as anyone else in the United States. In 1990, he was one of only three CIA analysts to predict the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. As the principal author of the CIA’s history of Iraqi military strategy and operations during the Gulf War, Pollack gained rare insight into the methods and workings of what he believes to be the most brutal regime since Stalinist Russia. Examining all sides of the debate and bringing a keen eye to the military and geopolitical forces at work, Pollack ultimately comes to this controversial conclusion: through our own mistakes, the perfidy of others, and Saddam’s cunning, the United States is left with few good policy options regarding Iraq. Increasingly, the option that makes the most sense is for the United States to launch a full-scale invasion, eradicate Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and rebuild Iraq as a prosperous and stable society—for the good of the United States, the Iraqi people, and the entire region. Pollack believed for many years that the United States could prevent Saddam from threatening the stability of the Persian Gulf and the world through containment—a combination of sanctions and limited military operations. Here, Pollack explains why containment is no longer effective, and why other policies intended to deter Saddam ultimately pose a greater risk than confronting him now, before he gains possession of nuclear weapons and returns to his stated goal of dominating the Gulf region. “It is often said that war should be employed only in the last resort,” Pollack writes. “I reluctantly believe that in the case of the threat from Iraq, we have come to the last resort.” Offering a view of the region that has the authority and force of an intelligence report, Pollack outlines what the leaders of neighboring Arab countries are thinking, what is necessary to gain their support for an invasion, how a successful U.S. operation would be mounted, what the likely costs would be, and how Saddam might react. He examines the state of Iraq today—its economy, its armed forces, its political system, the status of its weapons of mass destruction as best we understand them, and the terrifying security apparatus that keeps Saddam in power. Pollack also analyzes the last twenty years of relations between the United States and Iraq to explain how the two countries reached the unhappy standoff that currently prevails. Commanding in its insights and full of detailed information about how leaders on both sides will make their decisions, The Threatening Storm is an essential guide to understanding what may be the crucial foreign policy challenge of our time.

Based on in-depth interviews with tribal Sheiks involved in the Awakening and their American military counterparts, Confronting al Qaeda is a study of decision-making processes and the political psychology of the Sunni Awakening in al Anbar. It traces the change in American military strategy that made the Awakening collaboration between the Sunni tribes and the U.S. forces possible. It explains how the evolution of the tribal leaders’ perspective and of the American military strategy led to defeat al Qaeda in al Anbar. The process of these changing mutual images is detailed as well as how the cooperation between groups led to further evolution of perceptions. Political and military realities urgently forced these perceptual and social identity shifts initially, but the process of cooperation and engagement accelerated these shifts through increasingly mutually beneficial cooperation and interaction during the battle with al Qaeda in Iraq.

Arthur Borden's A Better Country demonstrates why America was right to confront Saddam Hussein. This book analyzes the public debate over Iraq to show how partisanship has obscured the purposes of the war effort and promoted a mistaken image of American power both domestically and abroad. A Better Country reminds us that, stretching back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter and before, there had been a broad consensus over the touchstone issues of Iraq, the Middle East and the unmentionable reality of oil--until political argument became degraded by charges of betrayal and wholesale deception. Taking by turn the key points of argument-from weapons of mass destruction and the inspectors to containment and the imminence of the threat from aggressive Iraq-Borden argues that even the Administration failed to present clearly the true nature of the security risks facing America. From George Bush and Hans Blix to Meet the Press and The New York Times, this book provides a lively account of how America--over its airways, through its newspapers and thus within its living rooms--argues out the great issues of the day. Written by a veteran World War II and of the many political crises since, this book is underlined by a personal narrative about the meaning of America and of American power at its best. It renews the principle that, in rising to address security risks in an uncertain world, America itself becomes a better county.