Losing Iraq: Insurgency and Politics

by Stephen C. Pelletiere

According to the Bush administration, the war in Iraq ended in May 2003 when the president pronounced mission accomplished from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Yet, fighting, resistance, and American casualties continue. Stephen Pelletière argues that it is Iraqi suspicion of the Americans' motive―the belief that the United States is out to tear the state apart―that is fueling the current rebellion. Resistance in Iraq has become a national struggle, tied to the mood of Iraqis generally, as well as to anger fed by experiences of the whole people over the course of the last quarter century. Americans see Iraq as a failed state because they lack knowledge of those experiences and of Iraqi history. That is what Pelletière has set out to remedy. In doing so, he relates American behavior in Iraq to the wider sphere of U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf specifically and the Middle East overall, positioning the war as part of a larger geo-political struggle that encompasses not just the Iraqis or the Iranians, but the Israelis and all of the other client states of the United States in the Middle East.

168 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2007

Reviews

[Damilola Ojikutu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The initial part of the book seems very boring but it goes very much into the overall Iraq War and following insurgency and various failures of US occupation government and Paul Wolfowitz to understand social realities of Iraq. It’s fairly interesting realizing what happened on the actual ground and how the US insistence that the US faced no hostile resistance was a lie.

Its nice to have a book that dosent repeat neo con epitets on the gulf war and that is fairly interesting in discussing Badr, Iran’s role in Iraq, the Sadr family and other niche things in Iraqi politics. I don’t feel too overwhelmed after reading this book and I am eager to read more about Iraq.

[Chuck Kollars · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reasoned analysis. Makes the invasion and reconstruction look _very_ stupid, as the actual knowledge and historical context used for decision making was woefully inadequate, and -as it turned out- not just inadequate but completely wrong. Suffers though from the author's sudden loss of the constant stream of inside information he was used to getting (he headed analysis of the Iran-Iraq war for the CIA, but then apparently retired and wrote this book purely from reasoned analysis of public information). In particular his complete dismissal of the "Zarqawi phenomenon" is strongly contradicted by the recent book "Black Flags", which says what Bush was saying about Zarqawi's organization contributing significantly to the destabilization and disintegration of Iraq was actually true ...even though the Bush administration was already thoroughly screwing things up on their own. Displays a complete lack of understanding of the Jihadi phenomenon, which makes sense coming from an author mainly involved in Iraq analysis, since the Jihadi phenomenon had had little relevance to what went on in Iraq for a long time.

Suggests the common media view that the Kurds are "good guys" who only want an "independent country" is false. What we see (and what is very good at manipulating our foreign policy mechanisms and our media) is more competing warlords, and the "pesh merga" are more along the lines of mercenaries or private armies than forces united by the ideology of independence. And the majority of the Kurds are simple mountain pastoral people with very local interests who just plain don't care about something as big as a "nation-state". The idea of the majority of Kurds sharing any opinion -even one about having their own country- is simply preposterous.

[Kosta H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good assessment of the build up to war, the crisis of the puppet government, and the failure of the occupation. Not enough attention to the Iraqi resistance and its development.