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Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq
This compelling book presents an unparalleled record of what happened after U.S. forces seized Baghdad in the spring of 2003. Army Colonel Peter R. Mansoor, the on-the-ground commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division—the “Ready First Combat Team”—describes his brigade’s first year in Iraq, from the sweltering, chaotic summer after the Ba’athists’ defeat to the transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government a year later. Uniquely positioned to observe, record, and assess the events of that fateful year, Mansoor now explains what went right and wrong as the U.S. military confronted an insurgency of unexpected strength and tenacity.
Drawing not only on his own daily combat journal but also on observations by embedded reporters, news reports, combat logs, archived e-mails, and many other sources, Mansoor offers a contemporary record of the valor, motivations, and resolve of the 1st Brigade and its attachments during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet this book has a deeper significance than a personal memoir or unit history. Baghdad at Sunrise provides a detailed, nuanced analysis of U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, and along with it critically important lessons for America’s military and political leaders of the twenty-first century.
Drawing not only on his own daily combat journal but also on observations by embedded reporters, news reports, combat logs, archived e-mails, and many other sources, Mansoor offers a contemporary record of the valor, motivations, and resolve of the 1st Brigade and its attachments during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet this book has a deeper significance than a personal memoir or unit history. Baghdad at Sunrise provides a detailed, nuanced analysis of U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, and along with it critically important lessons for America’s military and political leaders of the twenty-first century.
376 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 14, 2008
This is the second book I've read on the Iraq war. It's not that I've not followed the progress of the Iraq War extremely closely, because I have. It's that hitherto, all the books on the Iraq war stuck me as being written by parties removed from the daily affairs of the war, observing it at a distance as I was, and engaging not in the writing of history but in punditry, self-justification, spin, and axe grinding. Authors seemed to feel quite free to write books based on anonymous sourcing, innuendo, unrecorded conversations, rumors, and media coverage of doubtable competency and even veracity. So it's not that I didn't want to read the details of what was happening in Iraq, but that I did that largely kept me away from the dross being cranked out and inflicted on a certain class of willing consumer.
Thus, it was with great relish that I picked up Peter Mansoor's account of his first tour of service in Iraq. A brigade commander is uniquely placed to serve in the role of historian. The perspective that it provides is sufficiently high up that the larger picture can be discerned, but not so high up that you are observing the events from a distance.
Peter Mansoor lacks pretension. Rather than attempting to write a history of the Iraq war, he writes simply an account of his experiences. Writing an account of the Iraq War is at this point probably impossible because of the lack of creditable material. Writing an account of Iraq War at this point is too high of an ambition for anyone, much less someone who wasn't centrally placed in it. To my mind, Peter Mansoor was as centrally placed as any author thus far, and it’s to his credit that he doesn't pretend to be able to tell the whole story.
Col. Mansoor opens the book with a brief, candid and endearing biography. He spills his life story in a few brief pages. It is self-effacing. It is honest, and we know it is honest because no one who wanted to impress us would write so unglamorously. This sets the pattern for the entire book.
Humility is the rarest trait in a gifted soldier. Commanders are generally ego-driven, highly competitive, and ambitious individuals. Narcissists and self-trumpeting blow-hards, even incompetent ones, often achieve high rank: the humble man however skilled rarely does. The shelves of military biographies are filled with useless self-serving tracts written by men with a gift for judging others, but no gift for examining themselves. This is the rarest sort of autobiography of all - the one that will be worthy of study because it’s not afraid to admit to failings.
There is way too much in this book to write about in such a short space, and I'm chagrined that I did not attempt this review when the material was fresher in my mind. Col. Mansoor deserves better, but this will have to do.
Pundits on either side of the aisle with have a difficult time dealing with Peter Mansoor's account. For myself, reading the book I got the uncanny feeling that everyone, whether critics or proponents of the war, was in fact describing the same war. I got the feeling reading the text, that whether you were for or against the war, that many of the central claims being made were largely true. I don't know why this should startle me and force me to reevaluate my thinking, because my mantra is, 'The truth is never simple.', but on this subject it did. I guess I found it impossible to reconcile the conflicting accounts and ideologies behind the positive and negative spin and imagine that such two disparate accounts could be describing the same entity. One or both had to be wrong; but, what I discovered reading the text is that did not have to be the case. The both could be right. Everyone trumpeting a simple truth was no better than one of the blind men groping the elephant.
Another thing that really drew me into the book from the beginning was my ability to follow along with almost all of the major events in the book, and compare them to how I had experienced them as an observer getting most of my news by sifting through various stories in the media. As I said, I followed the Iraq war very closely, following along with the different changes in strategy, the minor operations, and the major campaigns. Peter Mansoor however was in the thick of it, responsible for a section of Baghdad that was repeatedly in the news during that first year.
Mansoor's account of that trying year is somehow exhausting, inspiring, and heart-breaking at the same time. I promise you that around page 228, this book will kick you in the stomach, stick a knife in you, and twist it repeatedly. I don't know how soldiers cope with it. I really don't. It hurts me from here all the way across those miles and years. I don't know what to say except that my admiration for the strength, courage, and honor on display is very great indeed.
Peter Mansoor's account is very tough reading. He is open and forthcoming about the mistakes he made that got people killed; and the things that he did that saved lives and - at this point I think we can safely say although he doesn't - helped win the war. He is unsparing on himself, and lavish on the praise of those he served with. He doesn't however sugar coat things and pretend that everyone always used the best of judgment. Prisoner abuse and mistreatment of Iraqis was an ongoing problem that comes up repeatedly in the book. He makes a full accounting of the stupidity he encountered and the disciplinary steps he was forced to take, while keeping the persons involved anonymous.
He is circumspect but suggestive about the failings of those in higher positions. Those in charge of planning and running the war do not get off without criticism, and its difficult for me to imagine from the text that he actually supported starting the war. He definitely supports winning it. His sometimes exasperation with and sometimes deep love for the Iraqi people also comes clearly through. Few groups, however, get quite as scathing of a review or are as consistently associated with incompetency in the text as the media, which comes off as being less than useless. Given the typically vast disparity between events as they happened and as they were reported, I think that this assessment will go down as fair.
It's still hard at this point to know, but in the future I think the most important part of the text will be judged to be the documentation it provides of the growing interpersonal relationship between the American military on one hand and the Iraqi public on the other. Peter Mansoor, as an American of Arab descent, was in some ways somewhat well positioned to be at the forefront of this deepening understanding between the occupier and the occupied, between the liberated and the liberator, and between the conqueror and the conquered. I think this relationship must be described in this way because I think it was somehow simultaneously all of those things. But also and more importantly, I think it is important to see that for all that complexity, ultimately it was simply face to face relationships between two individuals who were forced by the circumstances to rub elbows, share a life, and try to work together.
And although it would be looking well ahead beyond the events of this book, it ultimately turns out that these personal relationships - and not any weapon of war - that are the decisive factor in the outcome of the war. Ultimately, and perhaps not surprisingly, you win a war against a low level insurgency by being better at making friends than the insurgents are.
Fortunately, in this case, given all the mistakes we made, that didn't prove to be particularly hard.
There are a few things that disappointed me. Really, it must be admitted that it is still too early to begin writing even such unambitious texts as 'Baghdad at Sunrise'. There are a number of points where it seemed that Col. Mansoor deliberately turned away from the train of thought he had been following because of the fact that the war is ongoing. There are times when he says simply, 'We devised a strategy', where I very much would like to have heard the details. As a textbook - and I've little doubt this will become required reading at a war college somewhere - the book would be much improved if the writer didn't have to be so careful to avoid operationally useful information. Likewise, there are times when I think the book would be improved were Mansoor retired and better able to speak his full mind. This is not to say however, that I hope his retirement comes soon. His country still needs men like him.
Because of his frankness concerning his mistakes, Mansoor gets away with trumpeting his own efforts from time to time. He relates how he became to be something of a cult figure to the Iraqi tribal leaders, and how he found himself on Al-Qaeda’s most wanted. But always he does so somewhat sarcastically, comparing his own modest self with the fantasy version of himself others created. Near the end of the book he allows himself a little more latitude describing commands he gave and responsibilities he undertook during the Karbala campaign for which he is in my opinion justifiably proud. Those events in March and April of 2004 I recall as the darkest and scariest days of the whole war - the closest I ever came to feeling that we might lose. It was so welcome to see an inside account of these critical events.
Someday I hope there will be movies about Iraq that are worth watching that portray the war in all its ugly glory without any motivation other than tell a story which is at least mostly true and one would hope central to the larger story. It probably won't be any time soon. It would be too much to hope that Hollywood would pick up 'Baghdad at Sunrise' or Lt. Col. Neil Prakash's equally fascinating and important account as a screenplay. But I hope that it is not too much to hope that Col. Mansoor honors us with a sequel.
Thus, it was with great relish that I picked up Peter Mansoor's account of his first tour of service in Iraq. A brigade commander is uniquely placed to serve in the role of historian. The perspective that it provides is sufficiently high up that the larger picture can be discerned, but not so high up that you are observing the events from a distance.
Peter Mansoor lacks pretension. Rather than attempting to write a history of the Iraq war, he writes simply an account of his experiences. Writing an account of the Iraq War is at this point probably impossible because of the lack of creditable material. Writing an account of Iraq War at this point is too high of an ambition for anyone, much less someone who wasn't centrally placed in it. To my mind, Peter Mansoor was as centrally placed as any author thus far, and it’s to his credit that he doesn't pretend to be able to tell the whole story.
Col. Mansoor opens the book with a brief, candid and endearing biography. He spills his life story in a few brief pages. It is self-effacing. It is honest, and we know it is honest because no one who wanted to impress us would write so unglamorously. This sets the pattern for the entire book.
Humility is the rarest trait in a gifted soldier. Commanders are generally ego-driven, highly competitive, and ambitious individuals. Narcissists and self-trumpeting blow-hards, even incompetent ones, often achieve high rank: the humble man however skilled rarely does. The shelves of military biographies are filled with useless self-serving tracts written by men with a gift for judging others, but no gift for examining themselves. This is the rarest sort of autobiography of all - the one that will be worthy of study because it’s not afraid to admit to failings.
There is way too much in this book to write about in such a short space, and I'm chagrined that I did not attempt this review when the material was fresher in my mind. Col. Mansoor deserves better, but this will have to do.
Pundits on either side of the aisle with have a difficult time dealing with Peter Mansoor's account. For myself, reading the book I got the uncanny feeling that everyone, whether critics or proponents of the war, was in fact describing the same war. I got the feeling reading the text, that whether you were for or against the war, that many of the central claims being made were largely true. I don't know why this should startle me and force me to reevaluate my thinking, because my mantra is, 'The truth is never simple.', but on this subject it did. I guess I found it impossible to reconcile the conflicting accounts and ideologies behind the positive and negative spin and imagine that such two disparate accounts could be describing the same entity. One or both had to be wrong; but, what I discovered reading the text is that did not have to be the case. The both could be right. Everyone trumpeting a simple truth was no better than one of the blind men groping the elephant.
Another thing that really drew me into the book from the beginning was my ability to follow along with almost all of the major events in the book, and compare them to how I had experienced them as an observer getting most of my news by sifting through various stories in the media. As I said, I followed the Iraq war very closely, following along with the different changes in strategy, the minor operations, and the major campaigns. Peter Mansoor however was in the thick of it, responsible for a section of Baghdad that was repeatedly in the news during that first year.
Mansoor's account of that trying year is somehow exhausting, inspiring, and heart-breaking at the same time. I promise you that around page 228, this book will kick you in the stomach, stick a knife in you, and twist it repeatedly. I don't know how soldiers cope with it. I really don't. It hurts me from here all the way across those miles and years. I don't know what to say except that my admiration for the strength, courage, and honor on display is very great indeed.
Peter Mansoor's account is very tough reading. He is open and forthcoming about the mistakes he made that got people killed; and the things that he did that saved lives and - at this point I think we can safely say although he doesn't - helped win the war. He is unsparing on himself, and lavish on the praise of those he served with. He doesn't however sugar coat things and pretend that everyone always used the best of judgment. Prisoner abuse and mistreatment of Iraqis was an ongoing problem that comes up repeatedly in the book. He makes a full accounting of the stupidity he encountered and the disciplinary steps he was forced to take, while keeping the persons involved anonymous.
He is circumspect but suggestive about the failings of those in higher positions. Those in charge of planning and running the war do not get off without criticism, and its difficult for me to imagine from the text that he actually supported starting the war. He definitely supports winning it. His sometimes exasperation with and sometimes deep love for the Iraqi people also comes clearly through. Few groups, however, get quite as scathing of a review or are as consistently associated with incompetency in the text as the media, which comes off as being less than useless. Given the typically vast disparity between events as they happened and as they were reported, I think that this assessment will go down as fair.
It's still hard at this point to know, but in the future I think the most important part of the text will be judged to be the documentation it provides of the growing interpersonal relationship between the American military on one hand and the Iraqi public on the other. Peter Mansoor, as an American of Arab descent, was in some ways somewhat well positioned to be at the forefront of this deepening understanding between the occupier and the occupied, between the liberated and the liberator, and between the conqueror and the conquered. I think this relationship must be described in this way because I think it was somehow simultaneously all of those things. But also and more importantly, I think it is important to see that for all that complexity, ultimately it was simply face to face relationships between two individuals who were forced by the circumstances to rub elbows, share a life, and try to work together.
And although it would be looking well ahead beyond the events of this book, it ultimately turns out that these personal relationships - and not any weapon of war - that are the decisive factor in the outcome of the war. Ultimately, and perhaps not surprisingly, you win a war against a low level insurgency by being better at making friends than the insurgents are.
Fortunately, in this case, given all the mistakes we made, that didn't prove to be particularly hard.
There are a few things that disappointed me. Really, it must be admitted that it is still too early to begin writing even such unambitious texts as 'Baghdad at Sunrise'. There are a number of points where it seemed that Col. Mansoor deliberately turned away from the train of thought he had been following because of the fact that the war is ongoing. There are times when he says simply, 'We devised a strategy', where I very much would like to have heard the details. As a textbook - and I've little doubt this will become required reading at a war college somewhere - the book would be much improved if the writer didn't have to be so careful to avoid operationally useful information. Likewise, there are times when I think the book would be improved were Mansoor retired and better able to speak his full mind. This is not to say however, that I hope his retirement comes soon. His country still needs men like him.
Because of his frankness concerning his mistakes, Mansoor gets away with trumpeting his own efforts from time to time. He relates how he became to be something of a cult figure to the Iraqi tribal leaders, and how he found himself on Al-Qaeda’s most wanted. But always he does so somewhat sarcastically, comparing his own modest self with the fantasy version of himself others created. Near the end of the book he allows himself a little more latitude describing commands he gave and responsibilities he undertook during the Karbala campaign for which he is in my opinion justifiably proud. Those events in March and April of 2004 I recall as the darkest and scariest days of the whole war - the closest I ever came to feeling that we might lose. It was so welcome to see an inside account of these critical events.
Someday I hope there will be movies about Iraq that are worth watching that portray the war in all its ugly glory without any motivation other than tell a story which is at least mostly true and one would hope central to the larger story. It probably won't be any time soon. It would be too much to hope that Hollywood would pick up 'Baghdad at Sunrise' or Lt. Col. Neil Prakash's equally fascinating and important account as a screenplay. But I hope that it is not too much to hope that Col. Mansoor honors us with a sequel.
April 9, 2020
Good morning Iraq
To my liking it was a very long with lots of details, but it a very good book. Col. Mansoor impressed very much with his great memory and of ours his archives which is very impressive. I can see he kept his log up to date. I feel like I was in Iraq with him, since it was a very personal experience that was shared for all of us that like to read military history. I am a U.S. retired officer with combat experience in Vietnam and in Central America. Excellent!!!!!
To my liking it was a very long with lots of details, but it a very good book. Col. Mansoor impressed very much with his great memory and of ours his archives which is very impressive. I can see he kept his log up to date. I feel like I was in Iraq with him, since it was a very personal experience that was shared for all of us that like to read military history. I am a U.S. retired officer with combat experience in Vietnam and in Central America. Excellent!!!!!
July 22, 2020
The oldest has spent some time there as has the son-in-law. Trying to keep up. Especially since we're at least 5 thousand years into this conflict over who controls the Tigris/Euphrates. This is well written for me and according to my sources as accurate as any 'after action' report can be.
October 21, 2023
Excellent book on the Army's attempt to create an Iraqi government. A great read.
December 22, 2009
My sister started referring to Peter Mansoor as "your boyfriend," because I talked about this book so much, and my father thinks the fact that I casually use the term "cordon and search" is hilarious. The text was a little jargony and not great at painting a picture of the war as it comes from within the military (E.g. What does a tracer look like? & characters are very simply drawn, as if being described in a briefing.), so I wouldn’t recommend it to people who haven’t already gotten a visceral sense of the war some other way. I am finally, after watching Generation Kill, reading non-fiction comics, etc. getting a fuller picture of what the Iraq war felt like and this was a very important piece of that puzzle, from the inside. I have a feeling that it could be a lot worse in the jargony regard though, and I appreciated Mansoor’s warm human voice. I had the feeling this man was a wise leader, and therefore I trusted most of his conclusions about the war, but then again it is all from his perspective, so you never know how others saw it differently. I profoundly felt in the writing the disconnection from the Iraqi people when the troops moved from the Martyr's monument to the bigger base. Familiar places and people all disappeared and the war became inhuman and dull again, but even that experience as a reader gave me some real insight. A good read if you don’t have a military background and are curious about how men and women on the ground in Iraq may have perceived the war as it unfolded.
December 5, 2010
This is the memoir of a field-grade officer's tour in Iraq as a Armored brigade commander in 2006. It covers a period where U.S. military doctrine was being debated and changed from active denial that the U.S. was facing an insurgency to fully engaged in counter-insurgency. In particular, as a brigade commander Mansoor was exposed to both decisions from higher up as well as the reality on the ground.
Mansoor demonstrates the capabilities of those in the military. As some recognize (esp. Col Gian Gentile USA), as a practical matter, many in the U.S. military were very aware of tenets of low-intensity warfare from experience in the Balkans, Africa, northern Iraq and around SW Asia and SE Asia. And regardless of what their political masters may say, many have learned that these have to be dealt with, and the U.S. has experience and doctrine to do so, if it is followed.
So the book becomes a memoir of what he faced, how he dealt with the Iraqi people he was there to protect as well as the insurgency he was fighting. And how he handled both as well as the political and military senior leadership of the time (who did not have on-the-ground experience in these same areas). I found it to be candid, and worth reading the thoughts of those who attempted to carry out their countries missions in the unknown of war.
Mansoor demonstrates the capabilities of those in the military. As some recognize (esp. Col Gian Gentile USA), as a practical matter, many in the U.S. military were very aware of tenets of low-intensity warfare from experience in the Balkans, Africa, northern Iraq and around SW Asia and SE Asia. And regardless of what their political masters may say, many have learned that these have to be dealt with, and the U.S. has experience and doctrine to do so, if it is followed.
So the book becomes a memoir of what he faced, how he dealt with the Iraqi people he was there to protect as well as the insurgency he was fighting. And how he handled both as well as the political and military senior leadership of the time (who did not have on-the-ground experience in these same areas). I found it to be candid, and worth reading the thoughts of those who attempted to carry out their countries missions in the unknown of war.
April 4, 2013
I was looking for more of an overview and/or analysis of the Iraq conflict and that certainly colors my short review. What this book gives is the everyday life of an officer. You certainly get a feel for what the military is like and what it was like to live in occupied territory. For example, the author explained operations to you, where a particular location of an enemy mortar team was located and how he or others would fix or improve the situation. I was reading the 100th page when I wondered if I would ever read analysis that wasn't military-fix-the-situation speak... I flipped to the last pages and it read the same. I'm glad I had the chance to learn about part of the situation on the ground, but I now realize it is difficult to expect a career military veteran give objective, critical analysis of the conflict. I would love to get that from someone who actually served and I'll look around more. Any suggestions? I'm also not being fair here because that is not the book he chose to write. Other reviewers said this was the best analysis they had read of the Iraq conflict. That simply is not what this book was in my opinion.
February 7, 2017
Excellent, well written account of US military action in Iraq from a Brigade Commanders view. He describes how US military elements were trained for conventional combat; but instead faced a counterinsurgency campaign, a counterterrorism fight, a peacekeeping operation and a law enforcement operation. That conventional soldiers were also tasked with managing nation building made (and still makes) Iraq a complex battlefield unlike others.
June 30, 2015
The book told the story that reflected accurately my own brief experience in Iraq May-July 2004. Little slow reading in some places as it seems the author provides the standard SITREP of here is everything we did right. However, the conclusion is a great and succinct summation of what was needed and will be needed in the future.
"In the future, U.S. Army Officers must spend as much time in the library as they do in the gym, or risk defeat in this kind of war"
"In the future, U.S. Army Officers must spend as much time in the library as they do in the gym, or risk defeat in this kind of war"
May 7, 2010
Although the style is a little dry and wordy, this is a worthwhile read for the insight provided into the conflict in Iraq and the military response. The author makes some well reasoned arguments for a revised military approach to 21st Century conflicts (although based on the assumption that that the U.S. should be intervening in these conflicts - but that's another debate).
December 30, 2008
Having no military experience, obviously the logistics of operations escaped me; nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this officer's account of conditions in Baghdad during his time there.
I was surprised to read of the many meetings Mr. Mansoor had with the
tribal leaders
I was surprised to read of the many meetings Mr. Mansoor had with the
tribal leaders
June 22, 2011
Interesting and honest account of the War in Iraq, still not far enough into the book to provide more detailed response but I find Mansoor's writing style much more engaging then the majority of non-fiction history books I have read--especially those dealing with wars, etc
September 21, 2008
The text itself is a little dry, but it is the most enlightening document I've found regarding the Iraq conflict.
June 28, 2009
wow its so great and pete too
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews