Washington's War

by Michael Rose

In June 1775, George Washington commanded a band of rebels who were, in the eyes of the British, nothing more than a collection of "vagrants, deserters and thieves." Yet he led them in a revolution against the British, which ended with an American victory. Washington succeeded in defeating the most powerful army in the world—not by engaging in conventional warfare, at which the British excelled, but by waging an insurgency campaign of ambush and indirect attacks.


In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, and in the years that have followed, America has found itself fighting a widespread popular insurrection with an army trained for conventional warfare. Like King George and his advisers, President Bush and his cabinet misunderstood the nature of the problem facing them and underestimated its scale. Both imperial Britain and modern American failed to commit enough troops early on, nor could they resolve the dilemmas of counter-insurgency: how to wage military action and isolate the insurgents without alienating the local population. The British Army learned from its mistakes to remain a dominant world power; the Americans, by contrast, seem to be forgetting the lessons of their founding fathers.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Michael Rose was raised on a small family dairy farm in Upstate New York. He retired after serving in executive positions for several global multinational enterprises. He has been a non-executive director for three public companies headquartered in the US. He lives and writes in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Written with some passion by a former British General, while the fighting in Iraq was still intense, the book compares the American War of Independence with the Iraqi insurgency (or if you prefer the American insurgency with the Iraqi war of independence) and poses the question of why a country founded through an insurgent war of liberation against a foreign power was unable to take insight and understanding from their own past and apply it to the conduct of operations in Iraq (or for that matter other conflicts).

Unfortunately since the book doesn't address itself to institutional learning, training or military preparations but rather compares, in a deeply felt manner, the course of the War of Independence with the, as then, continuing fighting in Iraq, almost on a blow by blow basis, so that bigger questions doesn't get answered.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bold book that compares the american revolution to the current war in Iraq. The point is that using the same logic our government is using to label Iraqi fighters as "insurgents" and "terrorists" we can come to the conclusion that our nation was founded by "Insurgents" and "Terrorists". The paralell quotes from George Bush and King George are shocking in their similarities. The concepts presented in this book are obvious but I was still impressed by how effectively it blew the lid off of the bush administration smear campaign that labels anyone who resists american occupation an "enemy combatant" thus depriving them of rights under international law. You come to see that if george washington were currently fighting the war that he fought back then against us, hypothetically, he would probably end up hooded and tortured in quantanamo bay with the rest of the "terrorsist, insurgent, enemy combatants". This situation is by far one of the most ridiculous and sickeningly unjust in the history of warfare. Thank you to the author for being brave enough to draw this paralell and be uncompromising in his analysis. Read it!

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author draws some compelling parallels between the American Revolution and the Iraq war. Book mostly focuses on the History of the Revolutionary War, and the nature of insurgency warfare in general.