Category Archives: Books

Book: “The War Within,” by Bob Woodward

war-within.jpg“The War Within” is Bob Woodward’s fourth book about the inner workings of the Bush administration during wartime. He was granted a tremendous amount of access, including frequent conversations with George Bush. Bush must have deemed the previous books to be fair, since he kept the door wide open.

Woodward’s books are a first draft of history. Right now, the only histories of the Iraq war come from reporters. Down the road, historians will get involved, writing a different kind of book with a broader sweep and time’s illuminating perspective. But they will rely heavily on the basic reporting done by Woodward, Thomas Ricks, and others. If you don’t want to wait 10-15 years for such a book, read Bob Woodward.

“The War Within” is a chronological account of numerous meetings, conversations, speeches, and anything else related to the war–a huge amount of trenchwork reporting by one of the best. A lot of it seems mundane. But it’s all part of the story, all glimpses of history. You see how policy, strategy, and thinking gradually evolved; how ideas arose, and many of them fell by the wayside; and the interplay of personalities and their impact on decisions. It humanizes what happened behind government’s closed doors.

Woodward’s third book, “State of Denial,” ended with the war going badly–a bloody insurgency, the country headed toward civil war, Sunnis and Shiites slaughtering each other, and way too many American soldiers coming home in body bags. Sort of like where Thomas Ricks’s “Fiasco” ended.

As “The War Within” begins, everyone knows things are going badly. We’re losing, and nobody knows what to do. There is no strategy, hadn’t been one since the invasion, and much of the book details the search for one. We see different entities embark on studies to chart a new course–the Iraq Study Committee, the Pentagon, Condi Rice’s office, and more. It’s depressing to realize that for three years plus, we foundered aimlessly, despite all the optimistic public assurances.

We eavesdrop on countless meetings, and listen to conversations involving the President, Rumsfield, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, numerous military leaders, and others. (Though the presidential campaign is in full swing, Barack Obama makes only cameo appearances.) Some persons (like Rumsfield) emerge looking badly, but there are no villains–just people with different opinions and perspectives, all desperately wanting us to succeed in Iraq.

Overall, George Bush looks pretty good. He’s decisive, he pulls in information from various sources, he trusts his generals, and he shows what I felt was good wisdom in many situations. He doesn’t seem very engaged intellectually with anything involving nuance, but the war has his attention. His legendary pride in making decisions from his “gut” is disconcerting (something Woodward skewers in the final few pages). Bush constantly talks about “winning,” but can’t define what it means to win. He keeps asking for, and publicizing, Vietnam-era stats–body counts, raids, persons detained, etc.–which others know are meaningless in an insurgency; he never gets beyond that mentality. But overall, my view of Bush improved.

An influential, domineering figure is retired general Jack Keane, a straight talker. In separate meetings, he reams out Rumsfield, Peter Pace (Joint Chiefs chairman), and General George Casey (Iraq theatre commander), telling them exactly where their leadership is lacking. He outlines what needs to be done (counter-insurgency strategies), and who should lead it (David Petraus).

The idea of a surge in troops arises–a “gamble,” as it is repeatedly described (thus the title of Thomas Ricks’s book, “The Gamble”). The surge is discussed for about a year (and Obama was criticized for taking 2 months to develop a new strategy for Afghanistan?). But though they agree that more troops need to be sent, they don”t know what those troops will do. The two principle generals in charge of the war, Casey and John Abizaid (head of the regional Central Command), don’t request or want additional troops. In fact, both want to reduce troops. Abizaid’s view is that the only way to win was to get out.

There’s a surreal meeting between Casey and Abizaid where they say, “It looks like the President is going to send us thousands of additional troops. We need to decide what to do with them.” Casey, in particular, considers it backtracking–that the additional troops will take back jobs they’d been turning over to Iraqis.

A continuing complaint, voiced by many, is that we never had enough troops in Iraq to do the job. And yet, the surge is strongly opposed by various military entities, who argue that our total military is stretched way too thin, and that surge troops will remove our “strategic reserve,” the troops available to respond to another crisis should one arise. There is constant criticism that our troops are over-extended with lengthy tours.

Condi Rice also opposes the surge, repeatedly asking, “What will their mission be?” And nobody really has an answer. She fears that we’ll send an extra 30,000 troops, who will do the same things already being done, and with the same results.

However, the real difference is not so much the additional troops as the change in leadership–David Petraus–and the pursuit of an actual strategy. By the summer of 2008, violence is down substantially.

After Petraus takes over, a variety of problems arise politically. The Democrats seize control of the House, and Nancy Pelosi injects her ignorant self into the fray, insisting that we begin withdrawing troops right away. Plus, Petraus’s military higher-ups prove unsupportive. Bush and Cheney step in big-time to undergird Petraus. Good for them.

It’s a fascinating book. Woodward always gets information nobody else has. Now I’ll need to go back and read his other books, not to mention his first book about the Obama presidency due this fall.

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Book: Helmet for My Pillow

helmet-for-my-pillow.gifI’ve been reading World War 2 books since fifth grade, when I read William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler,” a book that, truthfully, was lost on me at that age.

In all my reading, I never got around to reading some of the major memoirs from the Pacific war. Three books are usually mentioned: “Helmet for My Pillow,” “With the Old Breed,” and “Guadalcanal Diary.” I read the latter in high school, but never read the other two. A serious oversight.

However, the new “Pacific” series is based partly on those two books, so they’ve been republished. I figured they would show up at Sam’s Club, which is the cheapest place to buy books. And last weekend, “Helmet for My Pillow” did.

So I bought it, and read it. At 300 pages, a fairly quick read.

I was expecting more of a battlefield book. But Robert Leckie, who enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, sort of partied his way through a lot of the war, pulling pranks, absconding with food, and getting into all kinds of mischief. He was on Guadalcanal, but didn’t see the heavy action most soldiers did. That was followed by about 10 months of what he called “The Great Debauch” in Australia. In New Britain, he killed three Japanese on a jungle trail. Then, on Peleliu, he really got into thick combat, and was eventually wounded. That ended the war for him.  

Leckie is an excellent writer, a journalist even before enlisting. I enjoyed the book and never lost interest. And yet, I’m not sure why this is regarded as a classic.

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Book: Tears in the Darkness

tears-in-the-darkness200.jpgI remember reading a book about the Bataan Death March back in high school. I was astounded by the cruelty of the Japanese. But “Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath,” published in 2009, takes the horror much further. The Japanese committed terrible atrocities in the Philippines, and that underscores our benevolence as conquerors in rebuilding Japan. We are good people. The Japanese, back then, were decidedly not.

This book’s center is Ben Steele, a US soldier who experiences a little of everything. He fights the Japanese for three months on Bataan. He endures the death march, and then the horrific train ride to the prison camp. We see men dying constantly, and being brutalized and killed for no reason by sadistic Japanese guards. Steele survives a work detail in the far south building a road, then lands in a POW hospital in Manila. After getting well, he and hundreds of other POWs are crammed into the hold of a “hell ship” and taken to Japan as slave laborers. He’s there when Japan surrenders. The book drifts away from Steele, telling the stories of many other soldiers, but keeps coming back to him.

The subtitle is a bit misleading. The death march doesn’t start until 170 pages into the book. Up to that point, it’s all about the battle for Bataan, starting with the Jap invasion the day after Pearl Harbor. I hadn’t read much about that. Our troops, joined by Filipino troops, actually fought very well against the combat-hardened Japanese. They might have even prevailed except for some huge mistakes by General Douglas MacArthur (who doesn’t fare well in the book, at least regarding his command in the Philippines). When our troops on Bataan surrendered–76,000 Americans and Filipinos–it was the largest defeat in American history.

The authors also tell the stories of some Japanese soldiers. The whole culture of the Japanese army was based on cruelty, including to their fellow soldiers. It helped explain their casual brutality toward POWs. We see the Japanese slaughter hundreds and hundreds of Filipino prisoners, bayoneting them. But we also see Japanese soldiers who refused to take part. It reminded me of the German soldiers in “Ordinary Men” who likewise abstained from executing Jews in Poland.

I’m fascinated by how ordinary people can so easily descend into brutality. “Ordinary Men” showed that, as did “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” “The Railway Man,” “The Rape of Nanking,” and to bring us to the present, “The Dark Side,” where America embraced torture for a short time after 9/11. (And as a fiction entry, there’s “The Lord of the Flies.”)

The mistreatment of our POWs in “Tears in the Darkness” got me so worked up that I wanted revenge. But then the authors turn a corner with the war crimes trial of the Japanese general who commanded the invasion of the Philippines (and was relieved of command shortly after we surrendered). The circumstances are far too complicated to explain here, but suffice it to say, there was a strong case for not holding him responsible for the atrocities. I’m still conflicted about it. The American military tribunal was pretty much a done deal–they went through the motions of a trial, but he was going to be killed in the end. For the authors to fling 350 pages of atrocities at the reader, and then suddenly make you sympathetic toward the Japanese general…I tell you, it was fascinating.

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Iraqi Eyes on the Example of the American Soldier

Moment-of-truth-in-Iraq.jpgI previously reviewed Michael Yon’s book “Moment of Truth in Iraq,” which tells of his experiences while embedded with US troops in Iraq. The book talks a lot about how American soldiers are viewed by the Iraqi soldiers whom they train and fight alongside.

Yon writes:

“The American soldier is the most dangerous man in the world, and the Iraqis had to learn that before they would trust or respect us. But it was when they understood that these great-hearted warriors, who so enjoyed killing the enemy, are even happier helping to build a school or to make a neighborhood safe that we really got their attention.”

He says that before the invasion, Iraqis looked down on American soldiers. They thought we were soft, hiding behind our technology. Even after conquering the country quickly, they could chalk that up to our superior equipment. But over time, they observed the American willingness to fight and suffer.

“It was only after, when they saw that our people were better street fighters, too, and that American combat soldiers would match or outlast them in the heat, that they began to understand. At this point, the man to man respect was there.”

Not only that, but Iraqi soldiers watched, and tried to copy, their American counterparts. For them, it was a matter of learning from the best. I loved this part:

“Iraqi soldiers and police constantly emulated marines and soldiers. When he got back from missions, SSG Lee worked out. The Iraqis would watch him and start doing their own exercises. Lee was just being himself, and the young Iraqis wanted to be like him….By showing that the strongest soldier is also disciplined, just, and compassionate, soldiers like SSG Lee were winning the moral high ground in Iraq and devastating Al Qaeda. I saw an Iraqi Army lieutenant named Hamid treating prisoners with respect, because he had seen American soldiers do it.”

In the Iraqi army, officers had led from the rear. Now they learned a different type of leadership. “The Iraqis were amazed that American officers and sergeants would lead from the front into the worst situations…..Soon the Iraqi officers who survived and mattered were leading from the front.” He adds, “Iraqi soldiers might be a lot of things, but cowards they are not….Courage is not in short supply in Iraq.”

Yon writes that everywhere he went, Iraqis responded to strong leadership.

“Leading the Iraqis by example worked, but cost us casualties. The American combat soldiers I was with in Mosul in 2005 were not there to play it safe. Their goal was to win. If it cost blood, then blood it would cost. The Iraqis were wild for that sort of leadership.”

The Abu Ghraib and torture abuses left stains which had to be overcome, and which initially deprived us of the moral high ground which is crucial to counter-insurgency. But, Yon writes:

“Even during the outrages of the Fallujah-flattenings and prisoner rape-torture debacles, Iraqis never turned against us the way they would later turn against al Qaeda. We were never completely evil in their eyes. Dumb, overbearing, disrespectful, but not evil….Though Iraqis know we were torturing Iraqi prisoners earlier in the war, overwhelmingly they accept that we have straightened up and that Americans now treat prisoners very well….

“They knew we did a lot of stupid and overbearing things, even brutal and criminal things at times. But they also could not deny that, on the whole, our people had a heart for them, or at least for their kids.”

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Book: Fiasco, the Early Years of the Iraq War

Fiasco150.jpg

“Fiasco: The American Adventure in Iraq,” tells about the Iraq war from 2002-2005–the pre-war planning through to the darkest period, just before the surge. Thomas Ricks, the author, is a highly-respected reporter who specializes in military affairs. He’s well plugged in to the military, and they speak their mind to him.

In addition to original interviews with military and civilian officials, Ricks draws on a vast amount of source material–countless internal military reports and studies; diaries, letters, and blog posts of soldiers; official combat histories of the military units; and practically anything else that was written about Iraq. The amount of research and reporting is overwhelming. If you want to understand the early years of the Iraq war, this is the book for you. Until somebody writes a better one.

The most interesting parts, to me, involved candid, real-time words from troops on the ground. We see their professionalism, their extreme competency as a fighting force (as in the section about the invasion). We also see their frustrations with the inadequate planning, the insufficient resources, and the lack of manpower from Day One.

I hate the title. Way too agendish. And yet, by the time I reached the end, I realized it was a pretty accurate description of the war up to 2005. Things were a royal mess, and Ricks tells why. Almost everything points right back to the lack of planning, and the insistence by Don Rumsfield and his deputies that Iraq would be a walk in the park (despite warnings from the military).

The lead-up to the war was truly a joke. Don Rumsfield continually thwarted the military’s attempts to bring sufficient troops. His agenda was to disprove the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, showing that we could conquer Iraq with a relatively small force. The military, looking beyond to the occupation, wanted at least 250,000 troops, but Rumsfield’s initial proposal called for just 10,000 troops. The Generals repeatedly warned him beforehand that we would need a huge presence to occupy the country. And since we didn’t, the country descended into looting and chaos. Rumsfield proved his point, at the expense of years of conflict and thousands of lives.

Ricks documents how a number of Bush Administration people, especially around Cheney and Rumsfield, were determined to get us into a war with Iraq, and readily disregarded any arguments against doing so. The frustrated military got the message that it didn’t matter what they had to say–we were going to invade Iraq one way or the other. And even upon realizing they would be fighting a war, they weren’t allowed to adequately prepare for it.

Ricks goes behind doors to all kinds of meetings, delves into numerous military studies, and eavesdrops on conversations between military men who can’t believe what’s happening.

The military knew what needed to be done. The knowledge was there, not only for taking the country but for occupying it and stamping out any insurgency. Bush himself kept his hands off, fully trusting his generals. But Rumsfield continually over-ruled the military leaders.

We also see how the people around Rumsfield were in love with Ahmed Chalabi, the crooked Iraq ex-pat whose falsehoods propelled us into the war, and whom the CIA always knew was in Iran’s pocket.

We see General Tommy Franks, having conquered the country, become disengaged at a crucial time as he prepares to retire soon after taking Baghdad.

Paul Bremer, the civilian put in charge of the occupation, was a disaster. The Iraqi military consisted of men accustomed to discipline and taking orders. They could have been a huge asset. Instead, Bremer disbanded the military, putting tens of thousands of young men out of work and fueling an insurgency. As if that wasn’t enough, he decided that any members of the Ba’ath party couldn’t hold government jobs. So all the people who knew how to keep the country running–civil servants, school administrators, you name it–were left unemployed and told, “You don’t have a role in Iraq’s future.” More recruits for al Qaeda. Bremer did other stupid, stupid things which had the effect of pushing Iraq further into bloodshed and instability. And yet, GW Bush still awarded him the Medal of Freedom. Go figure.

Ricks deals with the mass detainment of Iraqis, which culminated in Abu Ghraib and torture. We see General David Petraus in the early days of the occupation, when he commanded the 101st Airborne in Mosul. His strategy in pacifying his part of Iraq is contrasted with the brute-force tactics of General Odierno and the 4th Infantry Division, which continually knocked down doors in the middle of the night, violated all kinds of Islamic cultural norms, and indiscriminately rounded up large numbers of Iraqi men of all ages. They didn’t bother trying to sort out the good from the bad, as Petraus did, but just sent them all to Abu Ghraib, flooding the system with lots of innocent people.

I was fascinated by Ricks’ account of the two battles for Fallujah–first in the spring of 2004 (called off by civilian leaders just short of victory), and then again in the fall after insurgents had had a chance to heavily fortify the city. That second battle is regarded as the most fierce combat the US military has experienced since the Vietnam War. The taking of Tal Afar was also fascinating. Brilliant strategic thinking.

You get the impression that we would be much, much better off if the civilian leaders had stayed out of it, had just let the military develop all the plans for conquering and occupying Iraq.

The book ends with the war going badly, with Shiites running rampant in torturing and killing Sunnis, and Sunnis and Al Qaeda killing indiscriminately. The “fiasco” is in full bloom. But changes are on the horizon. We see David Petraus and a new team beginning to take shape, and preparations being made for this thing called “the surge.” Ricks deals with that in his second book, “The Gamble.”

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Book: The Bottom Billion

Paul_Collier_The_Bottom_Billion_sm.jpg“The Bottom Billion” is a fascinating study of the poorest countries in the world. Paul Collier, a former official with the World Bank, is one of the world’s leading experts on African economies. He has worked with, and studied, the dynamics that keep a country down.

Collier says the previous paradigm was one billion people in rich countries and five billion in poor countries. But now, he says, “We must learn to turn the familiar numbers upside down: a total of five billion people who are already prosperous, or at least are on track to be so, and one billion who are stuck at the bottom.”

The bottom billion consists of people in 58 countries. “Their reality,” he writes, “is the 14th century: civil war, plague, ignorance.” Africa is the main problem, but some such countries exist in Central Asia.

Collier and his colleagues and students (he teaches Economics at Oxford) have done gobs of empirical studies which shed light on the problems of the bottom billion. Being a good academic, he warns you when he uses results which haven’t been subjected to peer review, and therefore shouldn’t be taken as gospel.

Collier examines four characteristics common among the bottom-billion countries.

1. Going through a civil war. The poorer the country when conflict starts, the longer it lasts. After going through a civil war, the risk of going through another one doubles. Only half of the countries in which a conflict has ended manage to make it through a decade without relapsing into war. The poorer you are, the great the risk of relapse.

2. The predominance of revenue from natural resources. Sierra Leone’s economy, for instance, is dominated by diamonds; politicians fight and maneuver to get their fingers in that pot. With so much attention focused on natural resources, other types of business are never nourished. The country becomes a one trick pony.

3. Being landlocked with bad neighbors. Many African countries have no access to the sea–Mali, Niger, Chad, Uganda, Zambia, Botswana, Rwanda, Burundi, and others. Landlocked countries rely on having good neighbors, who either provide access to the sea or provide a good market. Switzerland, though landlocked, is surrounded by its market–healthy countries like Germany, Italy, and France. But Uganda is stuck with Kenya, which has no incentive to build roads to Uganda and has too many problems to be a good market for anything produced in Uganda.

4. Bad governance and poor economic policies. Such countries can’t attract investment capital, because they are perceived as a poor risk. With no opportunities, educated, quality people leave to seek their way in other countries. Rebel or coup leaders, upon seizing power, put fellow soldiers into important government posts, with responsibility over areas they know nothing about, resulting in increased dysfunction and corruption.

Collier also hit other aspects of this subject, such as the use, and misuse, of foreign aid. And in a
surprising chapter, he presents excellent arguments for military intervention in
certain circumstances.

The book is filled with fascinating insights backed by statistical research. I gained a fresh and deep understanding of why bottom-billion countries tend to stay at the bottom.

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A Values-Driven Counter-Insurgency

Moment-of-truth-in-Iraq.jpgAfter taking command in 2007, General David Petraus wrote a letter on “Values” to all of his soldiers.

“Our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right. Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy. This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we–not our enemies–occupy the moral high ground…..

“Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary….

“In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also human beings.”

Sounds good–but does it work? Yes, it does. Michael Yon shows that over and over in his book, “Moment of Truth in Iraq.”

Early on, the American military tried to impose its will with brute force, the idea that, “All these people understand is force.” That didn’t work in Vietnam, and it didn’t work in Iraq. The Special Forces people, and men like David Petraus, knew that heavy-handedness would fail and only serve to recruit more insurgents. But the people in charge at the beginning, both civilian and conventional military commanders, didn’t  “get it.”

Petraus instituted what Yon describes as a “value driven counter-insurgency.” He writes:

“Some think all of this talk of values is a sign of weakness. But in a counterinsurgency, our greatest resource is not the overwhelming firepower we can bring to bear upon the enemy, or the high technology we can use to locate and identify him. Our most powerful weapon is our values.” In a counterinsurgency, he says, “The superior fighting force occupying the moral high ground holds a commanding position.”

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Book: Moment of Truth in Iraq

Moment-of-truth-in-Iraq.jpgSomeone compared Michael Yon to Ernie Pyle, the World War 2 reporting legend, and that got me interested in reading Yon’s book, “Moment of Truth in Iraq.” Yon, a former Green Beret, has spent more time embedded with combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other reporter. I like that kind of writing. And I loved this book. I learned much that I didn’t know, and have had to alter some of my views.

I wouldn’t compare his writing to Ernie Pyle, who wrote fascinating human interest stories about American soldiers in the midst of war. Yon does share Pyle’s admiration for American soldiers, and he gets up close and personal. He, like Pyle, lives with soldiers on the Sharp Edge. But the writing style is different.

Gen. David Petraus praises the book. “He’s fearless…provides a candid, soldier’s eye view…from the very unique perspective of being there with them for weeks and months at a time.”

Yon goes into battle many times and describes those firefights and the acts of valor he witnesses. I was deeply moved by many little vignettes. However, it’s not a sugar-coated book. He’s an objective reporter with no agenda to pursue or legacy to protect, so he points out warts when he sees them. But overall, I came away from the book thinking, “Wow, things are going a lot better in Iraq than I thought.”

Yon arrived in Iraq in December 2004, when things were going very badly and our civilian leaders were in the “State of Denial” described in Bob Woodward’s book. But over the next several years (Yon’s book was published in 2008), you see things turn around, particularly under the leadership of David Petraus. Yon doesn’t deal with the dramas surrounding the budding Iraqi government, and only tangentially with the US civilian leadership. Rather, his focus is on soldiers on the front lines, and how a change in approach–the application of counter-insurgency principles–made a vast difference.

And let me emphasize: the turn-around Yon describes occurred on George Bush’s watch (though mostly after Rumsfield left and Cheney was marginalized). Obama has wisely continued the approach he inherited.

yon150.jpgYon (left) superbly pictures the principles of counter-insurgency in action. You really need to see these principles lived out to appreciate them. Thomas Ricks talks about counter-insurgency theory in “Fiasco,” which ends just as David Petraus is taking over, and he describes a couple major success stories–one in 2003 when Petraus commanded the 101st Airborne in Mosul, and then later in Tal Afar (both of which were basically rogue operations by individual commanders who “got it”). But counter-insurgency principles permeate Yon’s book, and you can’t help but realize, “We should have been doing this all along.” Yon, as a Green Beret, was trained in these principles, so he understands what he’s looking at.

Some of the other things I took away from the book:

  • The perpetual lack of troops. We didn’t go in with nearly enough troops, and we’ve never had enough since. The surge helped (and we must be careful not to draw down prematurely).
  • Yon describes what we’re doing as a “values-driven counter-insurgency.”
    He criticizes brute-force tactics common earlier in the war, along with the
    torture and abuse of prisoners. He continually stresses the critical
    importance, in an insurgency, of occupying the moral high ground. I’ve
    read about this, but Yon gives vivid examples of the principle in
    action. This, more than anything (more than the surge), has turned
    things around for us in Iraq.
  • Al Qaeda’s brutality has turned the Iraqi people against it. Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, he says. Iraqis realize that the Americans, not Al Qaeda, have Iraq’s best interests at heart. He gives many examples of the senseless brutality of Al Qaeda (like baking an 11-year-old boy and feeding him to his parents). He also shows the many ways Iraqi citizens are now helping us (calling in or pointing out the location of IEDs, or emailing Google Earth maps showing where to find terrorists).
  • The Iraqi soldiers have gotten a bad wrap. Yon goes into battle with Iraqi soldiers, and talks to American soldiers who have fought alongside them. We’ve heard the negative stories, about Iraqis sitting on the sidelines while Americans do the fighting. But Yon describes well-trained Iraqis who never back down from a fight, and who are ferocious allies in fighting Al Qaeda. This is an undertold aspect of the war.
  • He points out that a hidden skill set of the military is how to run a city–invaluable knowledge in restoring normality in Iraq. He says that knowledge comes from running large military bases around the world, where officers must deal with water, electricity, sanitation, sewage, police, courts, prisons, fire, schools, and everything else that a city deals with.
  • Yon shows the sheiks uniting behind the Americans, especially in Anbar. We think of them as being religiously motivated, but Yon says, “Shieks are businessmen. Ultimately the sheiks of Anbar turned against al Qaeda because al Qaeda was bad for business.”
  • During the fierce battle for Baqubah, Yon describes how, throughout the battle, Americans worked with Iraqi civilian leaders to deal with city services even as they tried to subdue the city. “[Commanders] alternated between teatime, firefight, teatime again, while figuring out food distribution, firefight, raid, IED, collapse from exhaustion, firefight, teatime, while arguing about some water pipes, and then firefight again.”
  • Yon depicts American officers showing incredible wisdom in dealing with difficult situations, some in harrowing situations.
  • Yon dismisses the idea of partitioning Iraq into Kurd, Sunni, and Shia areas, as has been proposed. He argues that though these groups don’t get along, and don’t mind slaughtering each other, Iraqis consider themselves foremost to be Iraqis.
  • Yon also spent time with British troops in Basra, and tagged along with them into some ferocious firefights. He highly respects the British.

In September 2007, Yon returned to the States and was dismayed at the “tremendous gulf between what was actually happening in Iraq and what people in America thought was happening. It was as if the inertia of the bad news from the previous three years had made it impossible to take in new information.”

He had seen a transformation in Iraq which he describes as miraculous, but Americans back home seemed oblivious. Yon writes, “It was far too early to declare victory. But it was definitely time to declare serious progress.”

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Books: North of Montana, Judas Horse

AprilSmithBooks225.jpgI just finished two books by April Smith, a new author to me. “North of Montana” and “Judas Horse” are two Black Lizard/Vintage Crime mysteries featuring Ana Grey, an FBI investigator. The books were written 15 years apart–1994 and 2008–which is a bit odd. But I went right from one to the other and didn’t feel like I had missed much in Ana’s life.

“North of Montana” revolves around a Hollywood star’s claim that her doctor got her addicted to painkillers. Ana Grey is assigned to investigate–a chump chase, not anything she wanted. But swirling around this investigation are a whole bunch of other threads, all of which are tied up, one way or another, by the end of the book:

  • What happened to Ana’s father, an El Salvadoranian?
  • Ana’s relationship with her happily-married partner.
  • Her relationship with Poppy, the bigoted cop/grandfather who raised her.
  • The superior who squelches her quest for a promotion.
  • The two Hispanic orphans, their mother gunned down, whom she is told are her cousins.

“North of Montana” was, in short, a wonderful book. Not a murder mystery, which I normally gravitate to; not a high-action book. But there was a lot going on, and it held my rapt attention.

“Judas Horse” was very different, yet equally superb. Ana Grey goes undercover to infiltrate a group of eco-terrorists. Smith didn’t have lots of threads going in this one, but focused on Ana’s undercover work and the collection of interesting personalities among these misguided criminals. Interestingly, Smith educates the reader about ecological causes, particularly regarding animals (mustang horses especially), and you feel sympathy for those causes (though I’m already inclined in that direction). And yet, you object strongly to the methods used to advance these causes. A variety of elements came together at the end, though not in the ways I was expecting. She surprised me in a number of ways.

April Smith is a skilled writer who knows all about dramatic tension
and conflict. She is a thrice Emmy-nominated writer-producer with lots
of credits on TV series and movies. I cannot emphasize how much I enjoyed her books. April Smith rocks!

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Books: Mind’s Eye, The Return

mindseye-return300.jpgDuring the last week I read two books by Swedish writer Hakan Nesser. Here is yet another very good Swedish mystery writer.

Nesser’s protagonist is Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. I found nothing special about Veeteren (though I initially thought the same of Henning Mankell’s hero, Kurt Wallander). Perhaps he will grow on me. Nevertheless, the plots were quite engaging.

Both books feature a team of police investigators trying to solve murders (as do Mankell’s books). The Swedes aren’t into the rugged individualist, man-against-the-system types common in American mysteries. In both books, interestingly, the investigation revolves around someone whom Van Veeteren suspects has been falsely convicted and imprisoned for a murder. And in both books, the investigation is set in motion when the accused is killed.

In “Mind’s Eye,” a man is sentenced to a mental institution for killing his wife, and then is brutally killed in his cell. The beginning chapters, about this man’s court case, are utterly fascinating. It’s a complex plot which twists and turns before reaching a satisfying conclusion.

In “The Return,” Leopold Verhaven spends 12 years in prison for killing his wife, is free for a while, and then goes back to prison for another 12 years for killing another woman. On the day he is released from prison the second time, he is murdered. Did someone seek revenge? Or was he murdered by the actual murderer? Did Verhaven–himself a complex, disturbed person–commit one murder, both…or none?

While I was not particularly taken by Van Veeteren, the conclusion to “The Return” surprised me with its uniqueness, and made me want to read more about Veeteren. There’s another Van Veeteren book in English, and no doubt others awaiting translation from the Swedish.

Nesser’s books, like most of my favorite mysteries, are published under the Black Lizard imprint from Vintage Books (part of Random House).

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