Two EXCELLENT books about the Iraq War

The March Up

and

The Strongest Tribe

Both by Author Bing West.

Now, the March Up is an interesting read, but you can take it or leave it. The Strongest Tribe on the other hand is downright educational. Its an engaging read, but its educational enough that (if I was a person that made these kind of decisions) I would put it on the mandatory/professional reading list for politicians, diplomats, and military leaders above E-7 or O-4)

First, for important context, who is Bing West?

From wikipedia

>Francis J. "Bing" West Jr. (born May 2, 1940) is an American author, Marine combat veteran and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration.

But ok the real key points here are - the guy was a Marine infantry platoon commander in Vietnam. He was right there in the S***

But also made it up to Col.

But also worked in the White House.

But also worked for the RAND corporation.

The important here is, he has real world experience at all these levels, but also he has the street cred to get access to people.

When he and Gen Ray Smith decide "hey, 1st Marines is in on the Iraq invasion, pushing all the way up to Baghdad, let's ride along and write a book about it" (The March Up), they have the connections to get permission to literally buy an SUV and ride along with the convoy the whole way

and based on his street cred, his "I was an Lt in Vietnam" means he can sit down with the infantry enlisted and junior officers and they'll talk to him.

But his I was a Col, creds mean he can get interview time with the General too

and his White House cred means he can get to the point interviews with the actual Bush administration decision makers. No doors were closed to him.

AND he speaks from actual subject matter expertise.

Like, when everyone was all sunshine about the rewriting of American counterinsurgency doctrine under Peter Pace, Gen pace assembled an entire think tank to make that rewrite happen. Bing West was one of the academics on that staff. He literally helped re-write "the book" on counterinsurgency.

>Interesting side note - part of the process for reshaping COIN strategy came from square one - study, go back, find ALL the counterinsurgencies in the modern era, Vietnam, the Troubles, etc and see what did they try, what worked what didn't, and why?" and oh BTW in Vietnam he was there. So sure enough one tactic he believed strongly in, was the whole "if you want the populace to side with you, you have to prove you are invested, and prove you can provide some safety. You gotta live among them. Can't own the town unless you live in the town. Which is what they tried in Vietnam, as West wrote about in his book "The Village", and reading it I was like, "yo.... I recognize this", because sure enough, it shed light on why, on my Iraq deployment, we picked the most defensible building in our sector, bought it, sandbagged it up, and LIVED IN the city we needed to assume control of.

Bottom line, As a former Marine, former academic researchers/think tank guy/former White House cabinet level staffer, this is a guy who knows how to research, has subject matter expertise at multiple levels of war and policy, and has access to face to face interaction with people that will open up to him, all the way from Marine Private First Class up to Undersecretary of State, so his book "The Strongest Tribe" as a chronicle and analysis of

how did we fight the insurgency in Iraq, what went wrong, what went right, and what changed things for better or worse

is excellently written and insightful. (Also, he pulls NO punches. He openly discusses which decision makers made dumb dumb dumb decisions. He tells it just how it is on Paul Bremer for example.)

I actually say that the most interesting pair of parallels books which SHOULDN'T be about the same thing, and yet, they kind of are

are The March Up paired with From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman (yes, aware of the many criticisms of Friedman)

But between the two books, set decades apart, in different conflicts, there is a very notable consistency in the end theme of how Middle Eastern intertribal politics cannot be forced into a Western Template.

The landscape is going to be dominated by various factions looking out for their own peoples' interests and maintaining a level of mistrust. You can't just stitch together a new pretty "national flag" and say "ok fam, just like work together eh?"