Iraq War First Drafts

I’ve been going back and re-reading some of the best early books on the Iraq War; books like George Packer’s The Assassins’ Gate (an outstanding book on the failures of U.S. occupation policy in Iraq from 2003-2004), Tom Ricks’ Fiasco (a similar, if slightly less detailed book), and Evan Wright’s controversial but no less fascinating book Generation Kill, about his experience embedded in the 1^st Recon Battalion in 2003. Nate Fick’s fabulous One Bullet Away (focusing on his training in Marine OCS and his experience as part of the 1^st Recon Battalion in the 2003 invasion) is a little different, written as it is by a combat veteran, but it is every it as compelling, if not more so. Even though none of these writers are professional historians (we should be so lucky), the outlines of future historiography on the early period Iraq War have clearly been set. In essence, the failures of the first 3 years of the Iraq war boil down to a failure of imagination (Packer), and of strategic leadership (Ricks), combined with the almost miraculous efforts of 20-something majors, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals, and privates who were struggling to make something out of nothing in an alien land and alien culture. We haven’t seen as much on Afghanistan yet, but we will, starting with Sebastian Junger’s engrossing War, about those brave Battle Company soldiers out on the very tip of the spear in the Korengal Valley.

These people are our generation's Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, and Stanley Karnow.