Ricks "Fiasco"

Jack Kelly reviews Ricks' book on the Iraq war after major combat operations. Like me, he finds it a mixed bag. I have not finished yet, and it is taking me a long time for various reasons. I think most of Kelly's observations are pretty good, particularly this criticism:

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The more serious weakness of "Fiasco" is Mr. Ricks discusses the enemy only to illume U.S. mistakes, real and imagined. He sheds no light on the relative importance of al Qaeda, the ex-Baathists, and Iran in this conflict, and how they have interacted. He says nothing of the importance al Qaeda has placed on Iraq, or of the losses it has suffered there. It's like reading a history of World War II that mentions the Germans, the Japanese and the Italians only in passing.

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Like many of the critics of the war, Ricks tends to put all the responsibility for enemy actions on the US rather than acknowledge that it is possible that the enemy would have fought whatever strategy the US used to deal with them. In fact, most enemies do. By making the US so powerful that it can create enemies, he attempts to put all responsiblity on only one side fo the war. That is the way liberals tend to look at warfare and it has not served them well, and it certainly does not serve this country well.

There is no evidence that he examined the possibility that the enemy was self generating because it feared the results of free elections and free people in Iraq. When you look at what the enemy says, those fears appear to be a more powerful motivator than any surly looks from US troops.