I previously reviewed the book “The Good Soldiers” by David Finkel about an infantry battalion that was part of the surge, and that led me to read a book that gives the anti-Iraq war perspective. This book by Phyllis Bennis certainly fits that description. There are quotes from a report by the National institute for Strategic Studies describing the war as creating “…an incubator for terrorism.” I may have chosen poorly, since the book has not had a single review posted on Amazon.

I attempt in my reviews to let authors tell their side of the story without editorial comment and then post disagreements in a posting on the blog link. There were sections that gave me difficulty complying with that approach. The book does contain interesting information about the history of Iraq and its ethnic diversity.

I thought using “frequently asked questions” to introduce discussion was a good approach. One question was, “Didn’t the ‘surge’ strategy work?” General Petraeus’s reported that the surge was working. The author disagreed, writing that the reduction in violence in Iraq came from the unilaterally declared ceasefire by Moqtada al-Sadar and his Mahdi Army militia and also because of payments given to Sunni militias in exchange for them not targeting US and UK occupation troops. Violence spiked in 2008 when Prime Minister Maliki ordered an attack on Sadr’s militia in Basra. Large numbers of Iraqi soldiers and police defected to Sadr. Iran arranged a ceasefire between the two Shi’a forces.

Many of the conflicts are between the Sunnis and Shi’a (most books use the term Shiite) militias. Sunnis Arabs make up 15-20 percent of the population and were disproportionally privileged in wealth and power in Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party. Shi’as are 55-60 percent of the population. The Kurds are primarily Sunnis.The Kurds have been protected by the US and are the most supportive of US policy. (There are an estimated 30 million Kurds in the world, and they are often named as the largest ethnic group without a state of their own.) Some have tried to make people think of themselves as Iraqis instead of Sunni, Shi’a, or Kurd, but with little success. One fact that is not in dispute is that there are fewer Iraqis in the country because of the war. An estimated two million Iraqis fled mostly to Jordan and Syria.

The borders of Middle East countries were established by “…the French-British trading schemes…” Faisal was appointed by the British to be king in 1921, and his son and grandson succeeded him. Faisal II was overthrown in a revolution against the monarchy in 1958. The Ba’athist government was officially secular but dominated by Sunnis. The book mentions that the CIA “…helped orchestrate the coup…” Saddam Hussein took control in 1968.

There are criticisms of several U.S. politicians to include Henry Kissinger, who developed and funded a plan for Iraqi Kurds to launch an uprising against Baghdad to weaken Iraq in its war against Iran. The Kurds were abandoned and were overrun by the Iraqi military after the war. Kissinger was said to have commented “…covert work should not be confused with missionary work.” President Clinton is criticized for claiming the U.S. was required by the UN to enforce the “no fly zone.” No UN resolution mentions creation or enforcement of such zones. All politicians arguing whether Iraq should be divided in three parts or united are said to be “…rooted in a set of thoroughly colonial assumptions about who has the ‘right’ to impose their will on Iraq and Iraqis from outside.”

The book frequently mentions “lie after lie” by the Bush administration in advocating the start of the war. Specifics include weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons programs, uranium yellowcake in Niger, Iraqi links to al-Qaeda, and Iraqi involvement in 9/11. There is a question whether U.S. actions brought a constitution to Iraq. There was a constitution adopted in 2005, but it was drafted mostly by U.S. lawyers under contract to the State Department.

The question “What war crimes have been committed in Iraq?” begins with bombing civilian targets and a long list of other actions designated as war crimes during the Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The twelve years of economic sanctions that followed were said to have resulted in the death of half a million Iraqi children. Secretary of State Madeline Albright infamously replied to a question about the children, “We think the price is worth it.” The invasion of Iraq is characterized “…as what the Nuremberg principles identify as the worst war crime: a crime against peace in the form of a war of aggression.” The “…congressional authorization passed in November 2002 granting Bush permission to go to war…” did not make the invasion legal.

Part II of the book presents the Bush administration’s arguments for the war and, in the opinion of the author, dispels them. The war is said to have increased recruitment of terrorists instead of making us safer. Iraq had carefully controlled borders before the war, but the U.S. demobilized the border guards. “Iraq has been transformed into a gathering place…for global terrorists…” The author says the real reasons the U.S. wanted a war were, “…oil, power, and ideology.” There are lengthy discussions that oil was main objective. There is a sarcastic comment in a couple of places that Americans seem to think the invading troops would be welcomed “…with sweets and flowers and singing in the streets.”

Part III discusses global effects of the Iraq war. The brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein was ruthlessly secular and not a safe place for fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. Iraq now “…is global center stage for a concentrated host of terrorist forces.” The war has “…accelerated recruitment for al-Qaeda.”

There is an interesting discussion of how many Shi’a sought refuge in Iran during Saddam Hussein’s rule, and many of those have now returned to Iraq. Iran was one of the first countries in the region to recognize the government of Maliki, and one of the few to maintain full diplomatic relations. The other powerful Iraqi Shi’a, al-Sadr, spends much of his time in Iran “…burnishing his religious credentials…”

Part IV is about ending the war, and I don’t intend to spend much time with that since U.S. combat troops were withdrawn in December 2011 after the book was published. The author directs strong criticism toward the U.S. Congress which “…essentially abdicated its constitutional responsibility to declare or reject war in 2002 when it gave the Bush administration the power to decide whether to go to war against Iraq. Congress could have ended the war at any time by refusing to vote supplemental war funding bills out of committee.

See the posting on the blog link for an update about current events in Iraq.