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Losing Iraq Insurgency and Politics
Stephen C. Pelletière
Book Code: C9213
ISBN: 0-275-99213-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-99213-2
168 pages, n/a
Praeger Security International General Interest-Cloth
Publication: 10/30/2007
List Price: $49.95 (UK Sterling Price: £27.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • Pelletière is a former CIA policy analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, instructor at the US Army War College, and the author of several previous books, two on the US and oil politics (e.g., America's Oil Wars, CH, Feb'05, 42-3684). He has earned a reputation for assertive, controversial positions, and, as in his earlier books, he argues that US involvement in both Iraqi Wars was driven by a neocon, pro-Zionist, military-industrial cabal with the desire to control oil in the Gulf regions and to assure high corporate war/reconstruction profits. His litany of the colossal errors, misjudgments, and calamities of the Bush administration, especially by Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer, and the neocon coterie, has been well established by others, but Pelletière adds several new twists. Most importantly, he deems the Iraqi Baathist state totalitarian and cruel but legitimate, because Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds were essentially committed to a unified state for which they have been willing to fight and die. He contends that the insurgency was not external, but homegrown and US-inspired....the book is a compendium of interesting tidbits of information. For those with enough background to separate dross from gold, it is worth reading. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
    —Choice     April 2008
  • Pelletier gives readers his interpretation of the American invasion of Iraq and why he thinks that Americans, including many in charge, don't understand the politics going on there....Pelletiere has written one of the clearest books available on the political situation in Iraq and how it came to exist. This book will be useful to virtually anyone trying to better understand Iraq and the Iraqi's reactions to the United States.
    —MultiCultural Review     Summer 2008
  • Since the easy "victory" in 2003, the war in Iraq has become a nationalist struggle, fueled by inept U.S. policies, against perceived threats to the country's future; this has wide implications for the region as a whole.
    —The Journal of Military History     April 2008
  • The American efforts in Iraq are based, in rhetoric at least, on the premise of rebuilding a failed state. Pelletiére....rejects that view categorically and argues that if such delusion continues, the American people will never understand the events of the war, in particular why such a large number of Iraqis who are neither die-hard Ba'athists nor religious jihadis are so determined to resist American occupation. In trying to set the record straight, he describes the events of the initial invasion, the near complete failures of US intelligence about Iraq prior to the invasion and during the occupation, relations between expatriate Iraqis and native Iraqis, and the role of Iran in the occupation. Two of his major topics are perhaps most notable: the history of the Iraqi Army....and the true motivations for the American invasion, which he sees as part of an overall plan to preserve the Middle East client system of the Cold War.
    —SciTech Book News     February 2008
  • Endorsement From Walter Lang
    Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia, and Terrorism (1984-94):     I have known Dr. Stephen Pelletière for many years. I was the senior official in the Department of Defense responsible for the intelligence business of the Armed Forces of the United States in that region of the world. Dr. Pelletière is by far the most gifted and accomplished analyst of Iraqi events and history whom I have ever met. His grasp of the underlying causes of the tortured events in the Northern Gulf which led to the Gulf War is superb.
Description: According to the Bush administration, the war in Iraq ended in May 2003, when the president pronounced mission accomplished from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Yet, fighting, resistance, and American casualties continue. Stephen Pelletière argues that it is Iraqi suspicion of the Americans' motives--the belief that the United States is out to tear the state apart--that is fueling the current rebellion. Resistance in Iraq has become a national struggle, tied to the mood of Iraqis generally, as well as to anger fed by experiences of the whole people over the course of the last quarter century. Americans see Iraq as a failed state because they lack knowledge of those experiences and of Iraqi history. That is what Pelletière has set out to remedy.
Chief among his analyses is a brief history of the Iraqi army, focussing on the period of the 1980s and the Iran-Iraq War. The war transformed the army, a change which largely escaped the notice of the United States. Pelletière also discusses American intelligence about Iraq on the eve of the war, characterizing it as delusory and showing that, even after the invasion, intelligence did not improve. This has led to the deterioration of relations with the Iraqis and precipitated the current revolt. Finally, he discusses the clash between the so-called expatriates and native Iraqis and the part the Islamic Republic is playing under the occupation.
Perhaps more critically, Pelletière relates American behavior in Iraq to the wider sphere of U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf specifically and the Middle East overall. In doing so, he positions the war as part of a larger geo-political struggle that encompasses not just the Iraqis or the Iranians, but the Israelis and all of the other client states of the United States in the Middle East.
LC Card Number: 2007027870
LCC Class: DS79
Dewey Class: 956
PDF Catalogs:
PSI Public Library Spring 2008.pdf
PSI Catalog Fall 2008.pdf
Academic Library Fall 2008.pdf
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