‘The Strongest Tribe’: How to turn around a war
Most Americans know about the debacle the Iraq war became. Only a couple of years ago, a leading member of Congress announced for everyone to hear, enemies included, that ‘‘the war is lost’’ — even as American troops were engaged in combat.
There hasn’t been such a grand pronouncement of the latest news — that as 2009 dawns, America is winning the Iraq war — thanks to American soldiers on the ground who figured out how to win amid and despite the incompetence of civilian leaders responsible for conducting the war.
How America almost lost, then turned the tide of battle, is chronicled in "The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq" by Bing West (2008, Random House). West is a Marine, a Vietnam combat veteran, an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration and author of several books on American war fighting including the Vietnam counterinsurgency classic "The Village."
As West reports, Washington made so many mistakes in Iraq that salvaging a victory could be regarded as something of a miracle. The list of near-deadly errors is long and well-known; here are a few: 1) disbanding the Iraqi army, meaning that thousands of soldiers would be out of work, angry and/or desperate, 2) firing, because they belonged to Saddam Hussein’s political machine, the thousands of bureaucrats who, as elsewhere, kept the cogs of government services turning, but who, in Iraq, had to be nominal Baath Party members if they wanted a job, 3) failing to keep order in the initial days after Baghdad fell, thus allowing the capital, and eventually, the country, to slide into bloody chaos, 4) allowing the State Department and the Pentagon to wrestle for command of the war, and, 5) defeating the terrorists in an area, then pulling out and allowing them to go back in and exact barbaric retribution on the local population.
To write the story of the Iraq turnaround, West made repeated and extended visits to Iraq, where he went on patrol and dodged bullets with battle troops. He chronicles how one of many heroes of the Iraq conflict, Gen. David Petraeus, tried counterinsurgency tactics on a small scale that eventually led to the Surge — the infusion of thousands more troops into the country, giving U.S. forces sufficient manpower to clean out terrorists’ nests in one city after another.
America has a good chance of victory in Iraq, that is, victory defined as stabilizing the country to the point that the Iraqis can, if they want to, establish a relatively humane, functional, civilian government. But much depends on politicians here at home, West concludes, and to the rest of us. The politicians can still decide to lose the war, particularly if the American public doesn’t have the fortitude and the farsightedness to finish the job.
"The Strongest Tribe" is one tribal sheik’s description of American troops in Iraq and the reason, he explained, that his people were changing sides and backing the Americans — ‘‘You have the strongest tribe.’’
The book is a fascinating account of the American experience in Iraq, and a tribute to this country’s fighting forces. A U.S. senator, in 2006, made a now infamous comment to a group of young Americans. “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq,” Sen. John Kerry told an audience mostly of college students in Pasadena, Calif. Reading West’s book, one is led to conclude that the young men and women fighting in Iraq are not the ones who got stuck there. Rather, they’re the cream — the best of us.
