His treatment of civilian casualties is caustically glib, and his support of the war is spurious and irresponsible. His insensitivity is most apparent when he claims of the war, "the people who ought to have been most affected by it, the population of Iraq itself, seemed scarcely to give it their attention," (p. 4). Keegan takes enormous liberties to make such a ludicrous assertion and without any proof. The bulk of his research was with military officials -- obviously those who had intimate knowledge of weaponry and advanced systems of defense as well as of strategic analysis. However, interviews with military officials and war experts does not provide the insiders' perspective that would be necessary to claim understanding of what it must have been like to live through the American/British invasion.
Furthermore, Keegan can barely hide his sympathy for the neo-conservative point-of-view when he writes about their "highly traditional American cast of mind" and their desire to save the world from its ills by "transforming absolutist, monarchical and autocratic regimes into free-enterprise democracies," (p. 96). Keegan makes the Americans sound exactly the way they wanted to be perceived: as liberators, as heroes, and as supermen saving the world from crime.
To underscore his support for the war, Keegan spends considerable time describing the demon of Saddam Hussein and the wreck that Iraq was upon invasion. Saddam was a brutal dictator who massacred countless numbers of people as a means to solidify and prove his power. The First Gulf War failed to oust him or accomplish any lasting stability in the region. After spending about half of the book describing Saddam's brutalities, Keegan introduces Operation Iraqi Freedom as being easily justifiable especially given the fear that gripped America after September 11.
To his credit, Keegan offers some explanation of...
He notes the desire to create peace in the region partly stems from the need to protect Israel. The biggest strength of the Iraq War is, however, Keegan's deft analysis of the military strategies and technologies used. Keegan details the American invasion, describing troops and divisions by name. The author also contrasts the American political position and military strategies with those of the British to provide a well-researched and comprehensive version of the story. The Iraq War is written well and can be used as an adjunct to research on the subject.
Unfortunately, Keegan's description of the Iraq War lacks a global perspective. Keegan's descriptions are narrowly focused on the American, especially the neo-conservative, perspective. The optimistic, rosy-glassed tone of the tome is disturbing at times. Moreover, the book is unlikely to leave any lasting impression on readers, who can gather the information Keegan presents from any other book written about the war. Much of what Keegan writes about is dry and factual as opposed to scholarly and lucid. As such, Iraq War is not a special treatment of the war. Keegan offers little insight into what the future of Iraq might look like or what it should look like given the complex political, religious, and ethnic conflicts in the region. The author only briefly mentions the ideological conflict that continues to plague Islam and divide Sunni and Shi'a. His treatment of the Sunni and Shi'a division and of Islam in general is overtly that of an outsider looking into what seems like a "mysterious" culture. In the Iraq War, Keegan spends too little time addressing why the Iraq War was ill conceived even if it was strategically well fought.
Keegan, J. (2005). The Iraq War: The Military Offensive, from Victory in 21 Days to…
