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Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter W. Galbraith
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $23.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 32293
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 1416562257
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.704431
EAN: 9781416562252
ASIN: 1416562257
Publication Date: September 30, 2008
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Product Description
Called by New York Times columnist David Brooks the "smartest and most devastating" critic of President George W. Bush's Iraq policies, Peter Galbraith was the earliest expert to describe Iraq's breakup into religious and ethnic entities, a reality now commonly accepted.The Iraq war was intended to make the United States more secure, bring democracy to the Middle East, intimidate Iran and Syria, help win the war on terror, consolidate American world leadership, and entrench the Republican Party for decades. Instead, - Bush handed Iran its greatest strategic triumph in four centuries
- U.S. troops now fight to support an Iraqi government led by religious parties intent on creating an Iranian-style Islamic republic
- As part of the surge, the United States created a Sunni militia led by the same Baathists the U.S. invaded Iraq to overthrow administration gave Iran and North Korea a free pass to advance their nuclear programs
- Obsessed with Iraq's nonexistent WMD, the Bush administration gave Iran and North Korea a free pass to advance their nuclear programs
- Turkey, a key NANATO ally long considered a model pro-Western Muslim democracy, became one of the most anti-American countries in the world
- U.S. prestige around the world reached an all-time low
Iraq: Galbraith challenges the assertion that the surge will lead to victory. By creating a Sunni army, the surge has, in fact, contributed to Iraq's breakup and set the stage for an intensified civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. If the United States wishes to escape the Iraq quagmire, it must face up to the reality that the country has broken up and cannot be put back together. Iran: Having helped Iran's allies take control in Baghdad, the Bush administration no longer has a viable military option to stop Iran's nuclear program. Galbraith discusses how a president more pragmatic than Bush might get Iran to freeze its nuclear program as part of a package deal to upgrade relations between two countries equally threatened by Sunni extremism. Turkey, Syria, and Israel: A war intended to make Israel more secure, undermine Syria's Assad regime, and strengthen ties with Turkey has had the opposite result. Nationalism: In the coming decades, other countries may follow Iraq's example in fragmenting along ethnic and religious lines. Galbraith draws on his considerable experience in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia to predict where and what the United States might do about it. The United States: George W. Bush substituted wishful thinking for strategy and as a result made America weaker. Galbraith provides some rules for a national strategy that will appeal equally to conservatives and liberals -- indeed, to anyone who believes the United States needs an effective national security strategy.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Can we learn a lesson? November 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I hope that the newly elected President has read and will re-read this book that ought to have been a primer for the last President. It teaches us not only about the war in Iraq and its bad pursuit. More importantly, it can teach us how to think about foreign policy and how to avoid mistakes like the hideous ones we made. Perhaps, it can even help to guide the path to more intelligent and useful planning and action. The author shares a great deal. It is up to us to profit from it.
 Galbraith October 22, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a passionately written book about the missteps of the Iraq war. It reads a bit like a history book in that you feel like you should have a highlighter or notepad ready. While I enjoyed it, it's certainly not light reading and felt a bit too pedantic at times. Another book that is in a similar vein but not as densely packed is Imperial Life in the Emerald City or War Journal by Richard Engel.
What Happens When A Dumb War is Fought Dumbly October 18, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Peter Galbraith, a State Department professional and insider (who just coincidentally happens to also be the son of the famous Harvard economist), claims in this critique of the Iraq war that "Bush's folly," is the classic case of what can go wrong when a nation embarks on an ill-conceived "one-part plan" whose execution requires "several other missing parts."
The book makes clear that it is one thing to sketch out on the war room drawing board an idealized scenario of a war that theoretically has winnable objectives, and quite another to proceed to the battlefield before "filling in" the minimum required implementing details. Usually even if the stated reasons for going to war, appear to be sound on the surface, as was the case in Iraq II -- that is to say, to strengthen democracy in a troubled region, to rid Iraq of WMD, to change the regime of a brutal dictator, to serve as a warning and to undermine emerging nuclear states and undemocratic despots in the region, to support our only democratic ally in the region, to wrest control of the oil pipelines from anti-U.S. and anti-Western forces, and to enhance U.S. military presence and influence in the region -- having only idealized goals without clearly thinking through the implementing details is what might best be described as "how to fight a dumb war, dumbly."
Galbraith's main point here in this cleanly written "no-holds barred" critique is that "fighting a dumb war" only can have the worse of unintended consequences, and did exactly that in Iraq II. He gives a laundry list of the unintended consequences of the Bush Folly into Iraq.
The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld War fought dumbly resulted in the following unintended consequences:
--It handed Iran its greatest strategic triumph in four centuries by facilitating the construction of a Persian run Shiite Super-state in a country that for the past four centuries had been dominated by the Ottoman installed Sunni Muslims. U.S. troops now fight to support an Iraqi government led by religious parties intent on creating an Iranian-style Islamic Republic.
--As part of the surge, the United States created a Sunni militia led by the same Baathists the U.S. invaded Iraq to overthrow. Their return would cancel out the only collateral objective accomplished, regime change and the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
--It caused Iraq to be divided, de facto, into three informal partitions: with the Iran backed Shiite majority controlling most of the country, but also with the much feared Baathist Sunnis controlling the Center of the oil wealth, and the Kurds maintaining a semi-autonomous region in the North (just as Democratic Senator from Delaware Biden had predicted would happen);
-- It greatly weaken the U.S. military, draining the U.S. of valuable resources needed at home, including its treasure of men and women, which so far as resulted in the deaths of 4, 000 plus U.S. soldiers and 30,000 plus injured, as well as nearly a million Iraqi soldiers and civilians killed and injured. The U.S. voluntary army is stretched so thin that the U.S. cannot meet its normally stated military commitments, and our enemies are well aware of this weakness.
--It resulted in the discovery (and to great embarrassment to the USG) that the UN inspectors had been right all along: there were no WMD;
--It enhanced al Qaeda's recruitment and helped spread terrorism from Iraq to Afghanistan, as well as to many other regions of the world.
--It has not resulted in a democratic Iraq, or a more stable Middle East, but rather a corrupt and dependent run Iraq, one ripe for either a return Baathist take over, or for sustain and long-term Iranian control, neither of which is in U.S. long-term interest.
--It enabled the spread of WMD to rogue states via Pakistan, and the DPRK, to Iran, Libya, and Syria. The Bush administration gave Iran and North Korea a free pass to advance their nuclear programs, and both did so.
--It changed Turkey, a key NATO ally, long considered a model pro-Western Muslim democracy, into one of the most anti-American countries in the world.
--It undermined, rather than enhanced U.S. influence and prestige around the world, to the point that today it has reached an all-time low.
Clear, concise, to the point, without rancor or ideological undercurrents: Easily five stars
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