Fourth of July weekend Book Review: No True Glory by Bing West

Bing West. No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah.  New York, NY: Bantam Book, December 7^th, 2011. 378 pp.

This book is about the US military’s operation in Fallujah from the time the first troops were on the ground in that city and leading up to the Marines’ assault towards the end of 2004.  There is so much that people don’t understand about the US military’s approach towards Fallujah and so many mistaken assumptions and factually incorrect claims of what the US military did.  I think this book makes an important contribution towards understanding what happened.

I don’t think many people could write a book like No True Glory.  I appreciated the author’s background that helped this book tremendously.  The author is himself a former Marine officer whose experience as a platoon leader who led men into combat in Vietnam helped him have an eye of capturing the operational history at the tactical level from the perspective of rifle companies and at times even down to the fire team.  Furthermore the author was also at one time an assistant secretary of defense and an analyst for the RAND Corporation so this experience definitely allows him to consider the larger perspective as well.  Even as he describes the complexity of politics from the angle of international opinion, Iraqi politics and the US government internal turf battles, the author is primarily focused on operational history and how those complexities shapes the military approach towards Fallujah.

What I appreciate the most about the book is its description of the hostility within Fallujah with the arrival of the first American troops.  I learned from this book that Fallujah itself was never “attacked” during the invasion and the first American troops came after the initial invasion was over.  The author does a good job describing the demographics of the city, with its population largely subscribing to the Sunni Islamic sect and therefore key figures in Saddam’s Sunni-minority government came from Fallujah including politicians and generals.  The book also described the sheiks’ attempt to hold to their former power, while radical clerics compete with them in being anti-American.  These factors along with the fact that historically Fallujah has a long history of being hostile towards outsiders fueled the insurgency.

What I also enjoyed a lot from this book is the description of various military units in trying to bring about stability and security to Fallujah.  Starting with the first Army units to the Marines taking over, we see various approaches being used, from the strong armed tactics to the use of soft power and military leadership and units that were sophisticated in their approach of counter-insurgencies.  I think students of military counter-insurgencies must read this book because Fallujah is a good case study and the book didn’t just covered one stint of a combat unit but a longer timeline for further evaluation.  For readers who are not aware, the author Bing West has been critical of some of the aspect of General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency’s doctrine.  I think West has valuable input both in his discussion elsewhere and also indirectly with what he has to say in this book.  I think Bing West’s discussion of the Marines’ leadership in Fallujah reveal that there were others besides Petraeus who were profoundly thinking about counter-insurgency and sometimes Petraeus’ personality and publicity has put Marine generals such as Conway and Mattis in the shadows.

At the end of the day the thing I like the most about the book is the story of military men and their commanders trying their best with the difficult situation at hand.  I learned from this book something I didn’t know before such as the Commandant of the Marine Corps actually visiting Fallujah when it was dangerous.  I also have a more deeper respect of Marine General Mattis whom I respected a lot serving under him in the first year of Iraq.  Mattis is well known to most Marines for leading the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq but here we see in this book that General Mattis has another side to him, that he is a greater thinker and understood the need for change of strategies and the need for nuance counter-insurgencies when most were slower to come around.  I was surprised at how much Mattis himself put himself in danger even in Fallujah in which he often visited the troops in the front and went to town personally.  His trips were far from safe, and his command element have been ambushed and Marines in his details killed.  Readers would also appreciate the account of young Marines battling in dangerous urban warfare both in April 2004 and November 2004 operation.

On another note this book doesn’t necessarily paint a positive picture of politicians.  We see the book describe the lack of clear tangible goals and misunderstanding of what was going on down on the ground.  But American politicians are not the only ones that are exposed; the Iraqi government in Baghdad is equally discussed as being not helpful.  Nor did the media helped with the truth, who often repeat things from Arabic media that were bent on being anti-American (things that later turned out to be inaccurate).  I think politicians can learn some things from this book.

Purchase: Amazon