John Keegan is recognized as one of the top military writers of his day, having authored comprehensive analyses of both World Wars and other significant historical events. In The Iraq War, he takes on a situation that was still murky and volatile at the time of publication. The result is a book rich with detailed information on the region and its key figures but somewhat hasty in its effort to provide a succinct history lesson. In the opening chapter, Keegan writes "The war was not only successful but peremptorily short, lasting only twenty-one days from 20 March to 9 April," and he later gives little mention to the protracted and amorphous violence in the region since Baghdad fell, characterizing as "aftermath" that which many see as the actual war itself. Between these sections, however, Keegan provides valuable insight into the geopolitical history of the region and provides an extensive biography of a ruler of whom most Westerners became aware only in the early 1990s: Saddam Hussein. Keegan presents Saddam as a brutal thug who is also possessed of a powerful and vicious political savvy, and charts his growth from Ba'ath Party muscleman to ruler of Iraq. Sections on the military efforts of the U.S. and British forces are extensively detailed and offer insight into not only what the plans of the coalition forces were but the strategic philosophies behind them as well. Keegan characterizes the war as "mysterious," seeking to understand why opposition forces seemed to disappear from active combat and why the citizens of Iraq paid the conflict little regard. And while such mysteries have not yet been solved, it is clear given the ongoing instability in Iraq that the final chapters of the Iraq War have yet to be written. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly
Ubiquitous military historian Keegan (Intelligence in War) offers a reportage-based account of a "mysterious war." Keegan addresses the war's anomalies—200,000 soldiers took a country of almost 30 million in three weeks; the war's justification (WMD) never materialized; the Iraqi army "melted away" and the populace tried only to stay out of the way—by surveying the post–World War I origins of Iraq, Saddam's rise to power, the nature of his rule and his external ambitions. The result is a work with broader scope than Murray and Scales's TheIraqWar (2003), and one that makes a case for the war as justified in moral, legal and practical contexts. Saddam emerges, predictably enough, as a particularly nasty regional despot and the architect of his own destruction through his intransigent failure to satisfy the demands of an increasingly frustrated international community. Keegan divides his account of the campaign itself into "American" and "British" chapters, and he praises the skill of the planners and commanders of both armed forces. His accounts of British operations in the Shiite south and the U.S. drive on Baghdad affirm the high morale and fighting power of the troops involved. Keegan in particular demonstrates the U.S. mastery of mechanized maneuver war, but underplays the problems of control and pacification that have been making headlines since the turn of the year. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Amid the painful news from Iraq, it's comforting to cast one's mind back long, long ago . . . a year ago, to be precise, when Anglo-American arms appeared triumphant, the Baathists were defeated, and a bright new day was dawning for a long-oppressed people. John Keegan takes us back to the not-so-long-ago world where it could reasonably be said -- as he says on page one -- that "The Iraq War of 2003 was exceptional in both beginning well for the Anglo-American force that waged it and ending victoriously." True enough, if one defines the war in narrow terms, as the 21-day period between March 20 and April 9, 2003, when coalition forces raced from Kuwait to Baghdad. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way that U.S. military planners defined their task, giving insufficient thought to what would happen after Saddam Hussein fell. We still don't know the answer to that question, and, while it's possible that everything will work out fine, it seems less probable today than it was when the world watched Saddam's statue fall in Firdaus Square. Keegan provides a vivid account of how we got here, emphasizing the coalition's successes, though he touches upon some failures in a concluding chapter. Unlike many other authors of instant histories of the Iraq War, Keegan was not embedded with the allied forces. What his account lacks in ground-level details, it more than makes up for with a panoramic perspective befitting the best-known (and perhaps the best, period) military historian in the world. He does not get to the actual Iraq War until more than halfway through The Iraq War. The first part of the book is devoted to a summary of prewar Iraqi history -- a task that no one has undertaken more elegantly or intelligently. He begins with ancient Mesopotamia and marches briskly through Ottoman rule, the British creation of Iraq from three Ottoman provinces in the 1920s, Iraq's peaceful days as a constitutional monarchy, the 1958 military coup that inaugurated a time of troubles, the rise of Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, his wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait and his comeuppance in the 1991 Gulf War. Keegan is unsparing in his depiction of the "violent and self-centered" dictator who was "a monster of cruelty and aggression." He then spends a chapter chronicling "The Crisis of 2002-03" which preceded Saddam's final downfall, in which the author's sympathies clearly lie with Tony Blair and George W. Bush, not with Jacques Chirac and other opponents of the war. All this is by way of appetizer. The main course is three chapters chronicling the three weeks of major combat. Keegan provides a fluent narrative, informed by a lengthy interview he conducted afterward with the coalition commander, Gen. Tommy Franks. The blow-by-blow account of how the 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force blitzkrieged their way to Baghdad does not contain much that is new for those who closely followed press coverage of the war. The chapter on "The British War," on the other hand, does contain a good deal of information that will be fresh to most American readers. Keegan is properly laudatory of the capabilities of the U.S. armed forces, many of which, he points out, cannot be matched by their poorer British cousins. But he also stresses that the British played an integral role, contributing "almost a third of the coalition force deployed," as well as with "their long experience of pacification operations." That knowledge was put to good use by the British commander, Maj. Gen. Robin Brims, in his handling of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. He cleverly avoided a block-by-block fight, choosing instead to cordon off the city while compiling intelligence on the exact location of Baathist fighters. By the time a full-scale assault was launched on April 6, 2003, Basra fell with little damage to civilians. The British immediately "began to adopt a postwar mode": "they took off their helmets and flak jackets, dismounted from their armoured vehicles and began to mingle with the crowds."That soft approach is relatively easy to follow in an area populated by friendly Shiites; it's much harder to act that way in the Sunni Triangle, where the U.S. military has suffered the bulk of its casualties in the past year. While Keegan is mildly critical of some U.S. missteps, he ends the book with a ringing defense of the war, which, he writes, made "the world . . . undoubtedly a safer place." Let us hope that subsequent events do not invalidate that cheerful conclusion. Reviewed by Max Boot Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Keegan has long been revered as a brilliant military historian with a gift for recounting the individual experiences of battle while simultaneously explaining broader strategic objectives. However, this compact and superbly written work is not strictly a military history of "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Approximately half of the narrative focuses on the creation and evolution of the modern Iraqi state in the twentieth century. Keegan makes the compelling argument that Iraq, traditionally divided along religious, ethnic, and tribal lines, has never been a nation in the usually accepted sense of the term. The unity of Iraq has been maintained at gunpoint. The portrait here of Hussein is both fascinating and chilling, the author capturing the aura of paranoia and grandiose fantasy with which he surrounded himself. Keegan offers some tantalizing tidbits on the diplomatic maneuvers as Washington moved toward war, and the Bush administration strived to patch together a "coalition." He describes the war itself with his usual elan and skill, drawing striking differences between this campaign and the Gulf War. As Keegan shows, in some areas the Iraqi military virtually melted away. Unfortunately, as we now see on a daily basis, many of their small arms either went with them or fell into the hands of more committed fighters. Essential reading for understanding the ongoing conflict. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“The best military historian of our generation.”
—Tom Clancy

“While it is difficult to examine any on-going conflict in a vacuum, there will come a day when the battles stand alone. When that day comes, Keegan’s book will be judged the first and best on the subject.”
—Calgary Sun

“A brief outline that is authoritative (at least until further details will be known) and is more on the state of affairs on the other side of the hill, in Iraq, about which we know little.”
—Los Angeles Times

“What his account lacks in ground-level details, it more than makes up for with a panoramic perspective befitting the best-known (and perhaps the best, period) military historian in the world.”
—The Washington Post


From the Trade Paperback edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The Iraq War is a study of the ongoing conflict. In exclusive interviews with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, Keegan has gathered information about the war that adds immeasurably to our grasp of its causes, complications, costs and consequences. He probes the reasons for the invasion and delineates the strategy of the American and British forces in capturing Baghdad; he examines the quick victory over the Republican Guard and the more tenacious and deadly opposition that has taken its place. He then analyzes the intelligence information with which the Bush and Blair administrations convinced their respective governments of the need to go to war, and which has since been strongly challenged in both countries. And he makes clear that despite the uncertainty about weapons of mass destruction, regime change, and the use and misuse of intelligence, the war in Iraq is an undeniably formidable display of American power." The Iraq War is important to our understanding of a conflict whose full ramifications are as yet unknown.

FROM THE CRITICS

Max Boot - The Washington Post

Keegan provides a vivid account of how we got here, emphasizing the coalition's successes, though he touches upon some failures in a concluding chapter. Unlike many other authors of instant histories of the Iraq War, Keegan was not embedded with the allied forces. What his account lacks in ground-level details, it more than makes up for with a panoramic perspective befitting the best-known (and perhaps the best, period) military historian in the world.

Publishers Weekly

Ubiquitous military historian Keegan (Intelligence in War) offers a reportage-based account of a "mysterious war." Keegan addresses the war's anomalies-200,000 soldiers took a country of almost 30 million in three weeks; the war's justification (WMD) never materialized; the Iraqi army "melted away" and the populace tried only to stay out of the way-by surveying the post-World War I origins of Iraq, Saddam's rise to power, the nature of his rule and his external ambitions. The result is a work with broader scope than Murray and Scales's The Iraq War (2003), and one that makes a case for the war as justified in moral, legal and practical contexts. Saddam emerges, predictably enough, as a particularly nasty regional despot and the architect of his own destruction through his intransigent failure to satisfy the demands of an increasingly frustrated international community. Keegan divides his account of the campaign itself into "American" and "British" chapters, and he praises the skill of the planners and commanders of both armed forces. His accounts of British operations in the Shiite south and the U.S. drive on Baghdad affirm the high morale and fighting power of the troops involved. Keegan in particular demonstrates the U.S. mastery of mechanized maneuver war, but underplays the problems of control and pacification that have been making headlines since the turn of the year. Agent, Gillon Aitken Associates, U.K. (May 28) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Keegan-not so much a journalist as a military historian who happens to work for a newspaper-has written an account of the Iraq war that benefits from a long historical prologue (which includes discussion of the post-World War I British attempt to pacify Iraq) and his skill at capturing the dynamics of a military campaign. Keegan, however, must now wish that he had waited to complete the book, as events have conspired to put the war, which he describes in a positive and even partisan tone, in a more dismal light. The postwar scene gets cursory treatment, under the heading of "The Aftermath," and this is the story now waiting to be told. More than the campaign itself, it is the diplomatic isolation during the build-up and the incompetence and trauma of the occupation that may define a turning point in U.S. foreign policy-and the end of the Vulcans' rise.

Kirkus Reviews