The Operation Iraqi Freedom - Book Report/Review Example

?A Critical Analysis of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” Introduction The book Operation Iraqi Freedom: What Went Right and Why; What Went Wrong and Why”, written by Colonel Walter J. Boyne, the former director of the National Air and Space Museum, and the Chairman of the National Aeronautics Administration, primarily deals with the “efficacy of US and coalition strategy, tactics, operational methods, weapon systems, and personnel during the period of armed conflict” (Boyne, 2003, p. 69). In the book, he critically analyzes the US-led coalition’s military strategies and subsequently points out the deficits of the invading army’s invasion plans. Simultaneously he also has analyzed these deficits’ effects on the invading army’s efficiency in operations. Boyne’s 23 years experience of working as a military professional in the US Army’s high command helped him a lot to analyze the coalition army’s efficiency, in the Operation Iraqi Freedom, from a practical point of view. Walter Boyne’s book, “Operation Iraqi Freedom: What Went Right and Why; What Went Wrong and Why”, which was written within three months after the war, carries its readers away to the real battle ground of the Operation Iraqi Freedom which was operated by the western governments. After conducting a thorough bilateral investigation of determining the rights and the wrongs of the US-led coalition forces’ strategy in the Operation Iraqi Freedom, he has put a significant effort on vindicating the proposition that the coalition forces’ strategic advancement was effective enough to reach the goal of devastating the opposing Army almost abruptly, while keeping the civilians’ life untrammeled, though a number of minor field-strategic flaws were discovered during the battle. Boyne narrates the specific details of those field-strategic flaws of the coalition army and attempts to provide specific solutions to those strategic flaws. Indeed he has endeavored to prove that in spite of the shining success of the US-led Coalition in Iraq, the most notable knot of deficits that affected the coalition army’s efficacy the most is the high command’s limitation to keep pace with a fast moving army. Evaluation of Sources Boyne has used information from a number of both primary and secondary sources. Since he has the extensive military background during his career in the Armed Force, and at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, he could manage many contacts required for effectively creating a comprehensive study like this. The primary sources include a long range of interviews with US-army officers, soldiers, and staffs, who took part in the war. For example, a significant part of his narration about the details of field operations comes from his interviews with Vice Admiral Timothy J. Keating, Major General Donald Shepherd, General Loh, General John P. Jumper, Robert Work (a soldier) etc. Documents, war report, intelligence reports, etc also constitute a significant part of the book’s primary sources such as CENTCOM Operation Iraqi Freedom Briefing, Documented Coalition Loses in the II Persian Gulf War as of April 11, 2003, etc. The secondary sources include various books, journals, military journals, etc such as Air Forces Monthly, Jane’s Defense Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, etc. Obviously the author’s manipulation of the sources is more questionable than the number of the used. Though Boyne has used those sources to make his description more factual, the way he has used them is not quite reliable and credible. It seems that he uses a reference where he likes, but not there where suspicion may grow. For example in chapter 3, Boyne has used about 17 sources to reference a number of information and data. But these 17 sources are not sufficient to cover all the information provided in this chapter. The fact whether he uses the references for events or some particular data is not clear enough to convince a reader about Boyne’s integrity. An Overall Review of Boyne’s Book The best comment on Boyne's book is that it is a history of military operations, not written from an academic perspective. Neither is it written with a prefixed viewpoint that the writer had in his mind. Rather the operations as well as the strategies have been written literally as if the readers were having a clearer view of the battlefield with the clearance of the smoker. Boyne has divided the whole book into a number of topics and assigned each topic to individual chapters. The common structure of any chapters of the book is: in-details account and analysis of a number of events or operations, rights and wrongs, and finally lesson to be learnt. Obviously the lesson and right-wrong parts are the author’s personal analysis, though the same events can be interpreted differently by different readers. Such modular presentations allow a reader to be introduced with the author’s approach more clearly. It investigates into the credits and faults of the US-led coalition’s military strategy during the Operation Iraqi Freedom between March 19 and May 1, 2003, a period that is frequently addressed as the conventional phase of the conflict. Boyne’s details of the operations necessarily exhume the Allied force’s new "unconventional" approach to the conventional war-strategy during this phase. For instance, kindly give example of unconventional approach used by the allied forces, where, when, how, why in this paragraph. Also the book can be precisely viewed as a "first-look" synopsis of the operations that was led to the disbanding of the Iraqi armed forces with great agility. Meanwhile it provides a basic coverage on the doctrinal and technological changes in the US military that, according to Boyne, has been developed since the first Iraqi conflict which provokes the US political and military leadership to adopt a new strategy in order to cope with the post Gulf War economic crisis in the country. “Operation Iraqi Freedom: What Went Right, What Went Wrong and Why” is actually an amalgamation of two books distilled in one. First, the book, as the title implies, appears to be a discourse on specific conflicts and operations -an in-details presentation of what they were and an in-depth analysis of how they worked according to the war-planners expectations. Secondly, the extensive appendices with pictorial aids that cover more than one third of the whole text, are very persuasive and “comprehensive compendium of what it took to conduct that war in terms of materiel, weapons, logistics, people, methodologies etc” (Boyne, 2003, p. 122). Brief Evaluation of the Book Through his analysis of military enterprise in general and air-strike and strategy in particular, Boyne has assisted his readers to get a full grasp of the US Army’s military presence in Iraqi ground. Obviously Boyne has endeavored to analyze the “Operation Iraqi Freedom” from more of a military strategic perspective than a moral one. Indeed his moral concerns constitute the most part of his critiques of the US Army’s strategic flaws and deficits. Any of his analysis of the flaws follows a specific analysis of a particular war situation. Necessarily his failure to analyze the strategic flaws of the OIF as a whole is glaring the final pages of his book. In these pages, he offers lessons for the readers as well as others concerned. Boyne’s book is to be read as a man-at-arms’ accounts of the OIF who cannot view a war in a greater social background, rather his knowledge is confined within the periphery of military tactics. Indeed he is successful as more a military analyst than a thought-haunting author. Once he comments that “Enemy supporters continued to spin dross rumor into gold propaganda in the face of the looming disasters.” In his book, for numerous times Boyne has used this term to refer to the oppositions of the OIF. Such usages of Boyne indicate that the enemy forces in the face of Boyne’s rifle in the battlefield carry the same status even in the nib of his pen. Strikingly such usages exhume another fact that Boyne as an author could not go beyond the limit of his military status. One of the glaring ironies that seem to trouble a reader the most is Boyne’s assumption of the moral background of the Operation Iraqi Freedom. Indeed his explanation of the moral background of the war is not enough to convince a reader about the justifiability of the US-led coalition’s military intervention in Iraq. He says that the Americans are “engaged in a global war against terrorism” (Boyne, 2003, p. 109). At another point he says that American will “intervene in areas outsides its borders when there is a clear and present danger to itself or to global peace and security.” (Boyne, 2003, p. 69) Also he claims that the primary of the coalition army’s victory in the OIF pivoted on the “air and information dominance”. But he fails to address the fact why the Americans were not successful to discover the Weapons of Mass Destruction that they thought to be a threat to Pax Americana (American peace, according to Boyne) in postwar Iraq. Indeed the fact how Iraq was a threat to the Americans has not sufficiently been explained in his book. Perhaps he also does not have a clear knowledge of the causes of the Americans’ involvement in that war. Conclusion Boyne’s book “Operation Iraqi Freedom” can be commended for its dealing with a complex subject in an in-detail, interesting, insightful and readable way. The book's advantage is that it replicates the present-day military wisdom of a great number of credible sources that Boyne taps to narrate the history. It includes those persons who contributed to plan and design the military that went into the conflict. In this respect, it is invaluable to future historians and political researchers. More importantly, Boyne has provided a harrowing account of the US strategy to show his readers how the advancement of the west’s military forces assists them to dominate the war and win the war. The common points of emphasis of Boyne’s analysis are the efficacy and role of the followings: ‘Precision guidance’, ‘the close integration of SOF (Special Operations Forces) and conventional forces’, ‘information dominance’, the ‘linking of ground forces to "on call" fighters, bombers’, ‘C4ISR (Command, Control, and Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance)’, and ‘massive AC-130 gunship’. References Boyne, W. J. (2003). Operation Iraqi Freedom: What went right, What went Wrong and Why. Vancouver: BJourn Publishers. Read More