Kenneth Pollack’s The Threatening Storm
I seem to be putting down notes for the books I’ve read in reverse of the order I read them. I finished Berman’s Terror and Liberalism most recently. The book before that was Pollack’s Threatening Storm, which is strangely a history book despite being published last year in anticipation of future events. Perhaps not so strangely in that, though: the strangeness was more in terms of predictions that came true, and the unusual, unheard-of proper nouns sprinkled throughout the book that came to prominence during the news coverage (Sadaam Fedayeen, Nasiriyah, Uday).
The war was ultimately fought with fewer troops than Pollack anticipated. It also took less time and cost fewer American lives. Pollack also dismissed the notion of a mass Shia uprising the moment American troops crossed the border: his account of the disasterous uprising of 1991 and how, ultimately, fewer than a few tens of thousands of Shia took part in that intifada (most of whom were killed), argues against jubiliant crowds of Iraqis appearing until it was clear that Saddam was finished. He also noted that Baath loyalists and Fedayeen would probably be a strong point of resistance, though he didn’t predict how the Republican Guard would give up without a fight (with American psychological operations coupled with monetary bribes working extremely well).
It should be noted that Pollack himself didn’t foresee the war happening this year when he wrote the book. His only timetable was to finish Iraq before Saddam acquired nuclear weapons, something not likely to happen in, say, four years. Between now and then, he argues that the United States should have seriously degraded Al Qaeda and helped rebuild Afghanistan, all the while trying to build the broadest possible international coalition for the upcoming war and reconstruction. Obviously, the war came before two of these conditions were achieved; whether Al Qaeda has been seriously degraded remains to be seen, though we may be hopeful of that. Ultimately, Bush’s war was not Pollack’s war, though, given America’s diplomatic failures of the past year, war was in many ways necessary this year (though I’m nervous about invoking the Vietnam-era word, “credibility”).
And ultimately Pollack argues for a real reconstruction of Iraq, rather than the mess we’re seeing right now. We won the war with fewer troops than anyone outside of air power theorists and RMA advocates would have thought. However, the air power theorists and RMA advocates, while having correctly observed that American warfighting capabilities are greater than most analysts have thought, have forgotten that military occupation and pacification are not the same as war fighting, and are bloody, labor-intensive endeavors. And if we fail in the reconstruction of Iraq, we may have squandered a once-in-lifetime opportunity to remake the Middle East.