I spend all day in front of a computer screen. The last thing I want to do for pleasure is read on a Kindle or Nook. Joe Queenan nicely encapsulates the love of books in a Wall Street Journal article: "No matter what they may tell themselves, book lovers do not read primarily to obtain information or to while away the time. They read to escape to a more exciting, more rewarding world. A world where they do not hate their jobs, their spouses, their governments, their lives. A world where women do not constantly say things like 'Have a good one!' and 'Sounds like a plan!' A world where men do not wear belted shorts..." But however you enjoy reading, here's a relatively short list of books to buy for friends or ask Santa for.
One fad in historiography is that the Red Army primarily won World War II. Rick Atkinson is having none of it in his majestic Liberation Trilogy about the U.S. Army in Europe. An Army at Dawn and The Day of Battle are the two completed works and they are the finest military history I've read in recent years. This is the way history should be written, the way that has been beaten our of three generations of professional historians. To give the Red Army its due, check out Thunder in the East by Evan Mawdsley and Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale. A terrific read about World War II in the Pacific is Evan Thomas' Sea of Thunder, about the greatest naval battle in history.
We're coming up on the centennial of the conflict that changed everything, World War I. The must-read here is Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory. Fussell, a World War II American combat infantryman, focuses on the British troops in the trenches of the Western Front and the things they carried, especially the literary influences that reached into the lowest ranks. This is one book every educated person should read: Deeply learned, highly moving, surprising and written with the attitude, as Fussell said, of "a pissed-off infantryman." Two others are both seminal and thrilling: Dreadnought and Castles of Steel by Robert Massie, about the battleship arms race and war.
We crow about putting computers in classrooms, as if this would make pupils into citizens. I've run across a few American histories the past couple of years that are remarkable in their scope, command of the material and literary excellence. The Pulitzer Prize-winning What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe is subtitled, "The Transformation of America: 1815-1848." You will never look on this neglected period of our nation's development the same again, or on Andrew Jackson. Another book in this fine Oxford History of the United States is David Kennedy's Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945. It is the best single-volume history of this critical period available and will, among other things, give you an entirely different view of the tragedy of Herbert Hoover, as well as the crucible that formed the strong nation we now would watch the Tea Party and their oligarch puppet-masters loot, vandalize and throw away.
Speaking of what every American should read: Taylor Branch's three-volume work on America in the Martin Luther King Jr. years: Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire and At Canaan's Edge. Among other things, one will learn (or be reminded) that Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad had a home in Phoenix.
The most fascinating biography I've read this year is the magnificent George Frost Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis. Not only do we learn more about the brilliance and fey personality of the author of the Long Telegram from Moscow, but also the elements that put in place the Cold War and America's response. Colonel Roosevelt beautifully, poignantly, wraps up Edmund Morris' towering trilogy on T.R. Robert Caro. Read everything. His latest LBJ installment, The Passage of Power, is an equal to the other splendid volumes in this life's work.
Did I mention Robert Caro? Read The Power Broker, his Olympian biography of Robert Moses. Just read it, even if you don't know who Moses is or care about New York (indeed, especially if so). In addition to the book's many pleasures, you'll learn why most American cities have been so destroyed and made so dysfunctional over the past sixty-odd years. For your urban/sustainability jones, read James Howard Kunstler: The Geography of Nowhere, Home from Nowhere, The City in Mind and The Long Emergency. Even if you tire of his weekly column, these books, especially the first, are superb at explaining what's wrong with our built environment and how to fix it.
There is no shortage of books about the American revolution. I particularly recommend Washington's Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer. This stirring volume centers on the events leading up to the Battle of Trenton, which arguably saved the patriot cause, but goes much deeper into the era and some of its leading personalities.
On the economics front: Joseph Stiglitz's The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future, Hedrick Smith's Who Stole the American Dream and Donald Barlett and James Steele's The Betrayal of the American Dream are essential reading if you want to understand how we got into this mess and how we can move out of it. David Cay Johnston's The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use 'Plain English' to Rob You Blind is the eye-opener we would expect from this Pultzer-winning reporter. We're usually having the wrong conversation, e.g. regulation vs. deregulation. As Johnston makes clear, there's always regulation. It's just that the oligarchy has captured it to further their quasi-monopolies and cartels.
As far as Phoenix goes, what can I recommend beyond my novels? There simply is no adequate history of the city (or the state). In the meantime, Andrew Ross' Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City is a fine substitute. The hysteria with which local mandarins greeted this book is a sign that he hit the target. The reader should know that Ross quotes me extensively. The Emerging Metropolis: Phoenix 1944-1973 by William Collins is the best Phoenix history we have so far. On water, I suggest: Cadillac Desert, rightly a classic, by Marc Reisner, A River No More: The Colorado River and the West by Philip Fradkin and (the more academic-dry) Rivers of Empire by Donald Worster. My friend Jack August has laid out important chapters of the winning of the Central Arizona Project with Vision in the Desert: Carl Hayden and the Hydropolitics of the American Southwest and Dividing Western Waters, the latter telling the critical but forgotten story of lawyer Mark Wilmer and the Arizona v. California court case (to which my mother committed a decade of her life).
I've spent the past several months on my new novel, The Night Detectives, so my fiction reading has been slim. Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher? Are you pulling my pump-action shotgun? One thing is clear from these thrillers: Reacher is six-feet-five and big. I guess Lee Child went for the money. In reality, the Reacher books are uneven. If you read only one, pick Persuader. I'm thinking of reading John Dos Passos, one of the most lionized American novelists of the early 20th century and now all but forgotten. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Thanks for the tip on The Emerging Metropolis, Jon; I've added it to my Quixotic Quest list.
As a companion piece to your preceding post on '60s Phoenix, how about Midcentury Marvels: Commercial Architecture of Phoenix, 1945-1975 by Don W. Ryden & City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Office?
Posted by: An Infinitude of Tortoises | December 10, 2012 at 11:46 PM
I have an Autographed copy of Ryden's book, its very nice. Long time Phoenix resident desert landscaping architect Wayne Smith of The Farm at South Mountain made me aware of it.
Posted by: cal Lash | December 11, 2012 at 08:38 AM
Being old and rather unscholarly I am sticking with the following for next year.
I buy about 25 Desert Solitaire used paperbacks every year and give them to strangers. And Cadillac Desert I give away at least 2 copies of it a year. I like Charles Bowden’s Killing the Hidden Waters, which the results of got him fired at U of A for being anti development. There are a lot of writings on water and the environment available today but I am not a Jack August fan as I find he lacks strength.
On the nonfiction side I thing Triple Cross and I Hear You Paint Houses are about as good as you can get on the ineptness of the federal terrorist investigations and who killed Jimmy Hoffa and Crazy Joe Gallo and maybe JFK.
Every year for the last 20 I have reread “City” by Clifford Simak as it takes me back to when I was about 10 years old. And I watch the movie Elmer Gantry to remind me how I oppose organized religion.
I am a big magazine reader (not on line.) and my favorite right now because of the art work is Adbuster. This column and the Huffington Post are about it on line. In my 320 feet abode I have over a 100 unread books just waiting to have their pages turned. I gave away my I Pad that a client gave me as I had no use for it and will go to my end not reading “my” books on an electronic machine.
Posted by: cal Lash | December 11, 2012 at 09:06 AM
I certainly agree about reading actual paper (although Google books is a research mecca). I too have piles of books to be read, and there are many RC has mentioned that are waiting to be read and a few I'd like to read after his recommendation.
However, I'll give the Red Army it's due. While we were wallowing on the beaches of Normandie, stalemated in Italiay, and bombing the poo out of Deutschland and other places to no avail, the Red Army smashed an entire German Army Group to smithereens (Operation Bagration) and opened the door to final victory.
Posted by: eclecticdog | December 11, 2012 at 09:57 AM
Speaking of Phoenix architecture:
http://www.modernphoenix.net/about.htm
Posted by: Suzanne | December 11, 2012 at 10:42 AM
I found a copy of What Hath God Wrought (evil electronic version) after you rec'd it on FB, Jon.
I found it very enlightening as well!
Posted by: Petro | December 11, 2012 at 11:29 AM
cal, I Heard You Painted Houses hasn't hit the pirate circuit (yet?)... dammit.
What you've said about it has peaked my interest.
Posted by: Petro | December 11, 2012 at 11:38 AM
Kindle all the way baby!
Adjustable font. 62 year old eyes.
Posted by: azreb | December 11, 2012 at 11:58 AM
Petro, I got a copy at Half Price Books for 3.00 and after I read it I had the cover of Jimmy Hoffa and his killer framed. U can have the book.
AZreb. U cant smell either? At 72 like Suzzane and burning wood, I love the smell of dusty and musty ink print and paper and u cant start a fire with a kindle.
My fiction is pretty much limited to Talton but a few months ago I did read a dark western book called The Sisters Brothers and I just finished the Mexican version of Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos,
Re" I Hear You Paint Houses
U all can decide if Oswald was alone when "he shot" JFK
Posted by: cal Lash | December 11, 2012 at 02:58 PM
great web site Suzanne. I am a life time member of the Sunnyslope Historical Society. They have a nice physical site on east Hatcher
Posted by: cal Lash | December 11, 2012 at 04:34 PM
Thank you, Jon. This is a fantastic list. I think I now have my reading list for at least 2013!!! I have read some of the books on this list and all of them rank among my favorites of all time. I will need to add some fiction, however. I wonder who I could add???
Posted by: SD Mittelsteadt | December 11, 2012 at 06:58 PM
There are some great titles and recommendations here. I'll have three or four more to round out the military history genre. Some of them deal with WW II in fascinating ways, and others are directly relevant to today's world-spanning problem of Islamic militants. All are exceptional either in their documentation/credentials or in their unusual take on events, or both. (Books by participants with broad as well as special access to primary sources of information get special preference.)
It will take time to assemble the information but hopefully I should have it posted tomorrow. I don't have the books handy at the moment and I want to be able to do them justice.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | December 11, 2012 at 08:42 PM
Emil - thanks for turning me on to Bettye LaVette (and that Dylan cover).
I can't believe that charming bit of Motown escaped my radar!
Posted by: Petro | December 12, 2012 at 09:52 AM
Reading War and Warriors:
There seemed to be a short period when the human population took a small break from wholesale slaughter. But Attila the Hun is back on the attack worldwide. Law enforcement in the US resembles Robocop patrolling the streets backed up by swat storm troopers and Bolo Tanks that have a mind of their own. I have looked at many books on war and warriors and at 72 only found one that didn’t just bore me to near exhaustion and the only one I found worth reading and re-reading, “The Art of War.” It’s time someone updated the thoughts in the Art of War and published it, calling it the Art of Not Making War. There is not one military “war” to date that I would sign up for however I have enlisted in an idealistic unwinnable attempt to save the planet from the human pestilence that inhabits it.
The recent election was a setback for the attack dogs of war. The Napoleons and Petraeus’s of the world that lead with small brains bled of blood and oxygen by their sex organs. Once again we have a chance to break the evolutionary mind set of killing each other but I hold out little hope as a number of the warriors I have known find killing in wholesale slaughters, enjoyable. Particularly when you win and get to pillage and rape your enemy’s lands and people. Which brings to mind what a number of cops have repeated almost word for word to me about the “WAR on Drugs, “making them legal would take away, my income, my toys (read guns) and all my fun” (read kicking ass).
PS, In the past generals stuck enemies heads on poles along traveled paths not as an ego trip but as a type of warning. Today in this modern era of warfare we have American soldiers with sick ego trips displaying and photographing for mementos the heads and body parts of "the enemy."
So I'll stay with reading Talton fiction for violence and reading non military writings for pleasure.
Posted by: cal Lash | December 12, 2012 at 02:04 PM
Emil, I wish I had known about Bettye LaVette for the new Mapstone (which is off to the publisher). She will definitely be in the next one.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | December 12, 2012 at 02:31 PM
Glad you three liked the Bettye LaVette. Aside from being good music, the song spoke to me strongly of Mr. Talton (his personal sensibilities as well as the noir genre he writes fiction in).
I was lucky to find a good YouTube version. The one put out by the record label itself has inferior audio and banal visuals marketing the singer.
The individual who animated the version I actually linked to did a fabulously creative job, and the use of bittersweet nostalgic video imagery (paper musical notation, traditional microphone, amber "lighting" etc.) further accented some of the sensibilities I had in mind.
I first heard the song on an ANTI sampler (ANTI being the record label) which Zia Records gives out for free, which should still be available. There is more than one ANTI sampler. Some of them can be downloaded free from their website.
This particular sampler included a really nice song by another artist I had never heard of, Glen Hansard, titled "Maybe Not Tonight".
ANTI has a youtube version posted which seems better than the independent ones and has better than average audio quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKmHkRx8zU8
It didn't specifically bring to mind Mapstone like the other one, but as a fine song about a man whose marriage or relationship is on the rocks, but still has enough love left (especially in memory) to consider salvaging, it has possibilities in the context of a cinema adaptation and a relationship subplot.
Samplers often contain loads of crap but if you're lucky there is a handful of recherche music which makes you wonder why you have never heard of it.
Almost out of time this login session. The book reviews/descriptions I promised will have to wait until later and/or tomorrow.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | December 12, 2012 at 03:58 PM
Maybe a Xmas gift of the Lapham Quarterly is appropriate for the holidazed reader?:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175626/tomgram%3A_lewis_lapham%2C_drugs_and_the_national_security_state/#more
Posted by: eclecticdog | December 12, 2012 at 04:25 PM
eclecticdog, excellent post. I could have not said it any better, even though I have been saying it since 73.
Anyone wanta do a fan club meet?
I gotta get my final report into galactic headquarters on all you subversives so I can my yearly bonus of CIA Leary acid.
Posted by: cal Lash | December 12, 2012 at 09:32 PM
This Saturday, coffee, Urban Bean, late morning or early afternoon??
Posted by: AzRebel | December 12, 2012 at 09:48 PM
11AM or 2PM?
Posted by: cal Lash | December 12, 2012 at 10:02 PM
11am
Posted by: AzRebel | December 13, 2012 at 07:05 AM
Unlike Joe Queenan, I have never read a book during a play or concert or at a prizefight. Joe seems a little obsessed. I do not speed-read either, I like to read deliberately. When I was younger, books were so expensive that I would never mark in them, never dog-ear the corners of the page and I tried never to crack the spine. Now I interact with my books far more intently, I mark in them, I highlight the seminal points and I refer often to the books in my stack.
Only recently have I given in to e-books, that is because they were free.
A very good history book I read this year was 'Cleopatra' by Stacy Schiff.
Thank you cal.
Posted by: Suzanne | December 13, 2012 at 08:50 AM
Here are three suggestions to add to the military non-fiction reading list:
(1) Dark December by Robert E. Merriam
I came across this book through an abridged edition titled The Battle of the Bulge. Merriam was was Chief of the Ardennes Section of the Historical Division, European Theater of Operations, for the U.S. War Department.
He had unprecedented access to troops, officers, and theater commanders on both sides, immediately following the war. He personally interviewed generals Eisenhower, Bradley and Hodges in 1946 "when as a civilian I could more freely question them". Synthesizing the testimony of planners and eyewitness participants, and official documents including intelligence reports and field communications, his stated aim was to give a true and full account of "the largest single pitched battle of the war on the Western Front".
What makes the book such a pleasure to read is the highly readable, almost conversational prose. The reader gets plenty of detail (not, generally, a surfeit), but tied together through prose that scans so naturally and simply that the reader is scarcely aware of it, as though information has been absorbed through osmosis. The narrative has the integrated flow of a novel without seeming in the least contrived or fictional, and presents the big ideas with sparkling lucidity.
Briefly, the story behind the Battle of the Bulge is this: the German army was losing a war of attrition and despite moving factory production underground didn't have the resources that the "arsenal of democracy" (America) could bring to the European theater of operations to resupply and replace. German divisions on the Western front were being damaged faster than they could be replaced and Germany had to act quickly and decisively if the course of the war was to change in its favor; at this same time the Soviet forces were moving in from the East and Germany simply did not have the resouces to fight a divided war on two fronts.
At the same time, the Allied lines, though adequately supplied, were stretched and vulnerable to supply disruptions. The Allied advance in Europe required nearly 700 tons of supplies per fighting division per day. Each month Allied forces on the Western Front had to replace 500 tanks, 2,400 transport and other vehicles, 36,000 small arms, 66,000 miles of field wire, and 8,000,000 rounds of artillery and mortar ammunition alone.
"An attack in late November would have caught us when (the port of) Antwerp was just beginning to go into operation, when most of our supplies were still being transported over the long truck and rail route from the beaches of Normandy, clear across the breadth of France to the fighting front. Without the large docks at Antwerp to feed the fighting men, our ability to counteract the German attack might have been seriously limited."
The Germans had two "secret" weapons which were ready but had yet to reach mass production: the jet aircraft and a type of submarine that seldom needed to resurface and could travel underwater at the same speed as a surfaced submarine. Any development which could put the war on the Western front at a stalemate long enough for these weapons to enter mass production could allow the Germans to regain control of the air and to severely undercut Alllied naval operations including the critical task of resupply.
The German plan was to stage a breakout in a zone which was regarded by both sides as an uneventful area where the tired and the injured were sent to recouperate, then drive directly to Antwerp and take the port. By cutting off resupply and reinforcements, the isolated Allied forces could be savaged from weak points in the rear and flanks. The Germans planned to trap twenty to thirty divisions and pound them into oblivion. During the respite thus gained on the Western Front, the refitting of German divisions could proceed apace, and the new jet airplanes and submarines could enter mass production.
"Thus with air equality again obtained and Britain's (shipping) lifeline to the Arsenal of Democracy cut by the submarines, the Allied armies could be hard-pressed and forced to delay indefinitely their offensive plans."
With Allied advances put on hold on the Western Front, the Germans could turn their attention to stopping the Soviet advance.
During the breakout in the Bulge, Allied air superiority was to be neutralized by timing the German attack to coincide with an extended period of bad weather, thus grounding most flights by both sides for at least a week after the attack began. This also disrupted Allied aerial reconnaisance (which our intelligence analysts normally relied heavily on) in the period prior to the attack:
"Of the missions flown (in the week prior to the attack) only one was a photographic mission, and it reported heavy rail activity at Trier, just behind the German lines in the Ardennes, but this sampling was not sufficient to warrant any conclusion."
The German plan required three seemingly contradictory conditions to succeed: a weak spot in the Allied lines; the massing of an overwhelming German force at that point; and complete surprise.
Exactly how the Germans managed to assemble such a strike force right under the noses of the Allied armies should be left to the reader to discover. However, psychology and disinformation did play a large role.
The Germans created a phony plan of operations called "Wacht Am Rhein" then leaked details to Allied intelligence. The idea was to suggest a strictly defensive German force development to prevent Allied armies from reaching the Rhine river and thus penetrating into the German heartland. Partially under cover of this ploy the Germans repositioned substantial forces; further guile was necessary to bring them successfully to the staging point of the attack.
The plan cleverly exploited Allied psychology: buoyed by a series of recent victories, the Allies were sure they had the Germans playing a defensive game and all but licked. At one point, unambiguous intelligence warning of the imminent attack fell into Allied hands; but so great was the psychological bias that our intelligence analyists decided this had been mistranslated or misunderstood, and the wording was changed from "German attack" to "German fear of attack".
The Germans also had some other clever tricks up their sleeve, including two tank battalions and an infantry battalion, all with captured American or British equipment and uniforms, and English speaking German soldiers: these were to be infiltrated during the confusion of battle, behind Allied lines, to seize critical targets (or just cause massive disruption).
Fortunately for the Allies, the brilliant conception was poorly executed.
The German High Command was at such pains to keep the attack secret even from the vast bulk of their own officer corps until the last minute, that fully 3/5 of the tank fuel allocated for the attack was positioned on the wrong side of the Rhine river and was subsequently unavailable.
"With only sixty miles worth of fuel, the harassed commanders were forced to issue emergency orders to their troops to seize whatever gasoline they could find along the way. And equally serious, many of the artillery units and supply eschelons were stranded while the fuel was diverted to the hungry tanks."
The high ground of the Elsenborn Ridge overlooking the road network to the north from which the Allies would attempt to reinforce divisions trapped in the "bulge", was not seized, because the Germans failed to budget for the possibility of stronger than expected Allied concentrations in their calculations. A second German force passing through the area early on could actually have achieved the objective through an additional flanking maneuver, but refused to be diverted from their original orders. Such a critical objective was too important to be left to the whims of chance as regards potential variations in enemy (Allied) troop strength.
The northern road network itself through which the Allies would attempt to reinforce their trapped divisions, was supposed to be seized and defended, in part, by a German paratroop battalion armed with anti-tank weapons, mines, and other equipment -- this despite the fact that the Germans were counting on bad weather to suppress Allied air-support. The flight personnel were inexperienced, the parachutists hastily organized and briefed and dropped a day late, and in a night-drop the men were scattered over three countries. The minority which managed to reach the assembly point were too weak to stop Allied reinforcements.
Also critical to the success of the panzerblitz lightning drive of tanks to the north to capture the port of Antwerp, was the ability to ford a couple of rivers. Yet, the Germans failed to supply forward tanks with adequate bridging equipment; they also failed to secure existing bridges, only lightly defended by the Allies, ahead of time, through paratroops or by infiltrating special light-infantry forces. This allowed a small number of Allied troops to blow up bridge after bridge right under the noses of approaching German tank divisions.
Another critical area in the south, which the Germans intended to use as a "keyhinge" to swing shut their trap, was lost because the force sent to secure it was poorly supplied, lacking sufficient armor among other things; instead, the Allies established themselves and slowly built up a new line there.
So much for "German efficiency". Hitler's grand plan, which despite the author's careful suggestion of German overreach, was probably strategically sound, was also undermined by the insubordination of commanders who had their own ideas about the proper scope and methods of German military operations. Penny-wise but pound-foolish, their actions might even have made the difference between German unconditional surrender and a conditional truce that would have allowed the monstrous Nazi regime to survive.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | December 13, 2012 at 04:34 PM
Sounds like a terrific book, Emil. I'll add it to my list.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | December 14, 2012 at 06:51 PM
(2) Tactics of the Crescent Moon: Militant Muslim Combat Tactics, by H. John Poole (Posterity Press, 2004)
If you ever wondered how Muslim guerrilla fighters in third-world countries manage to defeat lavishly funded superpower armies (e.g., against the Soviets/Russians in Afghanistan and Chechnya, the Israelis in Southern Lebanon, etc.), with application to the two U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, this is the book to read.
The author's decades as a U.S. Marine Corps fighter, commander, and instructor in advanced infantry tactics and squad leadership, provide reassuring bona fides supporting his unorthodox approach to the subject. In the book's Forward, Major General Ray L. Smith USMC (Ret.) says that "this book should be on the shelf of every infantryman, from fire team leader through division commander...it would also be a good primer for those in Washington who send these young warriors into the fight".
But what makes the book special, aside from the lucidity of the prose and the skills of the author as a writer communicating specialized ideas to non-specialist readers, is the way the author acknowledges that war takes place in a moral and political context as well as in a technical battlefield sense: he feels that the United States is not only fighting these wars the wrong way on technical grounds, but also in terms of psychological diplomacy, and that it has failed to uphold its own standards for moral leadership.
Some of his criticisms are surprising (to this civilian) coming from a military man, and are sure to be unpopular among conservative politicians and their allies; while for liberals, they are a useful reminder that common sense and humanity are not necessarily inconsistent with military service and sensibilities.
The author's basic thesis is that irregular fighters are light-infantry forces and effectively combating them also requires light-infantry, only better trained; and that the U.S. has become too dependent on technology and firepower.
Quoting from a U.S. Defense Agency study: Light infantry is a surprise and terrain dependent force; these protect it from tanks and artillery, compartmentalize (isolate portions of) its opponents, and mask its movements...The characteristic of light-infantry tactics everywhere is infiltration in the attack, and ambush & counterstrike in the defense.
The author illustrates by noting that "the ten Chinese divisions that sneaked into the Chosin Reservoir in November 1950 to blunt the U.S. offense were light infantry; so too was the North Vietnamese division that held Hue City for most of February 1968 and then mysteriously disappeared".
As of the writing (2004) the author asserts that the U.S. has no true light-infantry, despite claims to the contrary made by several divisions within the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. He quotes from a 2004 interview with the U.S. Army's Chief of Infantry to illustrate the U.S. position:
Q. As the Chief of the Infantry, you and the Chief of the Artillery have joined to send the message through the Army that "Indirect fire first is the American way of war". What does that mean?
A. Never send a soldier when (something else) will do. The intent is for the infantry to engage the enemy with indirect fire or close air-support or some other means -- and we need to apply these effects to avoid having to commit soldiers in the close fight.
Contrary to conservative civilian critics, the author (who served in Vietnam) strongly asserts that "U.S. Vietnam-era forces were not defeated in Congress; they were defeated on the ground through a relative deficit of short-range combat skill. Since that time, its small-unit tactics haven't changed and its enlisted field-skills have actually deteriorated...There has been some progress of late but not nearly enough."
Elsewhere: "While not as brutal as the Russians, American forces have been fighting the same way -- trying to avoid casualties through the liberal use of supporting arms...What is most disturbing is that U.S. leaders have been unwilling to admit to or apprise their subordinates of any tactical deficiency."
The author does not mince words when fingering the blame for American overdependence on very, very expensive weapons systems: "Mainly responsible for America's tactical stagnation has been its arms manufacturers. Death from above is less moral than at close range because of the greater difficulty of target verification. Machines don't have consciences, people do...Why the Pentagon pays more attention to weaponry than tactics probably has to do more with political economy than with military strategy...many of the key billet holders within the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are supporting-arms officers. Most aviators and artillerymen are 'firepower' oriented..."
Though the book was written before final developments in Iraq, and has no comment on the Anbar Awakening that turned the war around for the U.S., my personal view is that these proxy forces supplied much of the light-infantry equivalent, as irregular local fighters engaged enemy insurgents using guerrilla tactics supplanted by their own informal intelligence networks.
The author makes the point that the light-infantry tactics devloped by Muslim irregular fighters are the product of bottom-up experimentation in less bureaucratically controlled organizations; that through jihadist websites and training camps techniques are shared with others; and that every such war allows them to gain greater experience and to refine their tactics.
The book is a real eye-opener. While not every Muslim fighter or organization is elite as regards tactical development, the methods are often far more sophisticated than western popular audiences believe.
Probably the single most impressive example in the book is that of Chechen rebels in the First Chechen War. Using comparatively simple weaponry (e.g., rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns), but highly developed tactics, the Chechens decimated a Soviet armored brigade that entered the city of Grozny, destroying 20 of 26 tanks, 102 of 120 armored vehicles, and 4,800 of 6,000 personnel, within 72 hours. A second armored thrust was similarly ambushed, and the Soviets fired up to 4,000 artillery rounds an hour for 20 days just to extract their survivors. After a three month bombardment, the Russians finally captured the city. Eighteen months later, after detailed reconnaisance of Russian garrisons and outposts, the Chechens besieged every Russian position (12,000 Russian troops) and captured the city in a single day. The Russians settled for a ceasefire and departed the country.
Another surprise is how the standard U.S. military approach actually plays into the hands of insurgents, who may operate from civilian areas not because they believe that it makes them safe ("human shields") but because provoking a less than fully discriminating response with aircraft, artillery, or hellfire missiles fired from drones is actually a tactical means to a strategic goal. The civilian deaths ("collateral damage"), whether caused inadvertently or simply indifferently, "expand the population base on which the guerrilla badly depends...No amount of talk about regrettable error...will lessen the effects of civilian deaths in popular opinion...Supporting arms should be reserved for reinforced strongpoints in a defensive matrix. Seldom does someone's living quarters qualify."
The author's comments on Iraq (2004) are broadly applicable to many such insurgencies:
"With no polls to worry about, the Middle Eastern guerrilla has time on his side. He has a dual objective: (1) to make the average citizen so miserable that he will join, and (2) to make the occupier's life so miserable he will leave. Both can often be accomplished at the same time. By killing a few Americans every week, the Iraqi rebels hope to get U.S. forces to use a heavier hand and thereby alienate the local population. By sabotaging Iraq's infrastructure, they hope to discourage Congress from indefinitely funding the occupation. So far, water mains and treatment facilities, oil pipelines and storage tanks, and electrical grids have all been repeatedly attacked. All the means of transportation have also been targeted: airplanes and helicopters, trains and train stations, and truck convoys...With such attacks the rebels are telling the Iraqi people that their occupiers can provide neither security nor basic services."
Aside from the almost inevitable civilian deaths caused by blowing up a building with standoff weaponry whenever you get a tip or suspect militants may be there, it's difficult to destroy a bottom-up organization by removing a few heads; just as the drug cartels always have someone else to take the place of removed bosses, so too do militant Muslim movements. Successes are often short-lived.
"Just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. attempted 50 'decapitation' airstrikes against Iraqi leaders. While no Iraqi leaders were confirmed killed, the strikes were launched against heavily populated areas and contributed to the estimated 10,000 civilians killed in the invasion. The 'shock and awe' of it all apparently did little to dissuade the Iraqis from mounting a guerrilla-type defense. One wonders then about the advisability of the ensuing airstrikes against any location remotely linked to al-Zarqawi. At what point does the cost in human suffering to Fallujah's women and children outweigh the benefit of removing a few thugs from their midst?"
Even when not actively courted by cynical and manipulative insurgents, the combination of standoff weaponry and poor intelligence often lead to public relations disasters in places where winning the hearts and minds of the people is a critical element of victory:
"In December 2001, a tip from a warlord, Badshah Khan-Zadran, sent American AC-130 gunships and Navy fighters to attack a convoy of vehicles full of Afghan tribal elders on their way to show allegiance to the post-Taliban government: 65 civilians were reportedly killed. In July 2002, at least 48 people were killed and 117 wounded when U.S. warplanes attacked a wedding party in the town of Deh Rawud in central Afghanistan. The U.S. military said a gunship had come under fire in the area. In May of 2004, another wedding was hit near the Syrian border in Iraq. While the U.S. military maintained the target was a suspected safe-house for foreign fighters, Iraqi officials said a helicopter killed 40 adults and children at a wedding. Later, Associated Press Television News produced videotape of the wedding party before and after the airstrike. In a place where vengeance is everyone's sacred duty, mistakes like these can do irreparable damage."
The author also seems to suggest that the explosion in private contractors in such wars are a method of evading casualty disclosures as well as generally limiting transparency (since private services do not have the same requirements as U.S. forces themselves).
"To win in Afghanistan and Iraq, the opposition need not decisively beat U.S. forces. It has only to bottle them up, subvert or overpower local police or national-guard units, and then wait. That's how it got rid of the Russians and the Israelis . . . (U.S. strategists) don't realize that covert ground elements can do just as much strategic damage (as standoff weaponry, without the wholesale infrastructure destruction and alienation of the population). They assume that firepower-deficient armies have been sacrificing their infantrymen at close range. They have difficulty envisioning a way of war that might require little, if any, control from above. They assume that U.S. ground forces have been tactically evolving as quickly as their Eastern counterparts and will always take fewer casualties with enough preliminary bombardment. Unfortunately, many of their assumptions are wrong. Firepower-deficient Eastern armies have been taking most of their casualties at long range. All the while, U.S. preparatory fire has mostly hit dummy frontline positions and in the process compromised what little surprise the infantryman could muster."
A final quote deserves special attention:
"There is only one way to break the circle of violence. Someone in high office has to have the political fortitude to stick to a policy of minimal force . . . (peace in the Middle East) cannot be accomplished through self-righteous resolve and greater firepower. It will require more respect for Eastern culture and non-American life in general. What makes the GI's life more valuable than the life he is liberating? If American policemen could so easily resort to bombs, no bystander would be safe."
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | December 16, 2012 at 04:42 PM
Those were two great reviews Emil.
Posted by: eclecticdog | December 17, 2012 at 11:43 AM