Iraq I: The War Is a Disaster. You Can Book It

The trickle of books harshly critical of the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and the disasterous aftermath has become a flood. These aren't books written by flame-throwing leftie provocateurs; they're by people who know what they're talking about.

In the last few weeks alone, there has been:

* "Cobra II" by Michael R. Gordon, the New York Times' chief military correspondent, and Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general.

"Cobra II" is a powerful indictment of the multiple failures of Defense Secretary Rumself and his Pentagon flunkies based on extensive interviews with battlefield commanders and others in the know.

* "Boys of '67: From Vietnam to Iraq, the Extraordinary Story of a Few Good Men" by Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general who once commanded all U.S. troops in the Middle East.

Zinni is harshly critical of the entire Iraq adventure and bluntly calls for Rumsfeld's ouster.

Peggy Noonan, the conservative but independent minded Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist, is reading "Cobra II" and is in a conclusion drawing mood:

The Iraq story is not over. We are there. We must give our troops everything they need, and remain cleaved to them in gratitude and loyalty. More will be written, more books and commentaries, and memoirs, too. For now, from me, two thoughts that have bubbled up from the national conversation this week.

The first is optimistic. Our troops in Iraq are the best of us: brave young men and women willing to put themselves in harm's way for their country. But they are by and large something else: very good, and kind, and generous human beings. Every day for three years they have, as part of their mission and in their off hours, been interacting with Iraqi kids and young people. Those kids, those young people, having been exposed to who Americans are--their kindness, their helpfulness, their humor and good nature--will never forget it.

Will this have implications for the future? Yes, I do believe it will. After World War II, half of Europe had been defeated by America, bombed by it. And yet America had the broad support and affection of Western Europe in the crucial quarter century after that war, in part because of efforts such as the Marshall Plan, but also because of exposure, both prewar and postwar, to American GIs. Europeans came to know who Americans were. American leaders and diplomats did plenty to help America's standing, but in the end the glory went, I think, to the GI Joes, and some Janes too, who won and occupied with American grace.

We will find, down the road, that many in Iraq will hold affection and respect for America because of the Americans they met and came to know in our armed forces in the first years of the 21st century. And this will have implications, and they will not be unhappy.

The second thought is less happy. Tony Zinni was against the Iraq war before it occurred, opposes it now, has written about it. Fine. But the history recounted in "Cobra II," and the testimony of Gen. Zinni, suggests a lot of generals--a lot--were against the war in the run-up, for reasons that were many and serious. If this is correct it begs questions: Did they feel they could not speak? Why? What dynamics went into the decision? Or did they speak and we didn't hear, or didn't weigh what was said seriously enough? Did they speak inside? To what degree did the inside listen? Or were the generals and colonels, in fact, split? Were the generals more supportive than is now being suggested?

What really happened? I suspect books will be written on this too. I suspect we are all going to learn a lot, and some of it may be quite painful.

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