With American forces committed to the Middle East and the issue of Islamist extremism, governments that are despotic and weapons of mass destruction proliferation merging in that region, it is vital to keep up with the current books written on the region. In no time in U.S. history has the Middle East occupied center stage in American public discourse. As members of the 21st century U.S. military it is incumbent upon military leaders from NCO to Flag Officer to keep current on the latest thinking on the problems of the Islamic world. This review essay will highlight several books written in 2005 that will expand understanding of U.S. Marine Corps tactics and the operational art executed in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the British archival view of the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War and an excellent thoughtful but controversial piece on Iran's weapons of mass destruction program.
Colonel Nicholas E. Reynolds, USMC (Ret) was the Office in Charge of Field History in the U.S. Marine Corps. This outfit is not your garden variety armchair historians but Reynolds and his team embedded with the Marines in Iraq as U.S. forces pushed towards Baghdad. Reynolds' book is not just history but offers the first of what will hopefully many tactical analyses of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). His book entitled Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond: The U.S. Marine Corps in the Second Iraq War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005) takes readers into how the planning for OIF was conducted at Central Command (CENTCOM) headquarters in Tampa. The overall concept of a "shock and awe," campaign to paralyze the Iraqi regular formations was taken from a National Defense University book entitled, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. The first chapter also highlights the impact former Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni and former Commandant Alfred Gray had on the current Marine Generals who led, planned and executed OIF. The mechanics of how to integrate the Marines, Army and British forces into General Tommy Frank's overall plan involved the usual give and take of senior commanders. In the end, the Combined Marine and British force would be under the command of Lt.Gen James Conway whose forces totaled over 80,000 of which 42,000 would be the spear head force that would secure Basra, An-Nasiriya and its crossings along the Euphrates River as well as securing southern oil fields.
The book describes innovative Marine planning and tactics and heaps praise upon General Usher whose staff of logisticians came up with using a strategic highway as a landing strip for KC-130 tanker/transports keeping Marines supplied, fed and treated in the field. Another effective lesson from Afghanistan used in Iraq were Forward Arming and Refueling Points that enabled Marine air to be even more responsive to calls of support.
The Marine Ground Combat Element was made up of the 1st Marine Division (under Maj.Gen James Mattis) consisting of four Marine Regiments as well as the 2d Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) known as Task Force Tarawa with a fifth Marine Regiment all were five were known as Regimental Combat Teams (RCTs).
One of these RCTs was within the 2d MEB (Task Force Tarawa) under the command of Brig.Gen Richard Natonski (5,091 Marines). To understand the fighting potential of one RCT Natonki's forces slogged through urban combat in An-Nasiriyah and which got surprising resistance not from regular Iraqi troops but Fedayeen Saddam (irregular fanatics and loyalists bent on killing themselves while taking the life of an American). Fighting in An-Nasiriyah would last eight days and included bitter house to house fighting, but they cleared the city and secured key bridges vital for follow-on US forces headed towards Baghdad. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of Task Force Tarawa was the controversial A-10 Warthog friendly fire incident that is discussed in the book. OIF saw some very surprising and effective showings by Marine artillery that was used in sandstorms in lieu of grounded air support, yet there are tales of heroism in which helicopter pilots brought in supplies during the sandstorm and flying with instinct and compass, there would be no visibility in the mother of all sandstorms. The leaders and heroism of Marine units in An-Nasiriyah was matched in two major battles engaged in Baghdad by 1st Battalion 5th Marines, many coalition partners described Iraq as a massive ammunition dump designed to sustain long-term guerilla warfare against an invading army. The author also mentions Marine Maj.Gen Henry Osman, who led a small mission in Northern Iraq designed to keep the peace between rival Kurdish factions. Had the Kurds engaged in civil war it would have fuelled the Iraqi loyalist insurgency and foreign fighters who flocked to Iraq to engage U.S. units, it would have added a more complex dimension to U.S. forces engaged in the south and potentially given fedayeen and Islamic militants more battle space in northern Iraq. The most poignant descriptions of the book is the heroism of the individual servicemen and servicewomen who innovated while enduring harsh conditions, looked out for one another, and faced fanatic adversaries to take Baghdad and depose the Iraqi dictator who will join the ranks of other despots that have murdered thousands of their own people. Reynolds book should the top your reading list for 2005.
A more complex book for the serious student of the Middle East published in 2005, is Frank Brenchley's Britain, the Six-Day War and It's Aftermath (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005). Brenchley is a career British diplomat who spent 40 years dealing with Middle East issues and would be at the center of British policy making during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The book opens with a great primer all summarized into a single chapter on British policy in the Arab world from World War I to 1956, the Suez War. It highlights the problems of maintaining peace amidst competing policies such as the Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the creation of Israel and the Hussein- McMahon Correspondence that planted the seeds of Arab self-determination after World War I. Another chapter, offers the best summation in the English language on how Arab-nationalist leader Egypt's Gamal Abdel-Nasser made the decision to place two divisions in the Sinai, and order the withdrawal of UN forces from the Sinai, and finally announcing the closure of the Tiran Strait overlooking the entrance of the Aqaba Gulf. This was all part of an Egyptian policy of gradual escalation short of war, in which detailed explanations are found in Arabic books on the 1967 Six-Day War. Brenchley devotes a good portion of his book to discussing how England desperately wanted to avert war, not wanting to alienate Arab states that provided the bulk of British oil supplies. When Israel struck Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a lightening air blitzkrieg in June 1967, British diplomats had to counter Jordanian and Nasser's lies that British and American carriers were aiding the Israelis including its jet bombers and fighters helping the Israeli Air Force. The Egyptians could not fathom that the Israelis would leave only a dozen planes behind committing over 200 of its jets to the fight. The psychology of Arab states dictated that the bulk of its air force remained grounded to avert any aerial coups; this is the curse of despotism. Egypt would not commit mass air formations until the 1973 Yom-Kippur War.
What is striking having read Israeli, Arab and Western accounts of the Six Day War is the total lack of understanding of the wider implications on the cold war that Arab states did not adequately comprehend, the Egyptians and Syrians were consistently regionally focused in their strategy. Egyptian writers never look at the wider context of a war with Israel in terms of US-Soviet geo-strategic competition but always focus on how the west is keeping Arab states from victory, not understanding that an Arab total victory would lead to a wider superpower confrontation. Brenchley's book is a strategic view of the 1967 Six-Day War and not a tactical analysis, yet it is important to read the tactical to understand the strategic influence a conflict has on national policy.
The final book looks at a serious and overt adversary of the United States; Iran. It is important for U.S. military leaders to read current books and ideas on the development of Iran's military industry and weapons of mass destruction. As Iran will not come clean with its missile and nuclear capabilities before the International Atomic Energy Agency, one must look into worst case scenarios and plan for such in the case of Iran's hard-line leaders and their military intentions. Kenneth Timmerman has spent a career writing books that piece together what is known, unknown, what is speculation and what dissidents say about such nations as Saddam's Iraq and currently Iran. He paints a worst- case picture of Iran's conventional, unconventional and terrorist capabilities. His current book published in 2005 is entitled Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (New York: Crown Publishing, a Division of Random House, 2005) and offers readers a troubling look into what can be ascertained regarding Iran's power projection capabilities and how this fits in spreading an ideology that not even all Iranians approve of.
The book highlights highly intelligent and capable organizers of Iran's missile capability and follows the career of Sabzevar Rezai better known as Mohsen Rezai who during the Iran-Iraq War forged relations with China, North Korea and Russia to obtain much needed weapons to fight Iraq in the eighties. One of his earliest achievements was a $1.6 Billion deal with China to obtain such systems as the F-7M Fighter and Silkworm Anti-Tank Missile. He also placed Iran on the track towards self-sufficiency in rocket production with the earliest plants constructed at Semnan (175KM east of Teheran) and the Shahroud Great Salt Desert. The first missile that Iran would mass produce according to Timmerman is the Oghab-missile with 40KM range and 300KG warhead, 1,000 of these would be produced in time for the 1988 Battle of the Cities and during that phase of the Iran-Iraq War, 243 Oghabs would be fired on Iraqi urban centers bordering Iran in retaliation for Saddam Hussein's deployment of SCUDS on Iranian cities. The book discusses how Rezai turned to North Korea to acquire SCUD-B to reach Baghdad and during the Iran-Iraq War, Iran would fire 77 SCUDs.
After the Iran-Iraq War, Rezai would negotiate with the Chinese in 1990 to expand its nuclear facilities in Isfahan and obtain a calutron (uranium enrichment system). The nefarious Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan initially provided the strategy and known how for Iran to build centrifuges from scratch. Although a country could buy centrifuges off the shelf, building them did not attract the attention of the international community that buying and importing a whole system would. On the naval front Iran with the help of China improved on the French Exocet missile creating the C-802 anti-ship missile with a range of 60 miles. In a future confrontation in the Persian Gulf it is vital not to underestimate the Iranian navy as they could combine maritime suicide teams that attacked U.S. Navy ships in the eighties with advanced anti-ship missiles and Huodong (Hega-class) fast attack craft. In 1993, Iran began to look into the acquisition of what the Iranians called Zelzal-3 missile an upgrade of the SCUD-C that now made Israel within striking range.
Another troubling aspect of the book is the projection of terrorist power in Lebanon, Bosnia, Gaza and many more parts of the globe by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). They provide military advice and technical assistance to Hizballah in Lebanon, Timmerman's book quotes a figure of $70 Million per year that Iran provides Hizballah for its operating expenses. It also highlights what the Israelis call a terrorist genius Imad Mughniyah and explores sources, some of whom are not impartial, who explain Iranian relationships with Usama Bin Laden. Timmerman's book nonetheless offers a worst case scenario of what Iran can do to harm American interests in the region; his book is timely with the 2005 election of the new hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former IRGC commander, who is accused of holding American hostages in 1979 and whose election solidifies the power of intolerant hardliners in control of Iran.
Editor's Note: LCDR Aboul-Enein is Middle East Country Director at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He is an avid writer on Middle East affairs for U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps journals. LCDR Aboul-Enein was advisor to Maj.Gen Richard Natonski, USMC (Commander, Task Force Tarawa) when he commanded the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in 1997. He also advised BGen Francis (Frank) Wiercinski, U.S. Army (Anaconda Ground Commander) when they served at OSD until this year.