The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq

My rating:

add to my books

The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq

by Bing West

4.13 · rating details · 87 ratings · 16 reviews

From a universally respected combat journalist, a gripping history based on five years of front-line reporting about how the war was turned around-–and the choice now facing America.

In the course of 14 extended trips over five years, West embedded with more than 60front-line units, discussing strategy with generals and tactics with corporals. He provides an expert’s accou...more

Hardcover, 448 pages

Published August 12th 2008 by Random House (first published 2008)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyám

Iran and Iraq, Ancient and Modern

29th out of 103 books — 24 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 202)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Oct 23, 2009

Jason rated it

The American led coalition war in Iraq, and aftermath is little understood by the public at large, on a tactical, day to day level. The insurgent campaign, ongoing since the fall of the Baathist regime in 2003, is especially hard to sort out, beyond the political back and forth back home. The Strongest Tribe, Bing West's third book on the Iraq War attempts to place the political and strategic decisions in context of the tactical decisions made by units and individuals on the ground in Iraq, part...moreThe American led coalition war in Iraq, and aftermath is little understood by the public at large, on a tactical, day to day level. The insurgent campaign, ongoing since the fall of the Baathist regime in 2003, is especially hard to sort out, beyond the political back and forth back home. The Strongest Tribe, Bing West's third book on the Iraq War attempts to place the political and strategic decisions in context of the tactical decisions made by units and individuals on the ground in Iraq, particularly in the 2006 - 2008 time frame.

West, a former officer in the Vietnam War, and later a senior civilian in the Defense Department in the Reagan administration, has spent over 30 years studying the way for a superior military force, like the United States, to fight and win against an insurgent foe. What he brings to this book is his understanding of the higher levels of military and civilian culture in Washington, the reason why the US military approaches fighting and his expertise concerning insurgencies.

The book does cover the period roughly from the toppling of the Hussein regime to immediate aftermath of the new counterinsurgency strategy by Gen. Patreaus, though half the 400 page book concerns the late 2006 to mid 2008 period. West has limited his writing here to mostly the actions of the American military in Anbar and Baghdad. He writes for the general reader, with perhaps a basic understanding of how the modern Army and Marine Corps operate, and he takes time to personalize his narrative with stories of junior officers and enlisted men, in part to show their character, as they face an extremely difficult situation.

The Washington political class just comes off awfully in this book, especially on the Congressional level. President Bush's actions are fairly critiqued. The real disagreements at the top of the military are clearly described. What comes through is a real frustration on West's part between the outstanding service on the foggy front, and a disingenuous message back home.

The reader of this book should come away with a high appreciation of the monumental work accomplished in a very difficult environment by many members of the American military. West at times is prone to gushing in his admiration to where you can say his respect is of a level of love. Also, the reader should come away with a clear sense of how the failings and misunderstandings of the top levels of the executive and legislative branches, at best hindered, and at times harmed a very difficult mission. Most of all, the reader should come away with a distinct sense of the terror, brutality and grittiness that faced the American military, and the in a sense hopeful story of how such soldiers were able to overcome and achieve objectives in Iraq that would have seemed fanciful a generation prior.

West closes his book with real lessons and applications that can be applied from the Iraq War that should be understood by politicians, the military and the informed citizen. The informed citizen should especially come away with a sense of disappointment that general culture they participate in, is making it harder to produce wise politicians and self denying warriors who stand on watch for them.
(less)

· see review

Dec 14, 2009

Joe rated it

A friend of mine, who has a military background recommended this book to me. What it revealed to me was the "boots on the ground" perspective, lacking in so much of the political texts that have been written about this war. Starting immediately after 9/11 and evolving to 2009, Bing West shows how difficult this war has become in part due to the miscalculations of the Bush administration in the early years and the way the surge righted a VERY SINKING SHIP. It also details the difficulti...more

· see review

Sep 27, 2011

Lily Bart rated it

· review of another edition

More than just a gung-ho story of victory, it's a painfully honest look at the years of suffering and deadly incompetence in Washington DC. Ultimately it was the troops that had to find a way to victory in Iraq, and this book is a tribute to them.

Don't miss the "power point" section which is taken directly from a young captain's briefing on how to work with the locals. It is both funny and unspeakably outrageous that a company grade officer had to figure out a policy throu...more

like 1 like

· see review

Sep 29, 2008

Sylvia Pachecano rated it

Recommends it for: anti-war protestors

Recommended to Sylvia by: Glenn Beck

Shelves: non-fiction

Every anti-war protestor should read this book. Honor the brave war dead who died for your right to open your mouth!

like 2 likes

· see review

Jan 21, 2012

James rated it

Shelves: culture-and-politics, death-dying-killing-bereavement, economics, history, military, reference, regional, spirituality-and-or-religion, character-studies, crime-and-forensics, justice-system

Very good - I gave it four stars instead of five only for two reasons:
First, because of a major error in the military history cited by the author (he wrote that when the U.S. entered WWII, the British wanted us to invade the European continent early on, in 1943, and that the American leadership had refused and opted to start by invading Axis-held territory in North Africa instead; in reality, it was the other way around - the Americans wanted to tackle the Germans head-on and the British r...moreVery good - I gave it four stars instead of five only for two reasons:
First, because of a major error in the military history cited by the author (he wrote that when the U.S. entered WWII, the British wanted us to invade the European continent early on, in 1943, and that the American leadership had refused and opted to start by invading Axis-held territory in North Africa instead; in reality, it was the other way around - the Americans wanted to tackle the Germans head-on and the British refused to go along, arguing correctly that our forces weren't ready yet and a premature invasion of France would be a disaster.)
Second, because West argues that it is impossible to support our troops while opposing a war they're sent to fight, because we as a country chose to fight that war - it's a matter of opinion and personal values, but I vehemently disagree with the ideas that supporting our country or our troops requires supporting the policies of the current administration and that those policies necessarily represent the wishes of a majority of Americans. I believe this is naive and mistaken.

Still, in this book Bing West provides the best in-depth reporting and analysis of the situation in Iraq over a span of several years I've read yet, based on his having spent a lot of time there with American troops - from private to general, Army and Marine - and with members of different tribes and sects, Kurdish, Sunni, and Shi'ite, as well as on his extensive experiences in counterinsurgency strategy and tactics as a junior Marine infantry officer during the Vietnam war (which he chronicled in another book, the classic The Village.)

Among Bing West's books, The Strongest Tribe in particular stirs emotions in me as a retired Marine myself - I started my career as an infantryman in the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, a.k.a. 3/4 - the same battalion, out of 27 infantry battalions in the Corps, that the world watched on television pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein. Later I was in the 3rd Battalion, First Marine Regiment, 3/1, and was acquainted with then-Lieutenant Joseph Dunford. In 2003, Colonel Dunford led the Fifth Marine Regiment and attached support units during the invasion of Iraq, and now, as a four-star general, he is the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. General Dunford was one of the officers Bing West interviewed extensively during the course of the Iraq war up to the writing of this book.

As West explains, the situation in Iraq has been much more complex than most news accounts have shown. It's been a matter of U.S. efforts led by military officers and civilian appointees, some of those civilians reporting to the Secretary of Defense and some to the State Department, with power struggles between those two hierarchies in Washington and at the highest levels in Baghdad; of Iraqi forces divided between those loyal to and directed by the central government and those organized by tribes and local police and militia leaders; and between two major insurgencies, one Shi'ite and covertly sponsored by Iran and the other Sunni and working with Al Qaeda in Iraq, with those insurgencies fighting each other and terrorizing each other's civilian populations much of the time but occasionally cooperating against the American units they faced.

Ultimately, the lesson I took from the history up to the time the book was written shortly after the Obama administration took office, and the situation at that time, is that Iraq has become distressingly similar to South Vietnam at the time the U.S. finally withdrew from that war. There's a weak, corrupt, incompetent central government that strongly favors one portion of the country's population over others. That central government is neither capable of nor interested in meeting the needs of its people, basics like reliable electricity, schools, fair and honest law enforcement, and re-investing the wealth derived from foreign trade in infrastructure. That central government also fears competition or rebellion and therefore resists the strengthening and empowerment of local leaders who want to address these issues, particularly if they are Sunni, while turning a blind eye to the crimes of Moqtada al-Sadr's Shi'ite militia against Sunnis.

West spares no American or Iraqi civilian or military leader who deserves rebuke in his perspective, as indicated by chapter titles such as "How to Create a Mess," "Contradictory Goals," and "A Flawed Assessment." Still, he concludes at the end of the book that the U.S. will control the ultimate end state in Iraq and therefore we must keep troops there for the foreseeable future. I believe, to the contrary, that like South Vietnam, without a worthwhile central government the country will never be able to function independently, and there is no way the U.S. can create such a government there. Like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq was an artificial construct of a country, cobbled together out of peoples who had never seen themselves as part of the same culture; and like Yugoslavia, the only way Iraq was held together as a single country in name was with the brute force exerted by a ruthless dictator, Tito for Yugoslavia and Saddam for Iraq.

It seems only fair to call Bing West's final analysis mistaken if I go out on a limb and offer a different one. Based on its history and current situation, I believe the most likely outcome for Iraq, tragically, will be a combination of a civil war between Shi'ite and Sunni groups (the prime minister seems determined to start just such a war.) I think that war will then lead either to a failed state with Shi'ite regions dominated by Iran and Sunni by Saudi Arabia and other regional Sunni powers such as Egypt (the Iraqi Kurds are more of a wild card, as they want to unite with Kurdish populations in Turkey, Iran, and Syria to form Kurdistan, very much against the wishes of all four countries, and those same Iraqi Kurds happen to be sitting on top of a lot of oil) or to an outright annexation of much of Iraq by Iran, which might or might not touch off a regional Shi'ite-Sunni war involving several countries.

I really hope it doesn't turn out that way, but it's hard to imagine a happier ending given the personalities and populations involved and the present (as of January 2012) situation. Ultimately, a lot of the responsibility lies with the leaders of European empires, specifically Britain and France, who recklessly created so many counties by drawing lines on maps of places they may never have even seen and paying more attention to the natural resources and/or strategic locales of those places than to who actually lived there.(less)

like 1 like

· see review

Nov 11, 2008

Keith rated it

Bing West set out to write a defense of the American fighting man and proceeded to do just that. The book does an excellent job of providing a narrative for why progress in Iraq was initially elusive and what changed. This book attempt's to be the military's view of the Iraq war. As far as that goes, it is a useful book.

Part memoir of his trips to Iraq, part polemic, and part journalism, Mr. West comes tantalizingly close to something truly valuable - analysis. The problem is, ...more

like 1 like

· see review

Nov 04, 2008

Jean-marc Liotier rated it

I just finished reading "The Strongest Tribe - War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq" by Bing West. Once the author's own ideas about the relationship between the nation, the media and the armed forces are set aside, what remains is an account of reference on the civil war in Iraq from 2003 to 2008.

Bing West's military experience gave the author an excellent relationship with the troops, and that granted him access to a variety of sources in theater throughout the whole perio...moreI just finished reading "The Strongest Tribe - War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq" by Bing West. Once the author's own ideas about the relationship between the nation, the media and the armed forces are set aside, what remains is an account of reference on the civil war in Iraq from 2003 to 2008.

Bing West's military experience gave the author an excellent relationship with the troops, and that granted him access to a variety of sources in theater throughout the whole period. He provides a comprehensive view from the bottom to top about what the US forces experienced in Iraq and how they adapted to overcome the challenges of counter-insurgency in a very muddy political environment.

Communicating the complexity of this conflict is incompatible with the mass-media formats. This book offers the volume necessary to describe how the invaders went through the messy process of stumbling upon new problems, trying solutions, gaining understanding and then building doctrine from the ground up. Bing West's work is the first one to my knowledge that exposes the whole process and articulates it into a coherent narrative.

We follow the troops as they are dealing with duplicitous Iraqi politicians, struggling to build trust in a lawless society, sustaining morale while working with thankless partners, sticking to western due process standards in a country with no reliable judiciary, overcoming the impulse to stick to search and destroy, living among the locals to stop commuting to work from large bases, learning how to seize and hold sectors in a sustainable way, turning a population terrorized by campaigns of murder and intimidation, and finally getting it all together to find how to get the local potentates to stand for themselves. With the authors eyes, these problems are seen through the prism of the Vietnam war, and we discover what connects to the historical lessons learned in Vietnam and elsewhere, and how the Iraqi mix created original challenges.

The Strongest Tribe stops almost entirely short of the political territory of why the United States went to war in Iraq - and that is a good thing. Bing West does an outstanding job of explaining how the military in Iraq and its chain of command dealt with the fighting, and I extend my praise to him for sticking within that perimeter, apart from a handful of gratuitous mentions of Senator John McCain.

All in all, a recommended read for making sense of Iraq from the local point of view - provided you understand the bias of an author strongly connected to the culture of the US armed forces. Hats off to Bing West for his in-depth work, and hats off to the ingenuity, flexibility and sheer dedication of the troops who navigate in the dangerous unknown.(less)

· see review

Sep 26, 2009

Hank rated it

I admire Mr. West for the courage & sacrifice he's made to write this book & others. He goes to great lengths in his attempt to report objectively from mostly first hand observations. But his focus is narrow and frankly repetitive to the point that I found myself scanning the book at times reading details that did not seem to present a diffent theme than preceding accounts.

There were also some editing/ protocol oversights that irritated me, particularly since Mr. West is a Marine...more

· see review

Feb 17, 2009

Dfoulser rated it

So the surge was created as a way to take advantage of the Sunni Awakening, but still did not address political problems in the Iraqi government. If I'd heard in the press what I read in this book, I'd have preferred to get Maliki out of the gov't instead of troops out of Iraq.

A story that needs to be told, and heard.

· see review

Mar 13, 2011

Frank rated it

Excellent read. Gets across the "grunts on the ground" view of Iraq vs. the politics. West may be retired Marine but is fully engaged and his view reflects their motto, "Semper Fi".

· see review

Apr 15, 2009

Kelly added it

Shelves: stopped-reading

The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq by Bing West (2008)

· see review

Sep 29, 2009

Reid Schluchter rated it

It was a good book and it opens your eyes to bigger things

· see review

Jan 24, 2009

Pat Dugan rated it

Excellent read!

· see review

Jul 12, 2009

Brent rated it

This is a fantastic view at the tactical level leading up and into the beginning of the Surge strategy. Perhaps most instructive is the list of 'Lessons Learned' at the end of the book. This is a must read for any student of military strategy to understand the happenings at the tactical level.

· see review

Jul 19, 2011

Jordan rated it

Alright, maybe I'm not quite halfway through this after all. Interesting narrative about solving a very difficult problem in Iraq, although not as difficult as the problem in Afghanistan. Author has a slight bias, but very interesting. Be a filter.

· see review

Apr 15, 2011

Jfarley rated it

outstanding. read it immediately.

· see review

Feb 06, 2012

Hegemon_monster marked it as to-read

Jan 23, 2012

Nate rated it

Jan 06, 2012

Alexander marked it as to-read

Shelves: still-to-get

Jan 06, 2012

Bryon rated it

Jan 05, 2012

Mike marked it as to-read

Dec 31, 2011

Steve rated it

Dec 30, 2011

Nic Jenzen-Jones marked it as to-read

Shelves: mil-sec

Dec 29, 2011

Carson marked it as to-read

Dec 23, 2011

Jdmays rated it

Dec 18, 2011

John rated it

Dec 17, 2011

Mike marked it as to-read

Shelves: books-to-get, history, military, mid-east

Dec 17, 2011

Tasha marked it as to-read

Shelves: military

Dec 15, 2011

Rodney Ulyate marked it as to-read

Shelves: politics, iraq

Dec 14, 2011

Rami rated it

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (3)

Genres

War > Military

9 users

History

5 users

Non Fiction

3 users

Politics

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers Also Enjoyed

About Bing West

Francis J. "Bing" West is an author and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration. His 2004 book The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the First Marine Division, written with United States Marine Corps General Ray L. Smith,was awarded the Marine Corps Heritage Prize for non-fiction, as well as the Colby Award.

More about Bing West...

Books by Bing West

No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah

The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan

The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Pin It

Trivia About The Strongest Tri...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Groups That Shelved The Strongest Tri...

Daily Show / Colbert Report

347 members

last activity Feb 01, 2012 04:00pm

shelf: read

title link	preview: The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
avg rating	preview: The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq Goodreads rating: 4.13 (87 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3909038-the-strongest-tribe?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320454191m/3909038.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3909038-the-strongest-tribe?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq by Bing West[/url]

The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Readers Also Enjoyed

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website