Washington's War: From Independence To Iraq

by Michael Rose

In 1775, George Washington took command of a ragbag army of American insurgents and took on the might of the British Army. Through a brilliant campaign of ambush and indirect attacks, he finally succeeded in defeating the greatest military power in the world, and won America its independence.

Today it is the USA that is the world's dominant superpower. When they entered Iraq in 2003 they made the same mistakes that the British made over 200 years ago: they underestimated the popular hostility against them, and believed they could fight a widespread insurgence using troops trained for conventional warfare. They are beginning to learn, as the British did, that sheer military power is not enough.

As a former Director of UK Special Forces and Commander of the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia, Michael Rose is uniquely experienced in counter-insurgency warfare. In this hard-hitting book he explains the principles of guerrilla warfare as used in the American War of Independence, and shows how those same principles have been adopted by the insurgents in Iraq.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Michael Rose was raised on a small family dairy farm in Upstate New York. He retired after serving in executive positions for several global multinational enterprises. He has been a non-executive director for three public companies headquartered in the US. He lives and writes in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Written with some passion by a former British General, while the fighting in Iraq was still intense, the book compares the American War of Independence with the Iraqi insurgency (or if you prefer the American insurgency with the Iraqi war of independence) and poses the question of why a country founded through an insurgent war of liberation against a foreign power was unable to take insight and understanding from their own past and apply it to the conduct of operations in Iraq (or for that matter other conflicts).

Unfortunately since the book doesn't address itself to institutional learning, training or military preparations but rather compares, in a deeply felt manner, the course of the War of Independence with the, as then, continuing fighting in Iraq, almost on a blow by blow basis, so that bigger questions doesn't get answered.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bold book that compares the american revolution to the current war in Iraq. The point is that using the same logic our government is using to label Iraqi fighters as "insurgents" and "terrorists" we can come to the conclusion that our nation was founded by "Insurgents" and "Terrorists". The paralell quotes from George Bush and King George are shocking in their similarities. The concepts presented in this book are obvious but I was still impressed by how effectively it blew the lid off of the bush administration smear campaign that labels anyone who resists american occupation an "enemy combatant" thus depriving them of rights under international law. You come to see that if george washington were currently fighting the war that he fought back then against us, hypothetically, he would probably end up hooded and tortured in quantanamo bay with the rest of the "terrorsist, insurgent, enemy combatants". This situation is by far one of the most ridiculous and sickeningly unjust in the history of warfare. Thank you to the author for being brave enough to draw this paralell and be uncompromising in his analysis. Read it!

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author draws some compelling parallels between the American Revolution and the Iraq war. Book mostly focuses on the History of the Revolutionary War, and the nature of insurgency warfare in general.