Assessing the conflict in Iraq

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THE IRAQ WAR: A MILITARY HISTORY

Williamson Murray and Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, Jr.

Harvard University Press, $25.95, 312 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS

In the immediate wake of the first Gulf War, a number of "instant analyses" of the conflict were published. Some were better than others, but in general, they were not very good. An expert analysis of the decisions and a detailed description of the framework within which they were made had to await the publication of "The Generals' War" by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor.

Mr. Gordon and Mr. Trainor are at work on a book about Operation Iraqi Freedom, but this time we don't have to wait for a first-rate description and analysis of that conflict, thanks to the publication of "The Iraq War: A Military History," written by the first-rate military historian Williamson Murray and by retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, Jr., who brings not only his operational experience to the book but a Ph.D. in history from Duke University.

Mr. Murray and Mr. Scales are proponents of what has been termed the "new military history," an approach that places decisions about policy and strategy into their social and political context. War, after all, does not occur in a vacuum.