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This continues my attempt to bring noteworthy books to the attention of Freepers. Vanity? Not really, but it is a way for me to organize in a short review the main points of relevant books to our current economic, military, or political issues. "Armies of Sand" is an analysis by former CIA analyst and AEI scholar Kenneth Pollack. Although this was in part his doctoral dissertation, he has gone on to write many books about the military and especially the Middle East. He begins by looking at the Six-Day War and Arab/Egyptian military ineffectiveness, noting the AE military superiority of...

New Book Demolishes Arab Armies of Sand “Arab armed forces consistently underperformed, and underperformed in the same ways time and again, regardless of who they fought or where, the state of their politics, or the relative state of economic development between them and their foe.” So concludes scholar Kenneth M. Pollack in his magisterial book on the cultural roots of disastrous post-1945 Arab military performance, Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness. Pollack presents an encyclopedic, withering critique of Arab militaries across decades in numerous varied conflicts, to substantiate the conclusion that: Arab militaries were...

Lessons of the War by Victor Davis HansonJune 2003 THE GENERAL facts about the recent war are not in much dispute. In a span of about three weeks, the United States military overran a country the size of California. It utterly obliterated Saddam Hussein’s military hardware—tanks, heavy artillery, transport—and tore apart his armies. Of the approximately 110 American deaths in the course of the hostilities, fully a fourth occurred as a result of accidents, friendly fire, or peacekeeping mishaps rather than at the hands of enemy soldiers. The extraordinarily low ratio of total American casualties per number of U.S. soldiers...

Why Arabs Lose Wars by Norvell B. De Atkine Norvell De Atkine, a U.S. Army retired colonel with eight years residence in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, and a graduate degree in Arab studies from the American University of Beirut, is currently instructing U.S. Army personnel assigned to Middle Eastern areas. The opinions expressed here are strictly his own.Arabic-speaking armies have been generally ineffective in the modern era. Egyptian regular forces did poorly against Yemeni irregulars in the 1960s.1 Syrians could only impose their will in Lebanon during the mid-1970s by the use of overwhelming weaponry and numbers.2 Iraqis showed ineptness...

Iranian Terrorist Attack Against U.S. Revealed How Bill Clinton concealed it from the public and U.S. intelligence. October 7, 2015 Arnold Ahlert    A bombshell report by the Washington Times reveals that fecklessness in the face of terror isn’t a condition exclusive to the Obama administration. "Bill Clinton’s administration gathered enough evidence to send a top-secret communique accusing Iran of facilitating the deadly 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist bombing,” the Times states, "but suppressed that information from the American public and some elements of U.S. intelligence for fear it would lead to an outcry for reprisal, according to documents and interviews.” Nineteen American...

When Everyone Agreed About Iraq For years before the war, a bipartisan consensus thought Saddam possessed WMD. By STEPHEN F. KNOTT At 5:34 a.m. on March 20, 2003, American, British and other allied forces invaded Iraq. One of the most divisive conflicts in the nation's history would soon be labeled " Bush's War." The overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime became official U.S. policy in 1998, when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act—a bill passed 360-38 by the House of Representatives and by unanimous consent in the Senate. The law called for training and equipping Iraqi dissidents to overthrow Saddam...

Senior Brookings fellows Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack gave a report today and entertained questions at a Brookings briefing on Iraq. It was the single most illuminating presentation I have witnessed on the status of Iraq and the potential way forward. Neither man can be accused of shilling for either the administration or John McCain for numerous reasons: both have been strong critics of the war and O’Hanlon opposed the war and still believes on balance it has not made us safer. I understand from Brookings that the entire transcript will be posted, but I offer some highlights below. O’Hanlon...

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for exactly the right legislative ruse to force a retreat from Iraq without appearing to do so. In the last month, however, as a consensus has emerged about realities on the ground in Iraq, a reasoned debate has begun. A number of fair-minded observers, both...

Democrats demonised for backing Bush in Iraq By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 2:19am BST 25/08/2007 A US military patrol guards a street corner during a weapons search in Baghdad Two of the Democratic party’s most influential strategists have been transformed into hate figures of the American Left after daring to support President George W. Bush’s tactics in Iraq. Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, military analysts at Washington’s liberal Brookings Institution, declared themselves as unlikely allies of Mr Bush when they wrote an article in the New York Times titled “A War We Might Just Win". The article was...

According to major media, America's "surge in Iraq" is suddenly working. In an op-ed that appeared in The New York Times on July 30, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the left-leaning Brookings Institution called Iraq "a war we just might win." A week later, Robert Burns, who covers military issues for The Associated Press, wrote: "The new U.S. military strategy in Iraq, unveiled six months ago to little acclaim, is working. In two weeks of observing the U.S. military on the ground ... it's apparent that the war has entered a new phase in its fifth year." Anthony Cordesman,...

The Iraq debate that we’ve been watching this year has been about two bets. After false starts and misplaced hopes in 2004, and 2005, and 2006, George W. Bush is betting his surge strategy will facilitate the political progress that could bring a semblance of stability to Iraq. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are betting the surge will fail. It’s as simple as that. If Bush wins his bet, Iraq will be a better place, the Middle East will be a better place, and America will be a safer place. But Reid and...

OIF: Good news is bad for surrender monkeys In our democratic republic, we charge our elected representatives with the conduct of vigorous debate about issues both foreign and domestic. In doing so, we expect them to uphold their oaths to protect and defend our Constitution. However, politicians often posture and pretend in order to line up constituencies that perpetuate their tenure in office, regardless of constitutional constraints. Such political posturing is a disingenuous breach of trust at best. When this deceit extends to matters of national security, especially when we are at war and continue to face formidable threats from...

Critics of the troop surge have been arguing that it isn’t making any difference on the ground—the only thing it’s doing, they claim, is driving up American casualties. The facts are starting to contradict their claims. I’ve recently posted a couple of items noting that reliable on-the-ground observers—namely Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of The Brookings Institution and John Burns of the New York Times—have found that violence against Iraqis is falling. Now comes news that the number of American casualties is also declining, at least temporarily. There were spikes in the number of Americans killed in action in April...

Brookings scholars Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack used the most established of platforms, the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, to offer the most politically incorrect of arguments on Monday: “We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms.” Their 1,343-word piece, “A War We Just Might Win,” instantly provoked a more furious ideological shootout than has been sparked by any recent development on the battleground or action by the Bush administration. O'Hanlon told The Politico in an e-mail that he and his co-author were espousing "just temporary optimism," but their article was treated...

The big story out there right now is how the Left has been completely blindsided by the success of the Iraq Surge under the leadership of General Petraeus. At the present moment they are in a state of shock and haven't yet come up with a way to react. Yes, the Left have completely invested themselves in DEFEAT and now the success of the surge is sawing off the limb they have climbed out on. One big indicator of the success of the surge is this New York Times Op-Ed ARTICLE titled, "A War We Just Might Win." Written...

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place. Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the...

As I predicted earlier in the day, the left wing blogosphere has turned on the Brookings scholars who went to Iraq and noted the results of the surge. Glenn Greenwald, a.k.a. “The Lion of Jalalabad”, penned a characteristically windy attempt at character assassination. Thankfully, Matthew Yglesias showed more brevity. Characteristically, both pieces didn’t take issue with what Brookings-men Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon reported seeing in Iraq but instead attacked them personally. If you’ve studied the moonbats in their native habitats as I have the past several years, this comes as no surprise. After all, what is the chickenhawk meme...

An NRO Symposium The New York Times ran a piece Monday by two non-“neoconservatives” — Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack — arguing that the war in Iraq can be won. Is this indicative of some kind of mood change afoot? Could we really win this war? Could the rhetoric in Washington really change? National Review Online asked a group of experts.

There are many who cannot bear the suggestion that reenergized American military operations under Gen. David Petraeus are making headway, and yesterday they were shocked by Brookings Institution think-tankers who, writing in The New York Times, allow that Iraq is today "a war we just might win." Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack have been harshly critical of the war's prosecution in the past. But now, returned from eight days at the front, they point to the turnaround in Anbar Province, the plunging civilian fatality rates and the improving performance of Iraqi security forces as signs things may at last be...