Clark begins with a detailed critique of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the campaign to take Baghdad. His account of the invasion is marvelously lucid, and the book is well worth reading just for that. For example, he explains why the Iraqi command made a critical error when, in a classical military move, it ordered the Republican Guard divisions deployed around Baghdad to head south and face the American attack. But he has an argument, and it is this: The invasion had been meticulously planned over the course of fourteen months, yet for a variety of reasons (some logistical, some diplomatic, some still obscure) the buildup in Kuwait was far from complete on March 20, when the troops were ordered into Iraq. American and British commanders moved in with only three division-size forces and two separate brigades. Later two more US Army brigades were committed to the fight, but the other units slated to join them did not deploy until afterward. Thus the brilliantly successful campaign to oust the Baathist regime was waged by an extremely small force. In Clark's view the victory demonstrated the effectiveness of the military transformation since the end of the cold war: that is, the integration of the services and the development of information technology and precision weapons. He believes the transformation permitted the United States to defeat Saddam's divisions more quickly and with far fewer American or Iraqi civilian casualties than would have been the case had George Bush Sr. decided to move on Baghdad in 1991.

On the other hand, the victory did not, he contends, vindicate Rumsfeld's view that the future of warfare lies entirely with small, agile ground forces and high-tech weaponry. To the contrary, he writes, the lessons taken from this campaign will be conservative. Yes, the forces assembled proved sufficient to defeat the badly equipped and badly led Iraqi divisions. But, as the unexpected resistance from Iraqi irregular forces showed, combat is one of the most unpredictable of human activities, and because lives are at stake, the whole idea of military planning is effectiveness, not efficiency. By skimping on forces the American command took unnecessary risks in battle--and it was unable to cope with the chaos that immediately followed the collapse of the Baathist regime.

Clark goes on to provide some answers to what has become a major question in recent months: Why was the planning for the post-Saddam period in Iraq so inadequate? In the first place, he points, as some journalists have, to the bureaucratic struggles within the Administration and to the rosy scenarios that went unchallenged among the top Pentagon civilians who eventually took charge of the enterprise. But he also points to more profound tendencies within the US government and Washington as a whole. The Army, he writes, has long resisted investing or engaging in peace operations, even though every recent conflict, from Panama to Kosovo, has required such operations to attain the desired objectives. One reason for this failure, he suggests, is that the Army's mandate and historic task has been to fight high-intensity wars. Another is that the military-industrial complex makes its money off high-tech weaponry and not off such things as language training or the development of skills to deal with policing and legal systems. Furthermore, the Republican-controlled Congresses of the 1990s could be counted upon to vote against anything that smacked of "nation-building." In the mid-1990s the Clinton Administration tried to create an interagency capability for dealing with failed states, such as Haiti and Somalia, but the effort never got very far, and the Bush Administration brushed it aside. Thus before the invasion there was no structure or organization within the US government with the expertise to plan for the future of Iraq--much less one with the resources to implement such a plan. Then, too, Clark writes, by going to war without international support and by refusing to cede any power over the political process afterward, Bush forfeited the help he might have received from other governments and from international organizations that had expertise and resources to contribute. The Army and the Iraqi people are now paying the price for these failures.

"All else being equal," Clark writes in conclusion, "the region and the Iraqi people were all better off with Saddam gone." But of course all else is not equal.

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