Thomas Ricks: The Gamble: General David Petraeus & the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008

His evaluation was right there in the title of his first book about Iraq, in 2006: Fiasco. Since that book came out, we’ve seen a new secretary of defense, a new commander in Baghdad, a new commander-in-chief in the United States. So how does it look the second time around?

The Gamble finds Iraq “turned over to the dissidents”, with command mostly in the hands of military and civilian leadership who disagreed with the conduct of the war from the start. At the end of the period covered in Fiasco, Petraeus was not even in the Middle East – he was in Kansas, preparing a new counter-insurgency manual that would eventually form the core of the “surge”. Even among the holdovers, key leaders such as Gen. Ray Odierno have changed their approach to the war to such an extent that Thomas Ricks barely recognizes them from the days of Fiasco. From key advisors like Gen. David Fastabend, British pacifist Emma Sky, and Australian Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, Ricks finds a new realism within a Green Zone he previously found maddeningly deluded, and a much-needed focus on engaging and securing the population of Iraq.

But while he judges the surge a tactical success, Ricks declares that it has fallen short strategically – accomplishing a significant reduction in violence, but without yet achieving its larger purpose, which was to create the opportunity for a political reconciliation between rival Iraqi factions such as the Sunni, Shia, and Kurds. However great the turnaround thus far, The Gamble warns that it could only be temporary – there is a long war ahead, and there could be another Fiasco in Iraq’s future.

Thomas E. Ricks is The Washington Post’s senior Pentagon correspondent, where he has covered the U.S. military since 2000. A member of two Pulitzer Prize- winning teams for national reporting, he has reported on military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He is also the author of Making the Corps and A Soldier’s Duty.