My contribution to the Ricks fan club

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Tuesday, February 24, 2009 - 5:49 PM Share

Please do check out Foreign Policy's Book Club discussion of Tom Ricks' The Gamble, his excellent and contrarian follow-up to Fiasco. Here's a link to Marc Lynch's take, and that is followed by Christian Brose.

My take just went up. The point I want to stress:

[T]he ways in which the architects of the surge...

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EXPLORE:BOOK CLUB, BUSH ADMINISTRATION, GEORGE W. BUSH, IRAQ, STRATEGERY, THE SURGE

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ANON_ANON

5:36 AM ET

February 25, 2009

Read Abu Muqawama

You need to start reading Abu Muqawama as a supplement to Ricks. (I am not Abu Muqawama.)

MDREW

9:25 AM ET

February 25, 2009

Good point

That is a really good point, Dan. How grateful should we really be expected to be for the (arguable) corruption of the chain of command in service of a war that was almost lost, should never have been authorized, and should never have been waged, even if it was necessary to avoid strategic catastrophe, and no matter how much anti-establishment glee it happens to provide Tom Ricks?

The question of real versus nominal civilian control really is a constant one. The possibility that Binyam Mohamed has been beaten at Guantanamo within the last few weeks (reported by The Guardian and brought to my attention by your nemesis Glenn Greenwald) is a further reason for paying attention to the extent to which Obama's orders are heard and followed down the line by a military that was by and large supportive of the previous president's and voted for Obama's opponent by a quite large margin. It's impolitic to raise such questions at this juncture, but reality can be impolitic.