From Michael Massing's guardedly-positive review of Tom Ricks's new book, The Gamble, in the New York Review of Book– the full text of which is not on-line:
It's striking to see the extent to which Ricks, in assessing the work of the US military, relies on the views of the US military. We see the performance of the Iraqi army, the attitudes of Iraqi tribal leaders, and the views of Iraqi citizens almost exclusively through the eyes of US generals, colonels, and captains, or of civilians working with them. In the rare instances where we're offered a quote from an Iraq, it's usually taken from articles in The Washington Post or some other paper.
The absence of Iraqi voices seems especially serious in light of the emphasis Ricks places on the military's new policy of protecting the people. Since, according to him, a central goal of the surge was to improve the military's image in the eyes of everyday Iraqis, it would certainly be useful to hear what those Iraqis themselves thought of that approach–to learn, for instance, whether the locals who saw that platoon sergeant pick up the wounded girl actually regarded that as a turning point. When I visited Iraq last year, it seemed clear that, while the US military had made significant changes in its treatment of Iraqis, many Iraqis were far less sanguine about the American presence than Ricks suggests. While relieved that the US forces had curtailed their earlier aggressiveness, they continued to see them as an occupying force–one that had committed grave abuses in the past and that was still very capable of doing so.
The absence of Iraqi voices seems especially serious in light of the emphasis Ricks places on the military's new policy of protecting the people. Since, according to him, a central goal of the surge was to improve the military's image in the eyes of everyday Iraqis, it would certainly be useful to hear what those Iraqis themselves thought of that approach–to learn, for instance, whether the locals who saw that platoon sergeant pick up the wounded girl actually regarded that as a turning point. When I visited Iraq last year, it seemed clear that, while the US military had made significant changes in its treatment of Iraqis, many Iraqis were far less sanguine about the American presence than Ricks suggests. While relieved that the US forces had curtailed their earlier aggressiveness, they continued to see them as an occupying force–one that had committed grave abuses in the past and that was still very capable of doing so.
