Reddit reviews The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq

If you want to understand the nature of the war and the strategy used to fight it from the surge (2007) onward I recommend David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War by Fred Kaplan. This book will describe all the big names and texts that helped formulate modern counterinsurgency doctrine and will give you plenty of authors and publications to further explore. To further understand counterinsurgency, I recommend The Accidental Guerilla by David Kilcullen (this link downloads the file, it does not open it a new window) that has a great chapter on Iraq since he was the senior COIN advisor for a few months into the surge. You can also read FM3-24 the original 2006 version, but its a dense read and I recommend you familiarize yourself with the doctrine through other publications before tackling the field manual itself.

Fiasco by Thomas Ricks is a decent history of the run up to the Iraq war and the first years, I would say 2002-2005 is where it is strongest although it does discuss important history prior to 9/11 in the containment of Iraq and some detail into 2006.

From the Surge onward I recommend Ricks' follow on book The Gamble, and The Surge by Peter Mansoor. These books will detail the important changes and in strategy and operational practices that characterized the Surge and the post 2006 war effort.

These are the books I have personally read that best address your questions. Books that are more tactically oriented instead of focusing on the big picture include The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, which is a morbid book that does justice to the horror of the Iraq's sectarian civil war. Thunder Run by David Zucchino is worthy of being a masterpiece in terms of how well the author constructed an incredible narrative on the tank forays into the heart of Baghdad in the early weeks of the war. My Share of the Task by Stanley McChrystal is a great read on McChrystal fomented a significant evolution in JSOC's intelligence culture and operational tempo. This book is of value specifically to what you asked because his men were the ones that were tracking Abu Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and was the first iteration of what is now known as ISIS. McChrystal describes the structure of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and much of ISIS's organization and methods can be traced back to Zarqawi's leadership.

I don't think you will find any books that will do justice to your interest in terms of recent events however I have some advice that I feel will help you immensely. Simply type in (topic of interest) and end it with pdf into google. This cuts out brief news articles and wikipedia entries and leaves you with top notch reports published by peer reviewed journals and think tanks. This is all free, and its very well researched work.

A report I'm currently reading that I'm sure you will find interesting is Iraq in Crisis by CSIS. It's of course long for a think tank report, but it has a lot of information and great statistics and charts that help the reader better understand Iraq's trends in violence and other challenges. Here are two more interesting reports by well known think tanks that pertinent to what you are looking for.

On the evolution of Al Qaeda and other salafi jihadists by RAND

Iraqi politics, governance and human rights by the Congressional Research Service

> Isn't it true that the US's main strategy is to throw piles of money at war-related problems until the problems go away?

I'd strongly disagree with that.

There are elements in the overall US establishment that, of course, like spending money. The defense industry, for starters. Some members of Congress (more Republicans than Democrats, but it's not a cut and dry split), and there is of course the Pentagon establishment (bureaucracy and generals alike) that like spending.

However, in war, that changes. Nobody wants to burn money in a war. It's one thing to spend money in peacetime - Congressmen create jobs for their districts and guarantee lucrative lobbying/company positions for themselves. Colonels and generals get promoted for getting weapons systems designed and approved. And defense contractors obviously get profits.

However, in war, the political stakes are raised - people get upset when wars start costing a lot of money, so Congressmen are antsy. Generals and Pentagon bureaucrats alike don't want to be the ones in charge of an expensive, bloody war. Even defense contractors know that you can only go so much to the well, before the well goes dry (especially these days when the lower and middle classes have been bled white, the only way to pay for expensive shit like bad wars is by taxing businesses and the wealthy). You'll notice that almost zero Bush-era Republicans are in any positions of influence now - the public voted for them as a show of support during the war, but there was a big cleaning out starting in 2008 (both at polls and in the primaries).

You'll note that the Iraq War itself, meaning Operation Iraqi Freedom, was fought relatively cheaply. It was a small force (something that would come back to bite the US in the ass) doing the invasion, and the war was over very quickly. Rumsfeld fought quite hard with the Pentagon to cut back on the size of the invasion - he didn't want another Gulf War, and he was confident it could be won with a smaller, cheaper force.

The occupation itself is where matters went to hell, but this was not caused by excessive spending (rather the opposite - the small invasion force was insufficient for an occupation, not trained to police, not equipped for an occupation and policing.)

The solution to the insurgency was also not a matter of throwing money at it. It's true that extra funds were spent - buying the loyalties of Sunni sheikhs who had enough of Al-Qaeda, and the extra deployed manpower during the Surge - but this was a temporary boost in the budget to facilitate new strategies designed to end the insurgency, and thus save money in the long run. The insurgency was ended by a change in tactics, a change in leadership, a change in strategy. It was not ended by throwing money into the fire.

I highly, highly recommend that you go pick up Fiasco and The Gamble by Thomas E. Ricks. IMHO they are absolutely critical reading to understanding the Iraq War, how it began, why it began, how it went wrong, and how it was brought to an acceptable resolution. The books identify the mistakes made along the way, the critical errors in judgment that led to the insurgency, and the fundamental failures of American military leaders and their training. My views on the war were completely changed - and I went through both my conservative early-war mindset (including being angry at our Canadian politicians for not standing with America), as well as my liberal mid-war disgust with the blatant war profiteering and corruption (ie, cost-plus contracts for Halliburton) as well as the obvious incompetence of Rumsfeld/Cheney.

Have you read The Gamble? One of my favorite modern war books. I got sucked into the whole counter insurgency debate several years ago and read as much as I could.

https://www.amazon.com/Gamble-Petraeus-American-Military-Adventure/dp/0143116916/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1502060195&sr=8-3&keywords=the+gamble