Reddit reviews The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War

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

The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War is more about Petraeus and a small group of officers who came to accept COIN, their ideas (and where they came from), their battle to turn their thoughts into policy, and the effect they had on the Iraq War, particularly "the surge."

Exactly... That is the point to counterinsurgency tactics... military might is a tool of a whole of government effort to resolve what is fundamentally a political problem.

Insurgencies develop primarily for two reasons, and potentially both:

1) Groups are marginalized out of the political process and violence is viewed as required to meet their political objectives

2) The HN government is viewed as not legitimate and or does not follow the rule of law

One of the fundamental strategies of COIN is to separate the violent insurgents from the rest of the population while supporting the re-development of a legitimate government and the rule of law.

Heavy handed, indiscriminate killing of HN population while trying to target insurgents that are a minority of the population just ends up pushing more people towards the fringe. It is a feedback loop that is impossible to correct without a change in strategy.

If anyone reading this is interested in modern COIN, I strongly recommend "The Insurgents" ( https://www.amazon.com/Insurgents-David-Petraeus-Change-American/dp/1451642652 )

In the early days of the Iraq War Petreus was big on outreach to communities by providing aid and simply meeting civilians. He also would show up (with other guys of course) to doors of houses he was going to raid the next day and play dumb in order to get the suspected insurgents inside to panic and run around the area to supply lines and other key targets.

With the iron balls on this general I think he can handle himself. This is a good book if you want to learn more about him.