The Mother of All Battles: Saddam Hussein's Strategic Plan for the Persian Gulf War byKEVIN M. WOODSReview by: LAWRENCE D. FREEDMANForeign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 2 (March/April 2009), p. 146Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20699514 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 02:17

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Council on Foreign Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ForeignAffairs.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.228 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 02:17:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Recent Books

Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and

the Path to War in Vietnam, by

gordon M. Goldstein. Times

Books, 2008,320 pp. $25.00. After former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara addressed the grave mistakes that were made in the run-up to

and during the Vietnam War, McGeorge Bundy, who served as national security adviser to both John F. Kennedy and

Lyndon Johnson, wished to do so as well. He hired Goldstein to help him. He died before the project was completed, but Goldstein has used Bundy s notes and a number of detailed interviews to

provide a compelling and sympathetic, although hardly uncritical, account of the slide into the morass. Bundy s role is fascinating simply because he was so

smart, the man for whom the term "the

best and the brightest" was coined. The whole period, and Bundy s role, has already been scrutinized by historians, and so

inevitably much of the material is familiar.

Bundy was driven by his determination not to have the United States be seen as

having lost in Vietnam, which is a poor basis for a military commitment, as much

as by any conviction that the United States would win. But the most important conclusion from Goldsteins book is that when it comes to these big decisions, the key is the attitude of the president. Both Kennedy and Johnson are faulted for

having failed to explain to the American

people what they were up to in Vietnam. The big difference between the two, in

Bundy s vivid phrase, was that "Kennedy didnt want to be dumb, but Johnson didnt want to be a coward." That is why Bundy concluded, and Goldstein concurs, that

Kennedy would not have ended up with

ground troops in Vietnam.

The Mother of All Battles: Saddam Husseins

Strategic Plan for the Persian Gulf War.

by kevin m. woods. Naval Institute

Press, 2008,336 pp. $25.20. For students of the Persian Gulf War, this account of what Saddam Hussein

thought he was up to fills in a lot of gaps. Based on materials acquired when coali

tion forces entered Iraq in 2003, it provides a unique insight into Iraqi strategic con

cepts and plans. It shows the developing sense of threats and opportunities during the 1980s and the war with Iran, includ

ing the continuing preoccupation with

Israel, the underestimation of U.S. strength, and a growing interest in taking on Kuwait. The delusional quality of Saddams own

thoughts, the sycophancy around the

leader, and the lack of hard debate once he had spoken still make it hard to discern what the Iraqis truly believed and whether

they really understood what was happening in the field during the Gulf War. In the

end, Saddam took comfort from the fact that he outlasted in office George H. W. Bush and that although he might have had to leave Kuwait, he survived the most

dire threat to his regime?the Kurdish and Shiite insurrection of March 1991.

Treading on Hallowed Ground:

Counterinsurgency Operations in Sacred

Spaces. EDITED BY C. CHRISTINE

FAIR AND SUMIT GANGULY. Oxford

University Press, 2008, 240 pp. $99.00 (paper, $24.95).

This is a fascinating collection of case studies of instances in which regular forces have found themselves trying to cope with armed groups that have occupied holy places, mainly mosques (in Iraq, Islamabad, Kashmir, Mecca, and Thailand) but also one church (in Bethlehem) and a

[146] FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Volume88No.2

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.228 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 02:17:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions