Book Pages: No True Glory

I've been anxiously awaiting the publication of No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah by Bing West. West is a Viet Vet who also served in the Reagan Admin. as an assistant Secretary of Defense. He has the rare ability to give raw reports from the frontlines giving us an understanding of what goes through a soldier's mind yet still sit back at the end of the day and reflect on the political implications of what they do and how politics got them there. In the book West seems to exalt in the work done by the Marines and excoriates politicians and the media. CSM reviews the book and likes it:

The soldiers' accounts are harrowing. Readers will feel the emotions of the chronic exposure to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and randomly targeted mortar rounds, the discovery of the torture chambers, and the crowded tenement districts awash in deadly weapons. It's a stark reminder of the diabolical nature of counter-insurgency in an unfriendly land.

To his credit, West leaves most of the editorializing to the final chapter that bears the book's name. He then offers sweeping critiques of the war's execution, drawing significant parallels to Vietnam, the conflict he knows best. A divided chain of command with Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority on one side and Abizaid's military on the other was a "systemic flaw."

"The singular lesson from Fallujah is clear: when you send our soldiers into battle, let them finish the fight," he writes. "Ordering the Marines to attack, then calling them off, then dithering, then sending them back in constituted a flawed set of strategic decisions. American soldiers are not political bargaining chips. They fight for one another, for winning the battle, and for their country's cause."

West also criticizes the press. In Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq, America's fighting men barged headfirst into insurgent-infested houses and walked through enemy fire to drag their wounded and dying comrades from the battlefield. West feels that this bravery has gone underreported because the Western media remains conflicted about the morality war itself. "The focus of the press was upon [soldiers'] individual deaths as tragedies," he writes. "This was an incomplete portrayal. The fierce fighting at Fallujah attested to the stalwart nature of the American soldier. Unsung, the noblest deed will die."