A candid and gripping look at military leaders interacting with one another and with sensitive allies under enormous pressure during the Gulf War. Using recently declassified documents, New York Times chief Pentagon correspondent Gordon and retired three-star Marine general and military consultant Trainor give readers an inside perspective on tense top-level meetings that shaped the outcome of the Gulf War. Iraq, they argue, was armed by the West as a buffer against Iran. But when Saddam Hussein menaced the world's richest oil reserves in Kuwait, the West, led by President Bush, formed an unlikely United Nations coalition against Iraq that included other Arab nations. Though facing political, economic, military, and logistical problems, the coalition, in the authors' view, was able to take action in time to save the vital oil reserves. Gordon and Trainor draw insightful sketches of many leading players in the drama, especially generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwartzkopf. Powell, skeptical of air power, emerges as the astute politician, while Schwartzkopf appears imperious, unimaginative, and apolitical, often venting his volcanic temper on subordinates but painfully reluctant to shed his men's blood. In fact, the authors depict Schwartzkopf, contrary to Powell, as favoring a long and less deadly (to Americans) air war followed by a quick but militarily overwhelming ground war. But like Meade at Gettysburg, they claim, ``Schwartzkopf defeated his enemy, but allowed him to escape to make further mischief.'' In addition, Gordon and Trainor contend that while the Gulf War comforted the Arab world, Bush failed to envision a clear strategy for dealing with postwar Iraq, allowing Saddam Hussein to endure and to destroy Shiite and Kurdish rebels. A fine narrative history, written in a style suggesting a Tom Clancy thriller, that fills the void left by superficial media reporting.
Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1995
ISBN: 0-316-32172-9
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Far more worthy than the celebrity-driven narratives of recent seasons, this is an exceptionally valuable addition to the...
An extraordinary tale of bravery under fire and the will to endure.
When the Philippines fell to Japan in 1942, hundreds of the Allied troops who survived the Bataan death march were imprisoned in the jungle camp of Cabanatuan. Some would be tortured, others executed without cause; all suffered starvation and illnesses such as “dengue fever, amoebic dysentery, bacillary dysentery, tertian malaria, cerebral malaria, typhus, typhoid.” For three years, the “ghost soldiers” of Cabanatuan lived in an earthly hell, and they would have remained there longer had an elite group of Rangers fighting with Douglas MacArthur’s invading army not planned and executed a rescue operation of tremendous emotional but doubtful strategic value—and one that could easily have ended in a costly disaster. Led by a young colonel named Henry Mucci (called “Little MacArthur” not only because he smoked a pipe incessantly but also because “he had, like the Supreme Commander, a firm grasp of the theatrics of warfare”), the Rangers penetrated deep within Japanese-controlled territory, mounted an attack on the Japanese troops and tanks surrounding the camp, and led hundreds of Allied prisoners to safety—with thousands of enemy soldiers in hot and vengeful pursuit. Amazingly, the operation cost only a handful of casualties. Justly celebrated in its time (“Every child of coming generations will know of the 6th Rangers, for a prouder story has not been written,” declared one combat correspondent of the rescue), the Cabanatuan rescue has since been all but forgotten. Sides (Stomping Grounds, 1992) restores the episode to history in a thoroughly researched and reported narrative that is careful in its attention to detail and never short of thrilling.
Far more worthy than the celebrity-driven narratives of recent seasons, this is an exceptionally valuable addition to the popular literature surrounding WWII.Pub Date: May 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-49564-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
Hundreds of voices resound in this thoroughgoing analysis of '60s radicalism. ``If people demonstrate in a manner to interfere with others, they should be rounded up and put in a detention camp,'' argues Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst in 1972. Abbie Hoffman, speaking shortly before his suicide in 1989, gleefully proclaims, ``We were young, we were reckless, arrogant, silly, headstrong—and we were right. I regret nothing!'' Novelist Philip Caputo recalls that in his worldview John F. Kennedy was a modern King Arthur, the officers of the Army his knights, and Vietnam the new Crusade. Rock lyrics, SDS slogans, and official pronouncements from the likes of Spiro Agnew, Richard Daley, and George Wallace also abound. But Anderson (History/Texas A&M Univ.; The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, not reviewed) brings order to the period's chaos in his rigorous account of the intellectual origins of modern dissent, tracing the baby-boom generation's involvement with the civil-rights and free-speech movements as the proving ground for what, after the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, would very nearly become civil war. The author skewers a system that sent so many impoverished minority youngsters to Southeast Asia (``of the 30,000 male graduates from Harvard, Princeton, and MIT in the decade following 1962, only 20 died in Vietnam'') and condemns a national ethos that idolized Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun while imprisoning conscientious objectors. Clearly, for him the '60s are very much alive, and his passionate remembrance galvanizes the book. However, it suffers from occasional but annoying errors. Anderson misdates songs and truncates and mistransposes lyrics; he implies that musicians Mama Cass Elliot and Keith Moon died of drug overdoses (in fact, both suffered heart attacks); he places Fort Bliss (Texas) in New Jersey. Despite these lapses, a highly accessible survey that should be the standard for years to come.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-507409-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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