Book Review: "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End" by Peter W. Galbraith (2006; first paperback edition, June 2007)

Peter W. Galbraith, son of John Kenneth, former staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ex-ambassador to Croatia and at one time a professor at the National War College, tells of the execution of the Iraq War from his perspective as a longtime liberal champion of the Kurdish cause. This is both a critical look at the policies of the Bush administration as well as a sort of memoir of his own involvement with the dispossessed Kurds of northern Iraq, and so it comes off as a bit vain, being more about Galbraith and how smart/integral he is rather than a detached analysis of the successes and failures of the war effort so far. If you can set the author's ego aside, it's a very eye-opening look at how many missteps and follies were made by the neocons in their assumptions prior to the invasion, which in many ways is the mirror reflection of the laughable kind of grand schemes that far-left social engineers embrace with regularity - certainly anthema to this reviewer - not to mention the complete betrayal of the Shi'ites and Kurds by the American government after Gulf War One.

Not the definitive account of Iraq - subtly partisan as US policy towards Iraq during the Bill Clinton era warrants less than five pages out of 238 in total - but certainly an extremely valuable contextual piece, and kudos to Galbraith for not just throwing stones but for concluding with the offer of an uneasy solution - a federal system whereby Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'ites would all have autonomy within a larger state.

More here.

Overall rating: 7.25/10