Oguzhan Ozel Ozel itibaren Kelvedon Hatch, Essex, Reino Unido
Excellent treatment of the first three years of the Iraq War. Many of the missteps and fallacies of the (mainly) American war effort have been well explored in a number of places, but Fiasco remains the best and most comprehensive to date. Ricks calls on a variety of excellent primary sources and interviews and, on balance, presents a fair assessment of the run up and execution of the war and resultant insurgency. The course that the war took was not unpredictable. There were many people, importantly many in the military, who warned early on that going into Iraq would not be all kisses and roses. Weapons inspectors, right up until the bombs started to fall, argued that there in fact was probably no ongoing WMD program and Richard Clarke, among others, pointed out that there was little connection between radical Islamic terrorism and the ba’athists in Iraq. The main point to the book, though, is not that the Iraq War should never have happened. It is that if a nation commits to something so important, it must give thought to the strategy and rational from the start, base its decisions on good information, pay attention to history, and adapt to the changing environment. Looking forward to now reading the follow-up volume The Gamble.
The writing's good - easy read, colourful. The premise of preteen children being mankind's last resort in interstellar war - pathetic.
I had to get pretty far into this book before I found any redeeming quality to it. I pretty much didn't get anything from it. Not that it was poorly written, but I felt like I got about as much out of it as one does when you are watching a movie, but really still working on your laptop and only half-watching.