In the wake of nonstop coverage by the broadcast media and “embedded” journalists, a tidal wave of books on Operation Iraqi Freedom is now sweeping US bookstores, even before the dust of major combat operations has settled. Coming hot off the presses are eyewitness accounts of the war and US military operations, assessments of White House policymaking and the conduct of the war, and arguments for and against twenty-fi rst century American imperialism. In The Iraq War, one of the latest efforts to address the subject, Raphael Israeli provides a sweeping account of the early phases of the war, ending with the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003. The author’s purpose is to make sense of the confl ict thus far and to offer some thoughts about what war might mean for the “new Iraq” and “the new Middle East.”

More an outsider to the Iraqi confl ict than an insider, Israeli draws heavily on press coverage for his information, especially The New York Times, with occasional forays into Arab, Israeli, and European media, as well as a few academic publications. After briefl y recounting Saddam Hussein’s rise to power and Iraq’s involvement in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf War, Israeli describes the short- and long-range objectives of the US-led 2003 campaign, as well as the course of battle itself and the measures taken to anticipate the needs of refugees and other Iraqi civilians. These middle chapters of the book give readers some historical background information about Shi’as, Kurds, and the city of Baghdad, but the focus is mostly on the events of battle.

The most interesting chapters come toward the end of the book, where Israeli attempts to bolster two assertions made by the administration of US President George W. Bush: that there were close connections between Hussein and terrorists like Al Qaeda; and that Iraq had suffi cient quantities of weapons of mass destruction to pose a clear and imminent threat to the United States. Furthermore, Israeli maintains that the war has been brought to a quick, successful end “at a remarkably low price, human and economic, both for the US and its allies, and for the Iraqi people.” He even declares, “America came to Iraq to overthrow a tyrant and build a new state and a new society, in the process reaping some strategic and economic profi t.” In other words, the United States was engaged in a benign colonial mission.

Despite this optimistic stance, Israeli recognizes that the fruits of victory may be fl eeting if the problems of security, reconstruction, and self-governance are not addressed. It is incumbent upon the United States, therefore, to foster a new, pluralistic, non-theocratic order in Iraq—one that allows the marginalized Kurds and Shi’as to participate in political life, even if it is at the expense of the Sunni Arab minority.

This brings the reader to the book’s most controversial chapter, the last one, which urges the United States to promote the partition of Iraq into two or more states—Kurdish and Arab, or Kurdish, Shi’a, and Sunni—”to create longterm peace and prosperity.” Israeli dismisses out-of-hand the concerns that this portioning might escalate the violence in Iraq and destabilize neighboring countries. He actually seems to welcome this prospect: “It is better to resolve the problem once and for all, in a long and uneasy process of healing, than continuing the existing situation which has proven patently untenable … .” Meanwhile, US corporations would control Iraq’s economic reconstruction. The author does not spell out how this would occur as the country concomitantly undergoes the agonies of an imposed partition.

Israeli boldly confronts issues raised by the war and its aftermath and provides a useful overview of the confl ict. His account is marred, however, by his dismissal or neglect of contrary facts and interpretations and by a stereotyped view of Arabs and Muslims that verges on the vicious. He does not seriously take into account international opposition when he discusses the lead-up to the war and the long-term prospects for the “new” Iraq and Middle East. Rather, he invokes US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s “highly credible appearance” before the United Nations and Judith Miller’s New York Times reports to support his case for Hussein’s active weapons programs. Israeli does not acknowledge the growing body of evidence, available even during the late summer and early fall of 2003 and described more recently by former US Central Intelligence Agency chief weapons inspector David Kay, that undermines the veracity of the Bush administration’s claims.