His latest book Fiasco apparently isn't quite the administration ripper as its name implies--but you do what ya gotta do to get on the NYT best seller list, I guess.
And I take his word for it when Ricks states to Hugh Hewitt:
Most of the evidence in this book is from today's military in the course of executing their professional duties. It's internal reports. It's looking at the mistakes that were made. It's Army war college studies. It's professional work. It is not partisan, it is not a bunch of burn-out generals. It is the military trying to do the best it can in an extremely difficult situation. And to disregard it and slap it aside, if you'll excuse me, I think is aiding and abetting the enemy.
Constructive criticism is needed, no doubt. A different title for his book would have gone a long way toward promoting that spirit. Ricks protesteth a bit too much that he isn't attacking for the sake of undermining the president under the circumstances.
The problem Ricks has, I think, comes from using those military efforts to learn from the war to judge the war effort. These are detailed studies meant to improve--not wholesale critiques of the war effort branch and root. Is Ricks really saying that the fact that we made mistakes in Iraq and are working to correct weaknesses means the war has been conducted incompetetently? If so, I suggest Ricks read this book. Then he'd really understand military incompetence, inadequate planning, bad intelligence, poor equipment and training, failure to identify potential opposition, war crimes, defeat, poor leadership--and ultimately, victory.
The Weekly Standard's review of the book put it well:
A similar lack of historical perspective more broadly mars what is otherwise an incisive chronicle--and may account for the overly angry tone of some of Ricks's writing. If one steps back and takes the long view, it becomes apparent that it is too soon to write off the entire Iraq war as a "fiasco." Difficult as the situation is today, with Iraq seemingly sliding into civil war, defeat is not foreordained; somehow (although it is admittedly getting harder and harder to see how), a functioning democracy may still emerge from the current mess.
Granted, there have been individual "fiascos" aplenty, but then there has been no shortage of fiascos in all previous U.S. wars, stretching back to the loss of Charlestown, Philadelphia, and New York in the War of Independence. Even our most successful wars have been marred by numerous mishaps--in World War II, think of Pearl Harbor, the loss of the Philippines, Kasserine Pass, Anzio, Operation Market Garden, and the Battle of the Bulge--most of them far more costly than the Iraq war. That doesn't mean that these conflicts weren't worth fighting, any more than the Iraq war wasn't worth fighting.
Constructive criticism doesn't start with impossibly high and ahistorical standards.
If we were to lose this war, it wouldn't be because our military has failed to fight brilliantly. When we win it, the criticisms of Ricks, and others, will seem rather silly.
