Fighting in Baghdad

I served for a year in Iraq fighting on the west side of Baghdad and twenty years in the Army.  In Iraq I was a battalion commander holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

 Many people are anxious to learn and hear more about the important issues surrounding the Iraq War.  This is the best book you’ve never heard of covering the Iraq War.  

The big publishing houses wouldn’t touch this book because the content offered real political solutions to end the war, it didn’t emphasize failure for America, and it wasn’t written by a general or a celebrity or a disgruntled private who wanted to tell the American public “the shoot ‘em up cowboy” story.

Come out of the clouds of the media “ride-a-long” that clearly is taking you up into the stratosphere of politics and strategy in Iraq; and get out of your “arm-chair general’s seat” in front of the TV and experience the Iraq War by patrolling on the mean streets of Baghdad, sitting in on the war councils of the Army, and observing the negotiations with the local imams and tribal sheiks of Iraq. 

This is a compelling book that tells the story of 21st Century warfare, politics, counterinsurgency, and considers other-than-military solutions to winning wars.

I didn’t want to be the focus of this whole thing, I just wanted to tell a story and offer a solution in Iraq that clearly seems to elude the generals and politicians.

What the news media fails to provide you is context and important details...This book provides them all.  

None of the politicians offered a solution for the U.S. to win in Iraq and get the troops home.  I offer “The Mahalla Plan for Victory”; a solution that we can still implement right now across the Middle East in countries where Muslimreligion dominates and strife is endemic.

We will see more wars like Iraq in the future; we had better be prepared.

I offer a book that speaks directly to you, the American people, from the perspective of having served in this conflict in Iraq.  For those of us in the military and in the melee of Iraq this is a story that tells you what you need to know:

We served
We fought
We built
We helped

Hear my ideas through this book and know that there was a way to win and bring the troops home.  ADJUST FIRE gives you the answers and the details.

Why would a soldier’s story and ideas be more compelling than say a politician’s or a general’s? Simple, we are the ones doing the dying.  No one is more vested in finding a solution, achieving victory and getting home than the soldiers who fight.  This book tells exactly how that is achieved.

As a Lieutenant Colonel and battalion commander, I had 683 American soldiers, 150 Iraqi soldiers and 250 Iraqi Irregular Security Forces under my direct command.  We were responsible to secure and stabilize Al Saidiyah, an enclave of the Al Rashid District of Baghdad, and to provide route security for about 20 km segment of Highway 8, a road the media dubbed “Airport Road.”

A soldier is not a Republican or a Democrat; a soldier comes from a warrior class of this American Democracy.  While serving we cannot speak freely about the policies we must enforce; we are often ignored in counsel to the civilian politicians; and then we must do the bleeding and the dying for those policies…time to listen America.  This book speaks to you with the integrity of an American military officer; read the book, hear the message; hold your political leaders accountable.  You possess that power.

Our national problem with Iraq is more ominous than winning or losing; our problem is one of how we as an American Democracy choose to go to war against other nations.  Our problem is one of how we defend this American Democracy through this century; our problem is one of how we fit in a global security regime.  The answers to those compelling problems started with the war in Korea and continue today with our conflict in Iraq.  I contend that our politicians have not served us well on that score.