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Desert Victory: The War For Kuwait

Analyzes the Persian Gulf War, describes the strengths and weaknesses of the Coalition forces, and evaluates the strategies and weapons used in the war.

Paperback: 435 pages

Publisher: Naval Institute Press; 1St Edition edition (September 1991)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1557502552

ISBN-13: 978-1557502551

Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 1.3 inches

Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces

Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #3,659,662 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #109 in Books > History > Middle East > Kuwait #465 in Books > History > Military > United States > Operation Desert Storm #137253 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering

The outcome of a war between the world's biggest, most advanced power and a nation -- if that's what Iraq is -- of mostly illiterate barley farmers should not have been in doubt. For many it was.Will Americans, as a group, do any better at what Norman Friedman calls 'lessons learned and mislearned' after the fact? Maybe a little. Friedman's 'Desert Victory' is more sensible than 99% of the prewar commentary.However, it is less a quick history of the war than a summary of 1980s military philosophy, a subject Friedman has been covering all along. Thus, for every paragraph about events in the gulf, we get a couple of pages of instruction in elementary strategy and tactics. This is not a criticism: If we learned anything for sure from this little war, it is that the American public understands next to nothing about the practical problems of using force and violence in international affairs.'Perhaps the most interesting lesson of the war,' writes Friedman, 'is that the sort of conventional analysis used to project Iraqi performance failed to take into account the structural problems inherent in Saddam's Iraq.' He is not writing about hysterical journalists or frightened civilians but about the experts in the Defense and State departments and the National Security Council. They failed to correctly estimate the likelihood that Iraq would be an aggressor or the ability of Iraq to mismanage what Friedman likes to call 'national assets.

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