Middle East Strategy at Harvard

MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Peter R. Mansoor is the General Raymond Mason Chair of Military History, Ohio State University, and a recently retired U.S. Army colonel. His new book is Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq.

From Peter R. Mansoor

When I deployed to Iraq in June 2003, I decided to keep a daily journal as a personal memoir for my family. This was, after all, my first experience in combat, and my experiences as the commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division (aka the “Ready First Combat Team”) would be a defining moment in my life. For 13 months I wrote faithfully in my journal every day (or, more usually, late at night), no matter how tired I was. When I returned home in July 2004, I considered expanding the journal into a book-length manuscript, albeit still with the idea to present it as a personal memoir for my family. After some reflection, I decided that a more expansive treatment of my experiences in Iraq could fill a broader need by explaining what went right and wrong during the crucial first year after the fall of Baghdad in the spring of 2003.

Currently, the Iraq War genre is filled with books written by junior officers, noncommissioned officers, and soldiers recounting their experiences on the streets and in the deserts of Iraq. Although a few of these works are quite good, on the whole they lack context at the higher operational and strategic levels of the war. Books written by reporters fill some of this void, but these works are written by those on the outside of the military peering into headquarters to which they did not belong. Memoirs by very senior political and military leaders are more or less self-exculpatory, and too often attempt to deflect blame for what went wrong. A significant void currently exists in the history of the war, one which I try to fill with Baghdad at Sunrise. By explaining the conflict from the perspective of a senior commander who served in Iraq, the book fills a critical gap in the public’s understanding of the war.

Beyond giving the public a better idea of what happened on the ground in Iraq in the war’s first year, the broader goal of Baghdad at Sunrise is to provide lessons for the future as the United States and its allies continue the struggle in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. A lot has been written about our political and strategic failings, but the story of U.S. Army operations in Iraq has been told mainly through the eyes of people outside the institution. My hope is that the book is also a good read—a story not just worth telling, but a story well told.

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