Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 146

“new military history” or “war and society”—a postWorld War II shift from focusing on combat history to
examining broader historical relationships between war
and society.
The Embattled Past provides thirteen of Coffman’s
previous works. Coffman added a new introduction that
examined the evolution of military history during his career and his personal journey to become an internationally recognized military historian. The first portion of
the collection focuses on American military history, and
in some instances, specifically on Army social history.
His 1993 paper “The American Army in Peacetime”
examines the Army’s history when not at war. “The
American 15th Infantry Regiment in China, 1912-1938”
and “The Philippine Scouts, 1899-1942” provide fascinating views into a bygone era of Army history. In the
last half of the book, Coffman selected essays that examined aspects of military history and mentorship. “Talking
about War” discusses the use of oral history and military
history. The last article is on a rare interview with retired
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, conducted by
Coffman in 1960.
Reading this book provides military historians with
the feeling that they have been conversing with a friend
and mentor, leaving them with an understanding of
his road to success and the innovations he contributed.
Several of Coffman’s articles are exemplars of social
history and demonstrate his gift for making U.S. Army
officers, soldiers, and spouses from the past come alive
for the reader.
One weakness of this book is that Coffman could
have more overtly discussed how his separate articles
are related to each other, perhaps by crafting a common
theme in the introduction written specifically for this
collection. Despite this minor criticism, Embattled Past
is a must read for those interested in military history as
an academic discipline. The book is also appealing for
those interested in the social history of the U.S. Army.
Jon Klug, Arnold, Maryland

THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ’S FUTURE:
How Corruption, Incompetence, and Sectarianism
Have Undermined Democracy
Zaid Al-Ali, Yale University Press, New Haven,
Connecticut, 2014, 295 pages, $35.00

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as the U.S. intervention in, and occupation of, Iraq from 2003-2011 a success?
Was the collapse of the Iraqi army in the
face of the advance of the Islamic State in 2014 the
fault of the U.S. occupation? Many Americans may be
asking themselves the same questions as they watch
news coverage of Iraq’s recent difficulties. Zaid AlAli provides sobering and depressing insight into the
answers to these two questions. The U.S. intervention
did fail to help Iraq become a stable state and, in fact,
encouraged the corruption that followed. Certainly,
Al-Ali did not intend to discuss the advance of the
Islamic State as his book was published months before
their territorial gains in Iraq. However, his book still
provides material that explains the weakness in the
post-U.S.-occupied Iraq that would lead to the security
collapse mentioned above.
Zaid Al-Ali is from an Iraqi family, though he lived
outside of Iraq for the majority of his early life. He became a lawyer, returned to Iraq after the U.S. invasion,
and worked as a legal advisor to the United Nations
in Iraq from 2005-2010. He has family and numerous
contacts in Iraq, and much of the book is written based
on his own experience and personal interviews. Al-Ali
provides value to the reader through his understanding
of Iraq, the Arabic language, and the regional culture
and issues.
He states in his introduction that “the purpose of
this book is to explain how [Iraq’s deplorable] situation
has come about,” and he does an excellent job of doing
just that. He explains in eight chapters what created the
Iraq of 2014—a failing state with an unresponsive central government and with no apparent ability or desire
to meet the basic needs of its citizens. Al-Ali provides
a general historical context and then discusses the path
through which the recent regime of Nouri Al-Maliki
came about.
He goes on to describe the growth of the violent
insurgency and then he describes two more conceptual
insurgencies: corruption and environmental disaster.
He ends the book with recommendations that seem
irrelevant now that the Islamic State controls a sizable percentage of the country; for example, it seems
unlikely that Iraq will draft a new constitution in the
near future.
The book is not without flaws. Those unfamiliar
with Arabi