The Snake Eaters
Counterinsurgency Advisors in Combat
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“Every deploying adviser, and every American interested in how we are fighting our wars, should read Owen West’s gripping and important book” (The Wall Street Journal).
From 2005 through 2007, the battle for the poisonous city of Khalidiya became so intensely personal that an Iraqi battalion, its American military advisors, and the insurgents they hunted knew one another by name. A third-generation U.S. Marine, Owen West was one of those combat advisors. This is his gripping account of how a team of underprepared reservists built an Iraqi battalion from the ground up and with them plunged side by side into a mystifying insurgency.
Revealing war as a series of human acts, West makes the young American and Iraqi soldiers on patrol and the local townspeople come alive. From the bighearted American medic stalked by a sniper, a tough Iraqi major who is respected by the Americans because he likes them the least, and an enemy who blended into a population that dared not speak the truth, the characters in The Snake Eaters are as complex as the war that changes them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A former U.S. Marine major with two tours in Iraq (and the author of two novels), West makes a convincing case for the importance of military advisers who train indigenous security forces to fight insurgencies, because indigenous forces know the language, the local people, and can more effectively root out insurgents. West says that the U.S.'s undermanned and inexperienced adviser teams posted a losing record in the Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Khalidiya, before he initiated his strategy of advising the Iraqi Battalion 3/3-1, "the Snake Eaters." Aligning with Major Mohammed and his unit, West writes: "I became convinced that our own country could accomplish more with fewer forces and less money if we changed the way we fought...." He explains in vivid detail how Sunni and Shia career soldiers as well as the fresh-faced reservists and National Guardsmen operate in hostile territory with snipers, roadside bombs, and suicide bombers. Combining the might of his Iraqi allies, the goodwill of local civilians, and more savvy American troops, a perceptive adviser with distinct priorities and motivation led to a tamer Khalidiya, West concludes, spelling out clearer military methods with a speedier exit strategy usable for any future conflict.
