Chaos in the Green Zone - by Tom Mowle (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An American officer offers an explosive memoir from inside coalition headquarters in Baghdad. With raw honesty and exhilarating detail, Tom Mowle shares how policy and strategy were built at a time when it still felt like the US could win the Iraq War.

When Tom Mowle volunteered to go to Iraq in 2004 to help shape American strategy, he left behind a comfortable life as a noncombat junior officer and a professor at the US Air Force Academy. In Chaos in the Green Zone, he relives the chaos and absurdity of war in a way that recalls Joseph Heller's classic novel Catch-22.

Mowle vividly depicts the frenetic cycle of activity at a wartime forward headquarters, where the enemy often dictated the schedule of events, fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. Important tasks were set aside for urgent distractions; hard deadlines constrained critical thinking and well-balanced decisions. Frequent indirect fire attacks, the deaths of colleagues, heat-induced illnesses, and personality conflicts thickened the fog of war.

Amid this chaos in an unfamiliar land, Tom wrestled with deeply human issues, including his troubled marriage, his daughter's health, and his own career prospects. Through it all, he sought to find meaning through service despite creeping skepticism about the mission at hand.

Chaos in the Green Zone provides keen insights about Iraqi political dynamics and shows how collective ignorance, toxic optimism, and partisan considerations affected coalition decision making. The result was twenty years of dysfunctional Iraqi politics, increased Iranian influence in the Middle East, and many unnecessary Iraqi and American deaths.

This honest memoir, drawn from his original wartime diaries and other materials, is as thrilling as it is insightful. It is a must-read for anyone wanting to see what it was like to serve as a high-level strategist in Iraq and for anyone wondering how we wound up where we are today.

Review Quotes

"Thomas Mowle has given us a vivid, compelling addition to the first-hand literature of warfare. His book reads like fiction but is an important insight into the history of our times, with vital implications for the future."--James Fallows, author of Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq

"Chaos in the Green Zone is an engaging first-hand account of why US policy in the Middle East has failed. Thomas Mowle has the dark humor of M*A*S*H (the film and show), combined with a keen and critical eye and ear. This book should be required reading for cadets at West Point, and anyone running for Congress."--Dale Maharidge, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: James Agee, Walker Evans, and the Rise and Fall of Cotton in the South

"Tom Mowle gives us a precious insider's view of how the chaos of the Iraq War was produced by fickle political and military policies combined with a deep ignorance, at the higher levels, of the country America had chosen to occupy. Essential for understanding this decisive episode in US military and diplomatic history."--Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan and author of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian

"Thomas Mowle captures the idealism, tragedy, humor, and sheer insanity of America's (mis)adventures in Iraq. This stuff actually happened, and we need to remember that . . . so it doesn't happen again."--Nate Fick, New York Times bestselling author of One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer

"The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was followed by an unanticipated and difficult campaign to put down an insurgency and build up a new government. Tom Mowle now reveals, with sharp personal insights, how that campaign was conceived by the senior leaders and planned by a select staff, even as combat mounted and major amendments had to be made in stride. This story is both a unique chronicle of the war's early events, and an illuminating guide to all military staffs, validating General Dwight Eisenhower's dictum that 'planning is everything.'"--Dr. Kalev I. Sepp, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Counterterrorism

"Tom Mowle leaves his cushy but boring job teaching political science to Air Force cadets to accept a posting with American forces in the Green Zone in Baghdad. What could possibly go wrong? He answers that question in this straightforward account of life during the US occupation of Iraq."--Gary Sick, Columbia University, author of All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran, and October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan

"Tom Mowle gives an on-the-ground expert's assessment of a crucial phase in the United States's years in Iraq. Breaking down the myth about 'forever wars, ' Mowle shows how US failure to manage postwar Iraq led to the perception that the entire project was doomed from the start. That's the wrong lesson to learn. The United States needs to take both war and postwar more seriously. Mowle's memoir is an important contribution to understand that the United States needs to win both the war, and the postwar."--Thomas S. Warrick, Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Middle East Programs at Atlantic Council

"This is the personal story of a military academic sent to Iraq for five months in 2004 to assist with military strategy. His experience was both colorful and disappointing, reflecting the ad hoc nature of the American-led invasion of Iraq and the simplistic liberation turned occupation that followed. While many Americans, military and civilian, sent to Iraq during that period were smart and well-educated, most were ill-informed about the nature of Iraqi culture and politics and had a steep learning curve that often led to fumbled results. That is much the case in this story."--Gordon Rudd, author of Reconstructing Iraq: Regime Change, Jay Garner, and the ORHA Story