Reddit reviews Saddam's Generals: Perspectives On The Iran-Iraq War

Ho-hum... at the danger of 'slaughtering a few sacred cows' here:

Pollack is entirely wrong in regards of what 'Saddam did' - and when - which is little surprising considering all of his sources of reference were either Israeli or Western, and as such without any kind of serious insights into what was actually going on in Baghdad at what point in time during the Iran-Iraq War.

My memory might not be the best, and it's sure Saddam did sack quite a few of officers during the war with Iran. However, I do not recall him actually 'executing' (or ordering the execution) of more than 1-2 officers - and then for obvious and undisputable cowardice in front of the enemy, only.

I.e. the mass of such stories are the wildest sort of exaggerations and urban legends.

Actually, Saddam was so incompetent, that most of the time he wouldn't even know whom to sack.

Thus, instead of still hanging on, meanwhile, hopelessly obsolete Pollack (who's also wrong in regards of mass of other, similar, 'historical moments' in the history of other modern-day Arab militaries), my plea is: please people, start searching for some more up-to-date lecture to topics of this kind. I do not demand everybody to turn into a professional military history researcher, track down and interview all the possible Iraqi generals that are still around etc. And, surely enough, there's no new, up-to-date, serious and as comprehensive work on contemporary Arab military history as that by Pollack.

But at least getting copies of such stuff like Saddam's Generals or The Mother of all Battles shouldn't be that hard.

This is even more valid should you have serious intentions in regards of trying to find out who lost or won that war (Iran-Iraq). In that case, Pollack entirely failed to recognize that in 1988 - partially by design, partially by accident - the Iraqi generals actually caught the incompetent and corrupt IRGC off balance. When this moved its mass of offensive units to the northern front (which took it months because of hopelessly underdeveloped traffic system of Iran), the Iraqis delivered a series of devastating blows in the south. Yes, they used lots of CWs, and yes, they did suffer heavy casualties too, but their losses made sense: those of the Iranians not any more (and then at least since Karbala-4/5). Foremost: by the time the IRGC recognized what's going on in the south, and started moving its troops back in that direction, the war was lost simply because there were very few left in Iran still curious to keep on fighting (and, indeed, the mass of the IRGC was still not back to the southern front even by the time Khomeyni finally accepted a cease-fire, several months later).

BTW, Pollack also entirely failed to study the influence of the devastating IrAF aerial offensive upon the economy in western Iran. But hey: why expect any US researcher to consider some 'Arab' air force a professional military service… :rolleyes:

Anyway, back to the topic: be sure that 'finding and sacking incompetent officers' is far easier said than done, and anything else than easy. Indeed, it often results in sacking competent - but, for example, 'unpopular' - officers, too. Perhaps one of best recent examples of that kind happened in Algeria just today, where the commander of the air force was literally sacked - and nobody can say why.

Well one source about the Iran-Iraq war from the perspective of Iraq is "Saddam's Generals" by Woods
https://www.amazon.com/Saddams-Generals-Perspectives-Iran-Iraq-War/dp/0160896134/


Books on the Second Kurdish-Iraqi war too: In mid-1970s Iran (with US and Israeli backing) was promoting Kurdish rebellions in Iraq and bombing Iraqi pipelines, and then the Shah abandoned the Kurds once Iraq and Iran agreed to share the Arvand Rud waterway (aka Shatt-al Arab) -- Kissinger famously justified that by stating: "Foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work."

PS the proper way to do research is to to your library and start with annotated bibliographic databases such as Oxford Bibiographies http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com so you get a sense of "what's out there" and what the most relevant sources are. Then you have to read them and judge their accuracy. There is no such thing as a totally unbiased and reliable source. For example you'll still run into source that claim that both Iran and Iraq used chemical weapons even though by now it should be clear that was not the case https://web.archive.org/web/20030102224708/http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/programs/dc/briefs/030701.htm


Khomeini certainly was no fan of Saddam and wanted him gone but at the time Iran was not much of a threat to Saddam except with propaganda and rhetoric since Iran had no military and was caught up in the chaos of the Islamic revolution.