Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 138
WHY WE LOST: A General’s Inside Account of the
Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
Daniel P. Bolger, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing, New York, 2014, 544 pages
F
rom the moment the first promotional advertisements appeared, much was expected of
Why We Lost, retired Lt. Gen. Dan Bolger’s reflections on the last 14 years of war. Some hoped that
it would be a comprehensive account of operational
and strategic decision making that would illuminate
the many missteps made over the course of many
years. Others hoped fervently it would be an homage to the Army that, like the closing scene of every
episode of Scooby Doo, would blame faulty execution
of perfect plans squarely on “meddling” politicians. A
few expected a detailed analytical study of the many
successes and failures experienced by the Army in two
protracted wars of attrition.
Finally, there are certainly those who hoped that,
based on the provocative title, a senior member of a
very limited elite would finally cry mea culpa for promoting war as an instrument of national policy in the
first place. Sadly, none of the above expectations are
realized in Bolger’s book. Why We Lost is a tremendous disappointment, one that fails to measure up to
the level of Bolger’s previous works.
The book opens hopefully enough, with a rueful
recollection of how political correctness forced the
Joint Staff to repackage Operation Infinite Justice as
Op