Naval War College Review Volume 69 Article 16 Number 1 Winter

2016 ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, by Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss Craig Whiteside

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Recommended Citation Whiteside, Craig (2016) "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, by Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss," Naval War College Review: Vol. 69 : No. 1 , Article 16. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol69/iss1/16

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Whiteside: ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, by Hassan Hassan and Michael Wei

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lives. More Americans were killed as a the ISIS movement and part analysis consequence of the decision to invade of its nature and strategy. The authors’ in 2003 than on 9/11 itself. But backgrounds—Weiss is a prolific there is also the long-term causal impact journalist and Hassan a knowledgeable of the U.S. invasion. The existence Syrian analyst at the Delma Institute of ISIS is another unintended conse- in —combine brilliantly to quence of the American invasion. explain the rapidly evolving events on It is true that there are dangers in this the ground within the context of the world. But Preble and Mueller’s volume political-military issues in the region. constitutes an antidote to America’s Hassan and Weiss interviewed current tendency to imagine grave peril, and and former ISIS movement fighters in serves as an important counter to the , dissected ISIS propaganda videos American proclivity to overstate the and statements, and combined other benefits and understate the costs of an scholarly analyses of ISIS to produce assertive global military posture. The what I consider to be the most accurate editors argue that America is largely assessment of ISIS currently available. free of threats that require military The overwhelming strength of the book preparedness or balancing behavior. is that Hassan and Weiss get the history In his chapter, Fettweis argues that of ISIS right. Although it is often mistak- America’s tendency to exaggerate the enly thought of as a recent phenomenon, world’s dangers can be altered, since it is the authors correctly trace the group’s based on a system of beliefs that can be evolution as a core of Salafist-oriented changed over time. Let’s hope he’s right. fighters who joined together under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq in 2002–2003. ANDREW STIGLER Zarqawi’s unique outlook, based in the same Salafi-jihadist school as Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, imprinted on the ISIS movement early and has been the biggest factor in the populariza- Hassan, Hassan, and Michael Weiss. ISIS: Inside tion of its distinct ideology and the the Army of Terror. New York: Regan Arts, 2015. 288pp. $16.95 evolution of its tactics and strategy. The authors capture this dynamic, as well as The surprising success of the Islamic ISIS’s subsequent transformation from State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in seiz- a foreign fighter–based organization ing control of large parts of northern to a more indigenous Iraqi-led group and western Iraq in 2014 has gener- that eventually split with Al Qaeda. ated many questions for policy makers and the public. How was this group so Because of their understanding of ISIS effective so quickly? Where did it come history, Hassan and Weiss are able to from and how did so many observ- demonstrate the ideological foundation ers miss its rise? What threat does behind ISIS’s strategic targeting and why ISIS pose to the region and beyond? the group takes on such a large spectrum of enemies at once. The authors are also Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss ad- able to explain ISIS’s genocidal strategy dress these questions in this recent book and how the group promotes its own about ISIS. The work is part history of atrocities to inspire fear in its enemies.

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This book illuminates the strategic de- policies surely have contributed to the bate over the importance of uncontrolled untimely deaths of thousands of Iraqis spaces to groups like ISIS. ISIS’s effec- and the loss of much territory to ISIS. tive use of low levels of indiscriminate As of 2015, nineteen of twenty of ISIS’s violence to take over large parts of Syria top leaders were formerly in American and Iraq since 2013 demonstrates the custody at Camp Bucca before being opportunity that ungoverned space af- released or escaping from custody. fords malignant actors such as ISIS. The Overall, I highly recommend this ISIS movement began in the Kurdish ar- book to policy makers, educators, eas of Iraq outside the reach of Saddam and military professionals who seek Hussein in 2002, and moved quickly a deeper understanding of the ISIS into Anbar after identifying a security movement. The authors have provided vacuum following the invasion of Iraq in a very believable representation of a 2003. The collapse of the Assad govern- contemporary group that I believe will ment in eastern Syria and the defeat of be vindicated by additional research in the Sunni Awakening militias and their the future. Until that time, this book Iraqi security partners in several Iraqi will become the basis for most of our provinces (2008–12) once again created understanding of a highly secretive space for the ISIS movement—this time and effective pseudostate that remains to recover from its 2007 defeat in Iraq. a threat to the region and beyond. Despite today’s blistering air campaign, ISIS maintains control over most of CRAIG WHITESIDE the Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria, and arguably continues to develop deep roots of support among the population. The authors also highlight the problems Muth, Jörg. Command Culture: Officer Education of both the Bush and Obama adminis- in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, trations’ war-termination strategies for 1901–1940, and the Consequences for World War Iraq, in what has become a recognized II. Denton: Univ. of North Texas Press, 2013. weakness in the American way of war. 376pp. $29.95 Comfortable with outsourcing security Dr. Jörg Muth has written a serious in Sunni areas to an untrained civilian comparative account of the German militia, both the Iraqis and Americans and American precommissioning turned a blind eye to the fact that ISIS courses and general staff colleges from would make the Sunni Awakening an 1901 to 1940. Any new work compar- important target in order to reestablish ing German and American military core sanctuaries inside Iraq. The authors effectiveness in the first half of the point with amazement to the gradual twentieth century is guaranteed to release of hard-core ISIS prisoners be controversial, and Muth certainly (2008–11) back into their communi- achieves controversy. However, there ties as one of several factors that helped exists a significant revisionist school fuel the growth of ISIS from its post­ of thought that offers an interpreta- surge nadir. While the reasons for this tion much different from Muth’s. shortsighted approach were undoubt- The May 2010 Society of Military His- edly political and legal in nature, these tory annual meeting, held at the Virginia

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