From Nightmares to Dreams
From Nightmares to Dreams
The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa
reviewed by Nick M. Masellis
Small Wars Journal
From Nightmares to Dreams (Full PDF Article)
While some have called the U.S. involvement in Iraq a nightmare, the authors of The Defense of Jisr al Doreaa used a series of dreams to discuss the adaptation of counterinsurgency in today’s conflict environment. The book particularly exemplifies the lack of such thought in 2003, as well as consistent gaps in unit combat readiness that preside today. The book immediately brought back a personal account of the former, and encapsulates the latter.
Stowing all of the battle-worn rucksacks and bulky weapons on the commercial flight, there was a sense of disbelief that we were finally heading home. I turned to a couple of my friends and said, “what would you do if you took a nap on this flight, woke up, and realized that you were just arriving to Iraq — that the whole past year was just a dream?” I received laughter and mixed responses of who would jump out of the plane first. Only after reading The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa do I realize that I wish that I would have had such dreams before serving my time in Iraq, where only persistent nightmares prevailed.
This captivating book brings to light the intricacies and imbroglios of counterinsurgency warfare for the tactical leader and soldiers on the ground. The authors, Army majors Michael Burgoyne and Albert Marckwardt, served tours in Iraq, observing the situation as it evolved from the dreams that they portray throughout their book. This novella is a contemporary reinterpretation of E.D. Swinton’s account of the Boer War, a counterinsurgency campaign fought by the British in South Africa. In that account, Swinton describes the situation in a version of a dream in a tale called The Defense of Duffer’s Drift, which has been long taught to infantrymen in learning the fundamentals of small unit tactics (Swinton’s original work is included in the second half of the book).
