This book is written by a general who has experienced most of the conflicts since Vietnam. Our politicians should be listening to him. He stresses the need for diplomatic solutions and planning for what happens after the military battle is won. ( )

I enjoyed this book. General Zinni writes in a way that causes you to step back and think. Personally I think that there are rarely easy answers to military questions. However, I think this book helps frame some of the big questions around military action. Whether you agree or disagree with American military policy as it stands or with General Zinni's perspective, this book will have you pondering the big questions. That is part of what I like about this book, I have to engage with it. There is a bit of redundancy which can be off-putting, however, perhaps that is needed to drive a point home. This is readable in sections which also makes it easy to travel with and enjoy. ( )

A delicate takedown of the mismanagement of the military, published years after it would have been useful. I understand why it would have been difficult for Zinni to come forward about his misgivings before the invasion of Iraq, and appreciate that he is evenhanded in this book without pussyfooting around the fact that the Bush administration willfully ignored intelligence when it made the case for invasion, but at this point those of us who suspected the war would be a disaster have been vindicated by the facts, and those who still think the invasion was a good idea are not going to be convinced otherwise by a book like this.

While Zinni's overall points are excellent, and his ability to support them with his long experience in the military is a boon, I did not feel like I learned anything particularly new when reading. That said, the book is a strong case for reform on the civilian end of the US's wars, and a collection of insights that I can only hope will be heeded by our leaders in the future. ( )

While this book is not on WWII or focused on any other particular past war. I was interested in reading this book. I wanted to know how we as America could win or lose off the battlefield. Plus the author sounded like he had past experience and great knowledge about this subject matter. Which the author did have a lot of insight. This book is divided into sections. Each one focusing on a different part of war. Like...intelligence, political pressures, goals and visions, outsourcing war, and the operational art to name a few.

While I did like reading this book. I did also feel at the same time that the details sometimes grew old quick. I would fine myself skimming parts. Luckily you can get away with doing this with this book and still get the high points of the book that the author is trying to get across. One thing that I did really like about this book is that if you are a history buff or just interested in reading about history or military themed books you can read this one with ease. You don't have to have lots of knowledge because even with the author's knowledge he breaks it down into a easy, understandable way that the layperson can get. ( )

I have to say this book really makes you think about the wars that have happened and the wars to come. It opens the layperson's eyes to what needs to be done and who should be doing it. I am not usually interested in military reads but I am trying to read different things and I am really glad I read this one. "Before the First Shots are Fired" is a great read and one that really gets you asking questions. General Zinni is a man with decades of experience and it shows. You can relate to him even though he is political and military. I will definitely suggest this book for anyone to read. ( )

This is a Goodreads First Reads books.

Before the First Shots Are Fired: How America Can Win or Lose Off the Battlefield by Tony Zinni and Tony Koltz is a thought provoking critique of the American political and military systems. Leadership (or the lack thereof) plays a central role in their analysis of the military and the political leaders who direct it.

Before the First Shots Are Fired should be viewed as a wake-up call to the political and military leaders and is a good read for anyone interested in the military or political systems.
( )

General Zinni brings decades of experience leading military operations and conducting diplomacy to this informal yet informed discussion of U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy.

He covers many important points; one of which (referenced several times) concerns the the necessary ties between the political goals of a war and the manner in which the war is fought. This means that political leaders need to be deeply involved in leading and managing a war; they cannot just have a few high level conversations, make a few decisions, and call it a day. Zinni repeatedly criticizes "dilettantes placed [in high positions] who do not have the depth of knowledge or experience to make sound military decisions or offer credible recommendations" (p. 19). He offers the leadership of the Pentagon under Rumsfeld as a prime example.

Zinni's straightforward and unpretentious style sometimes blends over into platitudes but the book largely succeeds in presenting an accessible window into some of the failures of national security policymaking over the past few decades.

I received this book through LibraryThing Early reviewers in exchange for an honest review

General Tony Zinni has produced an insider's accounting of the leadership, strategic and political wrangling, and short-sighted military planning behind the scenes for the last 4 decades. This information alone is a treasure for military historians interested in the modern era. Zinni makes some astute judgments concerning our recent military snafus, particularly our invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, and the fractured political and civil climate that we left with the Iraqi people. If you can get past the "told you so" attitude, and sour grapes evident in some of Zinni's statements, you will find exceptional ideas from a highly intelligent military mind, as well as some interesting insight of what goes on behind closed doors during all phases of military engagement.

Above all, Before the First Shots are Fired offers us an overview of where our Political and military leaders have strayed, and how to possibly reign it all in, producing a solid policy that will keep us safe, while keeping us free from decades of nation-building madness.
Read my full review in The Thugbrarian Review @ http://wp.me/p4pAFB-la ( )

You know that saying that, to a child with a hammer, all the world looks like a nail? General Tony Zinni, USArmy (Ret.) has convinced me that, to a man who’s spent his whole adult life in the military, all the world looks like a war — or something best solved by war. That’s a great disappointment. I requested the book because the subtitle, “How America Can Win or Lose Off the Battlefield,” and the synopsis from the publisher led me to believe that General Zinni might have a vision to offer of solving the problems of the world without resort to arms. What the book offers instead of that vision is a detailed memoir and justification of Gen. Zinni’s role — always able to see what should have been done but never in a position or given the resources to do it — in USAmerica’s military ventures from Vietnam through Afghanistan.

He is most directly critical of George W. Bush’s administration and quite baldly accuses Vice President Cheney of lying to the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq. Zinni is also highly critical of President Obama’s policies and performance, though he seems to know no more than I do about how decisions have actually been made in the Obama White House. He settles for reading the most damaging conclusions possible into the photos we’ve all seen of the gathering in the Situation Room as Osama bin Laden was hunted down, and criticizes the President for robbing John Kerry of his rightful role in settling the initial crisis of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Perhaps he's sympathetic to Kerry because of Kerry's military background. Gen. Zinni names many other military figures, usually with a summary of their backgrounds and almost always with information about when Zinni worked with him and what he thought of him. He blatantly idolizes Gen. George Marshall. I can’t think of any women mentioned in any kind of leadership context, though he does speak at least once of the extra burden placed on commanders to integrate women and out gays into their units.

I guess that's my other great disappointment in the book: It's all about the brass, and almost not at all about the troops who do the fighting. They seem to be just another weapon to be used more or less effectively by the officers. He complains about 'taking America to the battlefield' for the comfort of the troops "at ease," and seems to blame the speed with which they jet home from combat for the epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorders. He says Presidents who've never been shot at lack a visceral understanding of what they ask of the troops, or maybe what they ask of the generals. He demonstrates no identification himself with the experience of being shot at. His comments on the most recent uses of National Guard and Reserve troops are hardly more sympathetic.

There is a brief moment in chapter two, in the context of the invasion of Iraq, when Zinni toys with questioning why it’s so easy to respond with military force, why we didn’t deal with al Qaeda and Afghanistan more directly and first, why we didn’t look to other injustices and threats in the world. He criticizes politicians — and generals — who never met an intervention they didn’t like. But he acknowledges that having the most powerful military in the world is its own temptation to use it.

I guess I'm glad to have had a reason to read a book by a General, though I never would have bought it or sought it out for any other reason. I am a pacifist, and it's always good to see things from another perspective. But General Zinni seems to accept that there will always come a crisis, and a time in each crisis, when resolution will depend on shots being fired, and fired by USAmerica’s military. And because of that certainty, we will be required to maintain the largest, most powerful military force on the planet. And we will want to use it. General Zinni spent his finest years as a “combat commander,” whether or not there was active combat in his area. And he is quite clear that he knows how to fight future wars, and construct future pauses in war and geographical shifts in where the war is, more efficiently and effectively than we’ve done at least since “the good war” of the 1940s. I was really hoping he might have seen an entirely different way for the world to run. ( )

This book by a retired four-star general is a thorough examination of the military and political factors that should be considered before deciding to go to war. The author explains how the threats we face have changed since he was a young officer in the Vietnam war. Today's threats are not so much other countries and established governing regimes but non-state movements (terrorism) and cyber attacks on our information infrastructure. Most of the senior military officers' experience and training are not particularly focused on the evolving threats.

General Zinni argues that non-military options including 'soft power' approaches such as diplomacy, negotiation, mediation, and economic sanctions need to be used in place of or in conjunction with traditional military approaches. The existing world-wide US military command structure and resource deployment models are well-explained. This is followed by suggested changes to the command structure that use more joint forces, special operations, and rapid deployment to better respond to today's conditions.

The author provides an insider's view of the military and political aspects of the decision to go to war. His experiences as a young officer in Vietnam, as a student of military strategy, as commander of CENTCOM during the time leading up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as a special envoy in the Middle East, and work with the joint chiefs of staff are used to support his recommendations.

I found the analysis and judgments of the decisions to use military force during the Clinton, Bush (I & II), and Obama administrations to be fact-based and even-handed.

This book deserves to be read by citizens and politicians who want to change and improve America's effectiveness and role on the world stage. ( )

You have just been sitting through a PowerPoint presentation and almost everyone is leaving the room. You notice that the one attendee with the large stack of folders is still organizing and placing the folders in his briefcase. You offer to help and an informal conversation starts. You recognize that you are about to hear an open and frank analysis of what really just took place.
If you have ever had this experience, you can imagine if the conversation was with one of the most honored and knowledgeable experts in strategic military and geo-political affairs.
"Before the First Shots are Fired" is a kind of record of a memorable conversation like that.
With this book, you are privy to a real insider analysis of United States military actions up to the present time. Retired General Tony Zinni with the help of Tony Koltz, shares a series of thoughts about our broad military strategy and the well recognized names of the military and civilian leadership at the highest levels.
Frustrations with civilian leadership limiting the early input from military expertise is one of the themes through the book. Military emphasis on highly detailed technical and logistical planning is not partnered with the same level of planning from the civilian leadership. Interestingly, the book recognizes the cultural factors from the military perspective that are not emphasized sufficiently from the civilian leaders.
The book is indeed written in a conversational manner even when looking deeply into strategic areas. Contemporary challenges are smoothly put into historical perspective.
If you are tired of the five minute cable news "analysis" and instead prefer a deeper but understandable look behind the scenes of our military role and strategic planning, this book makes a great read. ( )

A note about these newly posted non-link reviews.

I was somewhat surprised to have won this from the LibraryThing.com “Early Reviewer” program … as I've kvetched about in here repeatedly, I seem to get picked for business books when I request them, and it's interesting to get something of a different genre. Since the month this was offered, I didn't request any business books, it showed up … but I'm a bit unsure of how to define its specific genre. General Tony Zinni's (with Tony Koltz) Before the First Shots Are Fired: How America Can Win Or Lose Off The Battlefield is a bit of a memoir, a bit of a military history book, and a bit of a political broadside. Frankly, it reminds me quite a bit of another LTER book I reviewed some time back, Kip Hawley's Permanent Emergency, a look at the TSA that gave serious “behind the scenes” access to the reader.

Zinni's Before the First Shots are Fired is, at base, the author's stance on what went wrong in various military situations, and what he believes could be done about it. A product of the Viet Nam war (he joined the Marines after graduating from college in 1965), he was a participant in numerous military and quasi-military events over the next several decades. The book starts out with a look at historical data … and it's amazing to think that in 1939 the total U.S. Military was 334,473 individuals (smaller than Romania's!) spread between the Army, Navy, and Marines (there were over 12 million by the end of WWII just six years later). Prior to WWII, we were generally not in a position to get in too much trouble (wars with Spain's colonies aside), but once the page turned from the end of that war and into the Cold War, we were all over the planet, and involved in everybody's business.

{The Cold War} left us with military commitments that our forefathers could never have imagined possible. We fought limited wars, counterinsurgencies, and “police actions” in Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere. We supported armed struggles resisting communist takeover from Central America to Europe to Afghanistan to Southeast Asia. Clandestine operations helped overthrow communist or left-leaning governments in Iran and Central America.
Unfortunately, these dirty little limited wars and military interventions turned out to be hard to manage. Our model was the “Good War” and we expected these new wars to play out according to that unambiguous model. They did not. They were messy, hard to define, and harder to sell, requiring tactics that in some cases seemed less than honorable – and not really true to American values. We supported dictators; we toppled governments; and we used clandestine methods to protect our interests and achieve our ends.

One fascinating thing he notes is that every President had a military “doctrine”that was more-or-less formalized and served to guide military planning. What is somewhat creepy is that these, to a certain extent, never go away, so the strategic thrust of one administration is only modified by the next's (or subsequent), but never fully replaced.

Of course, as one would expect from a book by a General, much of this is pretty solidly from that side of the table, and the stories he tells of the civilian side are pretty horrifying. Every administration is different, naturally enough, and some came in with “the best minds” on hand to run things, but others were fraught with cronyism and worse (such as the Obama team assigning jobs more on the basis of campaign fundraising than any expertise, or even familiarity, with doled out cabinet or diplomatic assignments). There is always some cross-intent conflict between the sides, but it's amazing how bad this sort of thing can get when the politicians are trying to play politics with soldiers … especially when the foreign excuse is largely a ploy for domestic results. I was, honestly, surprised with the rancor he reserved for G.W. Bush's administration … as it appears that the key players in that (he particularly has a thing for Rumsfeld) pretty much didn't care what the military thought, and they were going to run things their way.

Zinni “lifts the curtain” on numerous conflicts and takes a look at the elements that were driving them, internationally, politically, and militarily. If you're a fan of military histories, these will be particularly of interest. However, the most fascinating thing here is how he frames “how we got here” … from a fairly isolationist, largely rural, nation protected by oceans on either flank, to “the world's policeman”, being pulled into nearly every conflict wherever on the globe it happens. He notes that the original form of the “Military-Industrial Complex” (a famous phrase from Eisenhower's “farewell address”) was the “military-industrial-congressional complex”, implicating Congress in a cycle that started with FDR's taking Depression-idled factories and turning them into the forges of “the arsenal of democracy” … which soon enough turned into local “pork” that was unlikely to be ever taken off the books by Representatives looking at re-election every 2 years.

While he doesn't necessarily propose a solution for wresting control of foreign policy from the “military-industrial-congressional complex”, while protecting it as much as possible from the craven politicization of it by the executive branch, he does discuss what he sees as positive programs, and what he sees as being deeply negative.

Before the First Shots are Fired should be appealing to fans of military history, political intrigue, world history, and associated fields. While not being an auto-biography per se, it also traces out an arc of a rather fascinating military career. Unlike many of the LTER selections, this one is actually early, and the book won't be appearing until September, but you can pre-order it from the on-line big boys, currently at about a 25% discount. While I think this book could have been a stronger statement (Zinni obviously has tried to avoid “nailing his thesis to the doors” here), it's a fascinating look at a lot of the “sausage making” that goes on behind the gorier headlines, and I would certainly recommend it to anybody with interests in these areas.

CMP.Ly/1

A link to my "real" review:
BTRIPP's review of Tony Zinni & Tony Koltz's Before the First Shots Are Fired: How America Can Win Or Lose Off The Battlefield (1079 words)

The authors bring the seemingly most obvious and logical positions and actions that should be held during war (and peace) time to the forefront. While it seems the "fixes" to the problems discussed in the book are well within an experienced, senior military board, I was left with a feeling that smart warring is something that will not happen any time in the near future.

A recommended read for those in politics and military, as those are the groups that are most capable of making the immediate needed changes. A good read for civilians in helping to understand what happens when a failure is perceived and how to better support military decisions and elect public officials. ( )

The good: This is an analysis of how the modern American political/military system is failing to do a good job , making us end up in quagmires like Iraq and Afghanistan, and what could be done differently to make things safer and more effective, worldwide. The author has vast experience, and shares much of it with us in this book.

Problems: Well, it's not tightly written, and I would have expected the secondary author to have corrected this. It rambles. It rambles a LOT. The anecdotes are fascinating and clear, but they do not seem chosen to support the immediate point that the authors are trying to make.

This means that the main points of the book are scattered throughout, and somewhat obscured by all the rest of the stories, except for the last chapter which is a very tight summary.

I'd recommend the lat chapter widely. The rest? probably mostly of interest to military historian buffs, especially ones focusing on the last 50 or so years.

I got this book as an ARC via LibraryThing. ( )

General Zinni brings decades of military experience to show how our political and militarily must learn from lessons from past wars in order to show what would be the preconditions for successful military intervention. No matter how we are provoked we must respond first with a sound analysis of the situation. Intelligence experts must gather all the information and define what is the problem, but also show how we must make solid decisions. Those responsible must look at all the options, what policies will be impacted and the consequences. The president must find a way to fully understand the implications of any decision to use force. We must design and put into place a strategy that meshes efforts of our political leadership, policy developers and militarily field commanders. Zinni touches on a variety of topics: the role played by any secretary of defense, the need for legal, and moral grounds arguing for war; a military force adaptable to any mission; the proper role of non military contractors, the National Guard and Reserves; the selection of combat leaders; the need for overhauling United States security structures, some of which date back to WWII.When were in a conflict and ask ourselves “How the hell did we get here?”it is likely due to the fact that we have ignored too many of the issues Zinni raises. ( )

An enjoyable book that greatly reminded me of "The March of Folly" by Barbara Tuchman. While her book was written in 1984, General Zinni's book shows that we still do not learn from our past. It was interesting to see a perspective of current affairs from an "insider"; however, since everyone has a bias, what was General Zinni's when he wrote this book. I would recommend this to others. ( )

World wars are very different from regional conflicts. General Zinni's worldview is shaped by his experience in Vietnam and he traces the US military transition from a big war mentality to the current fighting in the mIddle east. His book provides a perspective on the relationship between Commanders in Chief, the Congress, and top military leadership. The General gives Clinton good marks for the detail he seeks when considering military actions, Bush-Cheney lower marks (or grudging respect) for outmaneuvering Congress on debate prior to the Iraq war declaration, and dismisses Obama politely for his approach to drawing red lines in Syria.

Before the First Shots concisely states the problem but doesn't offer much in the way of answers. Still, it is a good read from one of the major players in this key area of the world. ( )