Victory Undone

"The United States defeated al Qaeda in Iraq, leaving tens of thousands of the terrorist organization's operatives and supporters dead. The Sunni Arabs of Iraq turned against al Qaeda during the Iraq War and the rest of the Arab world followed their lead, leaving Osama bin Laden the "odd man out" in the Arab Spring currently roiling the old authoritarian order in the Middle East. In the counterinsurgency campaign that followed the destruction of the Saddamist dictatorship, U.S. government contractors equaled or exceeded the number of American soldiers on the battlefield. This unprecedented situation served to train and employ 100,000s of Iraqis on reconstruction projects and thereby drained the swamp whence the al Qaeda-led insurgency sprang. Andress and McConnell make the case that without private contractors working in the war zone, America and its allies would have lost the war"--