Fight a War, Lose a Country: The Untold Story of the Iraqi Transportation Network

Every military conflict involves two wars: the war on the battlefield, and the war of logistics fought behind the front lines. While the latter is rarely studied, its contributions are just as vital, its work is often as deadly, and its heroes are frequently unsung. This book chronicles the never-before-told story of the Iraqi Trucking Network—an unprecedented joint venture between private sector experts in the West, the U.S. military, tribal sheikhs, and Iraqi truckers that sought to do what had never been done: provide a means of transporting military and civilian goods across the lawless, battle-scarred land. The project that Bill Boesch and others launched against all odds as a trucking operation soon grew into something bigger: a counterinsurgency strategy and a source of hope for a stable and economically revitalized Iraq after the bombs started falling. Sectarian violence, jihadist insurgency, greed, and American disengagement ultimately doomed the ambitious project. But its legacy remains a bright spot in an otherwise disastrous and costly conflict, and a lesson for the future of what can be achieved when a group of courageous and well-meaning visionaries think big and act boldly.