rapidfire
In Review
Warrior’s Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting
By Douglas Macgregor. Naval Institute Press, 2009. $29.95. ISBN 978-1-59114-505-9.
Retired
Army Col. Douglas
N
Reflective Therapy
DIGITAL EXCLUSIVE
See how mirror therapy
works. Click here to watch a video demonstrating this unique form of physical therapy.
Macgregor presents a vividly narrated
early 1,000 veterans have returned from
Iraq and Afghanistan as amputees. And more than 90 percent of amputees experience phantom
limb pain — excruciating pain, movement, or uncomfort- able sensations where their amputated arms and legs used to be. The best solution
so far, developed by neuroscientist Dr. V.A. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego, and tested by Cmdr. Jack Tsao, Ph.D., a Navy researcher and staff neurologist at Wal- ter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C., employs a simple mirror. Amputees exercise for
15 minutes daily while watching the refl ection of the intact limb and moving the phantom. Over time, the visual
input from the mirror dampens abnormal signals in the brain. “We know that it works for many people, but we don’t know why or how the brain responds to our therapy,” says Tsao. The treatment helps both war heroes and land mine and disaster survivors, and Tsao fi nds it “extremely gratifying to see people getting better.”
— Elaine Luddy Klonicki
2 2 MI L I T A R Y O F F I C E R J U N E 2 0 1 0
history of what he calls the “U.S. Army’s largest tank battle since World War II” in this story of armored combat during Desert Storm in Iraq.
Macgregor command-
ed the two reinforced armored cavalry troops in the tank battle at 73 Easting Feb. 26, 1991, as soldiers of Cougar Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment de- stroyed an Iraqi Repub- lican Guard armored brigade in a wild desert melee of gunfi re, missiles, and artillery. This is a colorful, fi rst-
hand account of the unit’s training and movement to contact and the vicious tank battle between well- trained young Americans in M-1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles and woefully inept Iraqis in Russian-made T-72s and BMP tanks. Macgregor skewers se-
nior offi cers for the myo- pic indecision and lack of
aggressive offensive spirit that allowed the Iraqi army to escape intact.
A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq
By Mark Moyar. Yale University Press, 2009. $30. ISBN 978- 0-300-15276-0.
In this well-
researched book, au- thor Mark Moyar, an expert on
terrorism and counterin- surgency, offers nine anal- yses of counterinsurgency successes and failures, from the American Civil War to the confl icts in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
Moyar also presents case
studies of counterinsurgen- cy operations in El Salvador, Malaya, the Philippines, and Vietnam, highlighting what tactics, techniques, and leadership styles are most and least effective. His conclusions reveal
success or failure is related to the strength or weak- ness of “leader-centric” efforts, not to the “hearts and minds” of the people. Moyar contends the key to victory is strong leadership well-suited to counterinsur- gency thought and action. Surely to be controver-
sial, the book also explores the intricacies of leadership in a counterinsurgency.
— William D. Bushnell
PHOTOS AT LEFT: DONNA MILES/DOD
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