The National Security Roundtable

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Bing West served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Reagan administration. As a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam, he served as a member of the Force Reconnaissance team that initiated “Operation Stingray” - attacks behind enemy lines - and also saw action in the villages with the Combined Action Platoons. Later, as an analyst at the RAND Corporation, he wrote the Vietnam classic The Village, which war colleges use as a primer in counterinsurgency.

Mr. West is a universally respected combat journalist and author, and a Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. His latest book, "The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq," is the third in his trilogy chronicling the war in Iraq, in which West attempts to capture the experience of the men with the boots and the guns, the rank-and-file U.S. infantry. whose skills and sacrifices have brought the long, bloody American campaign in Iraq to the brink of victory. West saw the fierce fighting in Iraq at close range, making more than 15 extended trips to Iraq, embedding with over 60 U.S. and Iraqi battalions, and interviewing more than 2,000 soldiers. His book is full of eyewitness accounts of nerve-wracking patrols, improvised-explosive detonations and small-unit gunfights, and has been hailed as “a brilliant exposition” and true “classic” written by someone “with a great ear for military truth and a determination to render events accurately” [Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor, USMC (ret), co-author of Cobra II; Dr. James Schlesinger, former Director of the CIA and former Secretary of Defense; Thomas E. Ricks, author  of Fiasco].

Mr. West's previous books - Small Unit Action in Vietnam (1967); The Village (2003), Naval Forces and Western Security (1987); The Pepperdogs: A Novel (2003); The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the US Marines (2003); and No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah (2005) - have received numerous awards. His articles appear in major publications and he’s been named as  “one of the top ten journalists covering Iraq” by The Los Angeles Times.