"Task Force Patriot" Ships

My latest book, Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq, has shipped to retailers.  You can buy it now at Amazon.com.

Task Force Patriot tells the story of an artillery-turned-infantry battalion and its year in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, the last battalion to occupy the city before the end of combat operations. It is published by Government Institutes Press, an imprint of Scarecrow Press.

Pat Proctor at the First Infantry Division Museum

Author Pat Proctor will appear at the First Infantry Division Museum at Cantigny Park, near Chicago, on 21 December, beginning at 7:30PM. At this event, he will discuss his new book, Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq.

To see details for the event, click here.

Task Force Patriot, is being published by Government Institutes Press, an imprint of Scarecrow Press. The book will be released on 15 December.  It is available now for pre-order from Amazon.com. 

"Task Force Patriot" now available for pre-order at Amazon.com

My new book, Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com. The book is slated for release on 15 December 2011 (Amazon erroneously lists 31 December 11).

To see the Task Force Patriot page at Amazon, click here.

Task Force Patriot will be publish by Government Institutes Press, an imprint of Scarecrow Press. The expected release date is in December 2011.

For more, click here.

More Advance Praise for "Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq"

The positive reviews for Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq continue to roll in! Here is what Brig.Gen. H.R. McMaster, PhD., author of Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam had to say:

“As we approach the twilight of the war in Iraq, it is widely acknowledged that the public understands too little about the experience of soldiers who have been engaged in that conflict over the past eight years. In Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq, Pat Proctor sheds light on the political, human, and psychological dimension of that experience, recounting how he and his soldiers fought across an area the size of New Jersey to achieve an outcome consistent with our interests and worthy of the sacrifices so many have made. This is a compelling account not only because it helps explain the American military experience in Iraq, but also because it reveals the difficulties that our soldiers are likely to confront in future conflicts.”

Check back with the Task Force Patriot Review Page often to see the latest reviews as they come in!

Creating the Credibility Gap

William M. Hammond, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962-1968, Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, U.S. Army, 1988, 429 pages.


In the years since the end of the Vietnam War, both war correspondents and historians have written extensively about press coverage of the war. Very few works, however, have covered this topic from the perspective of the government and the military, particularly the US Embassy and Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) personnel who fought on the front lines of the media war in Vietnam. This is the territory covered in William Hammond’s Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962-1968. Hammond provides a fascinating “behind the scenes” look at the actions that shaped the official message on Vietnam throughout the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.


This book is an in-depth, “blow by blow” account of both media coverage of the war, and the efforts by both Saigon and Washington to shape that coverage. Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962-1968 also covers two particularly interesting periods, both the “Americanization” of the war in 1964 and 1965 and the collapse of public support for the war after the Tet offensive. In the end, Hammond concludes, “Most of the public affairs problems that confronted the United States in South Vietnam stemmed from the contradictions implicit in Lyndon Johnson’s strategy for the war” (p. 385). Because Johnson wanted to commit the country to war without jeopardizing either America’s global commitments or his own domestic agenda, Hammond writes, Johnson placed public affairs personnel in Vietnam in an impossible position.

Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962-1968 is excellent, meticulously crafted history. The rigor with which William Hammond has reconstructed the actors and decisions that shaped the government’s message in Vietnam is without equal. Yet, the book suffers for its perspective. This book was, after all, written for the US Army Center for Military History; throughout the book, Hammond is overtly sympathetic to the government/military perspective. Again and again, Hammond details the ways in which the US mission in Saigon and MACV, tried to hide, slant, or outright misrepresent the situation in South Vietnam to favor the government position. He unapologetically paints both the military and State Department as enthusiastically complicit in hiding both the scope and the nature of the war. Yet, at the same time, he paints the press as unreasonably adversarial, as if one were not connected to the other. Hammond’s underlying premise is that the role of military and embassy public affairs is not to inform, but to influence the American public--a premise roundly rejected both by other writers on the subject and modern military public affairs doctrine (largely shaped by the lessons of Vietnam).

Even if one disagrees with Hammond’s perspective, this is still very well executed history. In that respect, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962-1968 is a must read for anyone interested in media coverage of the Vietnam War.

Advance Praise for "Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq"

The advance reviews are beginning to roll in for Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations in Iraq. Here is just one, from Lt.Gen. William Caldwell, IV, commander of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A).

"Lieutenant Colonel Pat Proctor provides valuable insight into the adaptability of the American Soldier and the versatility of tactical leaders in war. His compelling narrative provides an in-depth account of how his battalion implemented counterinsurgency theory in one corner of Iraq."

To read more reviews, click here.

Task Force Patriot and the End of Combat Operations will be released in mid-December 2011.  It is being published by Government Institutes Press, an imprint of Scarecrow Press.

The American Way of War

Donald J. Mrozek, Air Power and the Ground War in Vietnam, Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2002, 216 pages.


Much has been written about the particulars of the air war in Vietnam, from the massive bombing campaigns over North Vietnam to the use of strategic and tactical bombers in support of ground forces in South Vietnam. But the majority of work in these areas has been focused on the technical aspects of the use of air power--tactics, types of aircraft, and types of munitions. In Air Power and the Ground War in Vietnam, Donald Mrozek goes beyond the “how” of the use of airpower in Vietnam to answer the much more interesting question of why it was used in this way.  In the process, Mrozek ends up using air power as a tool to illustrate a much larger point about the American way of war.

Air Power and the Ground War in Vietnam begins by examining the evolution of air power theory up to the start of the Vietnam War.  The book then delves into the struggle to make profoundly conventional American air power fit with the various conceptions of the nature of the Vietnam War.  Where Mrozek takes a fascinating turn is when he departs from the well-worn discussion of tactics for the use of air power and delves into the organizational pressures, both internal to the Air Force and between the services, as they fought for predominance in the control and use of various types of air assets inside the Southeast Asian theater of operations.

Mrozek concludes, among other things, that American air power was in some circumstances a poor fit for Vietnam.  For instance, helicopters used in air mobile operations were antithetical to counterinsurgency, which required a clear-and-hold methodology.  In other circumstances, Mrozek concludes that air power was misused.  The Johnson administration, in particular, repeatedly tried to use strategic bombers as a method to send political signals to the North Vietnamese--messages that were often inscrutable to the communists.  Finally, Mrozek concludes, “The starting point for all appraisals of the Vietnam War on the tactical and operational level--the realm of means and instruments--must be that it was fundamentally a failure in conception and vision on the strategic level” (p. 155).

In this final conclusion lies the only problem with an otherwise excellent book.  At the end of an in depth examination of why air power was used as it was in Vietnam, Mrozek then concludes that the strategic ends America chose for the war were fundamentally flawed.  The concluding chapter of Air Power and the Ground War in Vietnam raises a number of excellent points about the basic strategic conception of the Vietnam War that the rest of the book, because it is ultimately a book about uses of air power, is not able to explore.  One is left wishing for another book to discuss these broader conclusions in detail.