Boots on the ground.

No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah, by Bing West (Bantam, 400 pp., $25)

I AM sorry to say that Americans have forgotten how to honor their war heroes. When I was growing up, everyone knew about Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of World War II, and John Basilone, the Marine who was awarded the Medal of Honor for Guadalcanal and was subsequently killed on Iwo Jima. No more. Americans have performed extraordinary feats of bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who knows about them?

Vietnam changed things: The press, if not the American people, began to treat those who fought there as victims, not warriors. Even though many things have changed over the past three decades, the media today still seem reluctant to describe the bravery of American troops in Iraq. But as Francis J. "Bing" West observes in No True Glory, his remarkable new book about Fallujah, stories of soldierly courage deserve "to be recorded and read by the next generation. Unsung, the noblest deed will die."

West does his part, recording the breathtaking acts of heroism performed during the battle for Fallujah by Marines and soldiers, six of whom--Marine corporals and lance corporals--he honors on his dedication page. "Corporals are the backbone of the infantry," he writes, and Fallujah was an infantry battle. Technology played a role, but for the most part Fallujah was about Marines and jihadists slugging it out at close quarters. West observes that we will continue to need the infantry's efforts on the ground, but we continue to scrimp on our investment in this kind of warfare. "The U.S. military has more combat aircraft and pilots than infantry squads. The infantry squad deserves to be funded as a weapon system every bit as precious as an aircraft and its pilot."

No True Glory offers riveting descriptions of the fighting, but it also recounts the policy debates that caused events in Fallujah to unfold the way they did. The author is particularly well qualified to write such an account. As a Marine infantry officer who served in Vietnam, he understands what those Marines and soldiers were up against as Fallujah emerged as the central battlefield of the Iraq insurgency. As a former assistant secretary of defense, he understands the complex, interconnected roles of war and politics, especially in an era of instantaneous communications. Out of these disparate strands, he weaves a fascinating narrative.

West identifies four phases of the 20-month struggle for Fallujah. From the fall of Saddam in April 2003 until March 2004, U.S. forces attempted to apply classic counterinsurgency doctrine--winning the "hearts and minds" of the population of the Sunni city. But the Americans had too little money to spend for economic projects, and this generated resentment--which grew as the Americans responded to attacks with overwhelming firepower.

The second phase began in March 2004 with the lynching of four American security contractors. Their bodies were mutilated; two of them were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates. In response, President Bush ordered the 1st Marine Division, which had recently assumed responsibility for Fallujah from the 82nd Airborne Division, to seize the city. The Marines advised against the attack--they had an alternative plan for targeting those responsible for the atrocity--but they were overruled. As Marines always do, they saluted and said, "Aye, aye, sir." But just as the Marines were on the verge of finishing off the insurgents, they were ordered to halt their attack because of international outrage over televised images of the assault. For the next six weeks, the Marines besieged the insurgents, but fighting was inconclusive.

In the absence of any practical alternative, the senior Marine commander in the region worked out a plan to hand the city over to former Iraqi generals who claimed they could restore order: This was the third phase. But Fallujah descended into chaos, becoming the headquarters of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an arch-terrorist who turned the city into one big torture chamber from which he dispatched suicide bombers to other cities.

The fourth and final phase of the struggle for Fallujah began in the fall of 2004 when the Marines were once again ordered to seize the city. The terrorist force was twice as large as the one the Marines had encountered in April, and they had prepared their defenses well--but the Marines were able to "shape the battlefield" in a way that had not been possible in April, especially by maintaining control of the images transmitted around the world. In addition, the Iraqi leadership was on board this time--not keen to save the Sunni insurgents as they had been in April. The battle was fierce, but the insurgents were defeated.

West has nothing but praise for the Marines and soldiers who bore the brunt of Fallujah, but he is critical of the policymakers who put them in such a tough spot. He argues that the main problem for our fighters was the lack of unity of command. Ambassador Paul Bremer was responsible for determining U.S. policy in Iraq, and controlled the budget. But he did not direct the operations of U.S. military forces. Gen. John Abizaid, commander of Central Command, was responsible for U.S. military operations--but not for developing the Iraqi security forces. Critical decisions bounced back and forth; no single individual was responsible for them.

West contends that the president's decision to seize the city after the mutilation of the four contractors was also mistaken: It was based on emotion, not reason. Washington saw the event as "a symbol of America's humiliation and a challenge to the American occupation." The preferred Marine response was dismissed as insufficiently aggressive, given the outrage represented by the lynching of the contractors.

Unfortunately, the high-level policymakers who ordered the attack did not lay the strategic groundwork. There was apparently no discussion of how the Iraqi Governing Council or our allies might react once the attack was underway. The images transmitted by al-Jazeera conveyed the impression that that the Marines were indiscriminately targeting civilians; the impressions were false, but it didn't matter. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council threatened to resign if the attack was not called off and Tony Blair, Bush's strongest ally, came under pressure to convince him to stop it.

Another problem, writes West, was the failure to take into account that "every battle now has a global audience": For all our talk about information technology, the Americans lost the siege of Fallujah "on the playing fields of digital technology." As Lt. Gen. James Conway, the senior Marine commander, put it, "Al-Jazeera kicked our butts." (On the positive side, the Marines learned their lesson and the strategic-information preparation of the battlefield was far superior in November 2004 to what it had been in April.)

West contends that the most important lesson of Fallujah is clear: "When you send our soldiers into battle, let them finish the fight. Ordering the Marines to attack, then calling them off, then dithering, then sending them back in constituted a flawed set of strategic decisions. American soldiers are not political bargaining chips."

In April 2004, I, like Bing, was extremely critical of the decision to call off the attack on Fallujah. But what looked like an error at the time may have turned out for the best. It is important to remember that it then looked like the Coalition was about to confront the "perfect storm": a unified Sunni-Shiite "national front" manifest in the simultaneous uprising of Sunni insurgents in al-Anbar province west of Baghdad and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army to the south. Had the Americans continued the assault on Fallujah in April while Sadr's militia stirred up trouble in Shiite strongholds, the city could have emerged as a national symbol of resistance. In fact, the Marines went on the defensive in Fallujah while Sadr was crushed. By the time the Marines went back on the offensive, Fallujah had become a symbol of a different sort--a slaughterhouse where Sunni terrorists tortured and killed ordinary Iraqis. As West writes, "Fallujah appeared on nightly news reports to resemble the lair of the monster Grendel, a city of whippings, kidnappings, and beheadings." It may well be that the evolution of Fallujah from backwater to slaughterhouse contributed to the success of the Iraqi election in January 2005: If Iraq establishes a viable government, it may be because the terrorists of Fallujah, deluded into believing they had won in April 2004, overreached, earning the everlasting enmity of ordinary Iraqis who were their victims.

After Iwo Jima, Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, remarked that among the Marines and sailors who fought on the island "uncommon valor was a common virtue." So it is with those who fought in Fallujah. Bing West has told the story that these American fighters deserve.

Mr. Owens is an associate dean of academics and a professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He is writing a history of U.S. civil-military relations.