Download or read book Afghanistan and the Vietnam Syndrome written by Deepak Tripathi and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great powers have often found that military adventurism to force their will in distant lands comes with the risk of spending excessive military, economic, and moral capital to the extent that war is no longer sustainable. Written by a former BBC Afghanistan correspondent who set up the corporation's bureau in Kabul in the early 1990s, this book draws both from scholarly knowledge as well as first-hand insights on how the Americans met that fate in Vietnam, and the Soviets and Americans in Afghanistan. America's 1975 retreat from Vietnam was a consequential event, prompting US commentators to explain it as reluctance to get involved in foreign wars, a mindset described as the Vietnam Syndrome. As Deepak Tripathi points out, the Vietnam experience made the Americans determined to give the Soviets their own Vietnam. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and retreat after a decade of occupation, represented the revenge America sought. However, President George W. Bush's decision to invade Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks was the beginning of a long military venture that ended in retreat in 2021. Addressing an academic as well as a general audience, Tripathi explores parallels between wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam, and shows how the United States and the Soviet Union met the same fate. "Anyone with an interest in world affairs should read Deepak Tripathi's superb book Afghanistan and the Vietnam Syndrome." Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University, and Chair of Global Law, Queen Mary University of London "Combining the sharp judgments of an experienced foreign correspondent with the insights of the trained historian, Deepak Tripathi has produced an informed, insightful and wide-ranging study that helps us make sense of the challenges that both the Soviet Union and the United States encountered in Afghanistan's mountains and on Afghanistan's plains. No one will fail to benefit from reading it." William Maley, Emeritus Professor of Diplomacy, Australian National University.

Download or read book Superpowers Defeated written by Douglas A. Borer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Cold War, military conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan validated the importanct of war in global power dynamics. But military intervention proved not to be politically sustainable for the USA and the USSR. This study investigates the parallels and differences in the two conflicts.

Download or read book Planning to Fail written by James H. Lebovic and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States national-security establishment is vast, yet the United States has failed to meet its initial objectives in almost every one of its major, post-World War II conflicts. Of these troubled efforts, the US wars in Vietnam (1965-73), Iraq (2003-11), and Afghanistan (2001-present) stand out for their endurance, resource investment, human cost, and miscalculated decisions. Because overarching policy goals are distant and open to interpretation, policymakers ground their decisions in the immediate world of short-term objectives, salient tasks, policy constraints, and fixed time schedules. As a consequence, they exaggerate the benefits of their preferred policies, ignore the accompanying costs and requirements, and underappreciate the benefits of alternatives. In Planning to Fail, James H. Lebovic argues that a profound myopia helps explain US decision-making failures. In each of the wars explored in this book, he identifies four stages of intervention. First and foremost, policymakers chose unwisely to go to war. After the fighting began, they inadvisably sought to extend or expand the mission. Next, they pursued the mission, in abbreviated form, to suboptimal effect. Finally, they adapted the mission to exit from the conflict. Lebovic argues that US leaders were effectively planning to fail whatever their hopes and thoughts were at the time the intervention began. Decision-makers struggled less than they should have, even when conditions allowed for good choices. Then, when conditions on the ground left them with only bad choices, they struggled furiously and more than could ever matter. Policymakers allowed these wars to sap available capabilities, push US forces to the breaking point, and exhaust public support. They finally settled for terms of departure that they (or their predecessors) would have rejected at the start of these conflicts. Offering a far-ranging and detailed analysis, this book identifies an unmistakable pattern of failure and highlights lessons we can learn from it.

Download or read book The Afghanistan Papers written by Craig Whitlock and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 ​The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

Download or read book Returning Home from Iraq and Afghanistan written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2010-03-31 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly 1.9 million U.S. troops have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since October 2001. Many service members and veterans face serious challenges in readjusting to normal life after returning home. This initial book presents findings on the most critical challenges, and lays out the blueprint for the second phase of the study to determine how best to meet the needs of returning troops and their families.

Download or read book The Afghan Syndrome written by Oleg Leonidovich Sarin and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two former Soviet officers recount the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, reveal the political motives for the move, and compare the consequences to those of the Vietnam War

Download or read book Afghanistan and the Vietnam Syndrome written by Deepak Tripathi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great powers have often found that military adventurism to force their will in distant lands comes with the risk of spending excessive military, economic, and moral capital to the extent that war is no longer sustainable. Written by a former BBC Afghanistan correspondent who set up the corporation’s bureau in Kabul in the early 1990s, this book draws both from scholarly knowledge as well as first-hand insights on how the Americans met that fate in Vietnam, and the Soviets and Americans in Afghanistan. America’s 1975 retreat from Vietnam was a consequential event, prompting US commentators to explain it as reluctance to get involved in foreign wars, a mindset described as the Vietnam Syndrome. As Deepak Tripathi points out, the Vietnam experience made the Americans determined to give the Soviets their own Vietnam. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and retreat after a decade of occupation, represented the revenge America sought. However, President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks was the beginning of a long military venture that ended in retreat in 2021. Addressing an academic as well as a general audience, Tripathi explores parallels between wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam, and shows how the United States and the Soviet Union met the same fate.

Download or read book Our Latest Longest War written by Aaron B. O'Connell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American and Afghan veterans contribute to this anthology of critical perspectives—“a vital contribution toward understanding the Afghanistan War” (Library Journal). When America went to war with Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, it did so with the lofty goals of dismantling al Qaeda, removing the Taliban from power, remaking the country into a democracy. But as the mission came unmoored from reality, the United States wasted billions of dollars, and thousands of lives were lost. Our Latest Longest War is a chronicle of how, why, and in what ways the war in Afghanistan failed. Edited by prize-winning historian and Marine lieutenant colonel Aaron B. O’Connell, the essays collected here represent nine different perspectives on the war—all from veterans of the conflict, both American and Afghan. Together, they paint a picture of a war in which problems of culture, including an unbridgeable rural-urban divide, derailed nearly every field of endeavor. The authors also draw troubling parallels to the Vietnam War, arguing that ideological currents in American life explain why the US government has repeatedly used military force in pursuit of democratic nation-building. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, this created a dramatic mismatch of means and ends that neither money, technology, nor weapons could overcome.

Download or read book The Lessons of Vietnam written by Willard Scott Thompson and published by Crane Russak, Incorporated. This book was released on 1977 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Footprints of War written by David Andrew Biggs and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When American forces arrived in Vietnam, they found themselves embedded in historic village and frontier spaces already shaped by many past conflicts. American bases and bombing targets followed spatial and political logics influenced by the footprints of past wars in central Vietnam. The militarized landscapes here, like many in the world�s historic conflict zones, continue to shape post-war land-use politics. Footprints of War traces the long history of conflict-produced spaces in Vietnam, beginning with early modern wars and the French colonial invasion in 1885 and continuing through the collapse of the Saigon government in 1975. The result is a richly textured history of militarized landscapes that reveals the spatial logic of key battles such as the Tet Offensive. Drawing on extensive archival work and years of interviews and fieldwork in the hills and villages around the city of Hue to illuminate war�s footprints, David Biggs also integrates historical Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data, using aerial, high-altitude, and satellite imagery to render otherwise placeless sites into living, multidimensional spaces. This personal and multilayered approach yields an innovative history of the lasting traces of war in Vietnam and a model for understanding other militarized landscapes.

Download or read book Invisible Wounds of War written by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2012-07-24 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There’s no real homecoming for many of our veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They may go through the motions of daily life in their hometowns, but the terrible sights and sounds of war are still fresh in their minds. This empathic, inside look into the lives of our combat veterans reveals the lingering impact that the longest wars in our nation’s history continue to have on far too many of our finest young people. Basing her account on numerous interviews with veterans and their families, the author examines the factors that have made these recent conflicts especially trying. A major focus of the book is the extreme duress that is a daily part of a soldier’s life in combat zones with no clear frontlines or perimeters. Having to cope with unrecognizable enemies in the midst of civilian populations and attacks from hidden weapons like improvised explosive devices exacts a heavy toll. Compounding the problem is the all-volunteer nature of our armed forces, which often demands multiple deployments of enlistees. This results in frequent cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and families disrupted by the long absence of one and sometimes both parents. The author also discusses the lack of connectedness between civilian society and military personnel, leading to inadequate healthcare for many veterans. This deficiency has been highlighted by the urgent need to treat traumatic brain injuries in survivors of explosions and the high veteran suicide rate. Bouvard concludes on a positive note by discussing some of the surprising and encouraging ways that the chasm between civilian and military life is being bridged to help reintegrate our returning soldiers. For veterans, their families, and especially for civilians unaware of how much our soldiers have endured, The Invisible Wounds of War is important reading.

Download or read book A Kids Guide to American wars Volume 3 written by KidCaps and published by BookCaps Study Guides. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bundle book is a compilation of three of KidCaps top selling history books; it is the third in a three-part volume. The third volume presents the following wars in an easy to understand format that kids love: *The Vietnam War *The Gulf War *The War In Afganistan *The Iraq War

Download or read book War Comes to Garmser written by Carter Malkasian and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you want to understand Afghanistan, writes Carter Malkasian, you need to understand what has happened on the ground, in the villages and countryside that were on the frontline. These small places are the heart of the war. Modeled on the classic Vietnam War book, War Comes to Long An, Malkasian's War Comes to Garmser promises to be a landmark account of the war in Afghanistan. The author, who spent nearly two years in Garmser, a community in war-torn Helmand province, tells the story of this one small place through the jihad, the rise and fall of Taliban regimes, and American and British surge. Based on his conversations with hundreds of Afghans, including government officials, tribal leaders, religious leaders, and over forty Taliban, and drawing on extensive primary source material, Malkasian takes readers into the world of the Afghans. Through their feuds, grievances, beliefs, and way of life, Malkasian shows how the people of Garmser have struggled for three decades through brutal wars and short-lived regimes. Beginning with the victorious but destabilizing jihad against the Soviets and the ensuing civil war, he explains how the Taliban movement formed; how, after being routed in 2001, they returned stronger than ever in 2006; and how Afghans, British, and Americans fought with them thereafter. Above all, he describes the lives of Afghans who endured and tried to build some kind of order out of war. While Americans and British came and went, Afghans carried on, year after year. Afghanistan started out as the good war, the war we fought for the right reasons. Now for many it seems a futile military endeavor, costly and unwinnable. War Comes to Garmser offers a fresh, original perspective on this war, one that will redefine how we look at Afghanistan and at modern war in general.

Download or read book Protesting War written by George M. Reynolds and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Since the divisive Vietnam experience, US Presidents have avoided diplomatic and military intervention in the affairs of other states fearing a negative American public reaction. US involvement in Beirut and Somalia was cut short and the use of ground forces in Kosovo was off the table. -- As President H.W. Bush concluded in 1991, a "Vietnam Syndrome" had taken hold of the public. Bush explained this problem in greater detail : "I don't think that [public] support [for the 1991 Gulf War] would last if it were a drawn-out conflagration. I think support would erode, as it did in Vietnam.""--Introduction.

Download or read book The Strategic Lessons Unlearned from Vietnam Iraq and Afghanistan written by M. Chris Mason and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military personnel who have experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam, as well as senior leaders and military historians alike, will find this book by Dr. Chris Mason thought-provoking and useful. Dr. Mason examines indigenous personnel issues at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of war and uses empirical data and exhaustive research to argue that all three wars were lost before the first shots were fired-not on the battlefield, but at the strategic level of war. The United States interpreted all three conflicts as insurgencies, Mason writes, when in fact all three were civil wars in which the United States took a side. Success was never possible from the outset, his provocative thesis argues, because none of the three countries were nations for which the majority of their citizens were willing to fight and die. Nation-building is a slow, evolutionary, internal process through which the political identity of the peoples within a country's borders matures over centuries...

Download or read book Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare Implications for Army and Defense Policy written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The defense debate tends to treat Afghanistan as either a revolution or a fluke: either the "Afghan Model" of special operations forces (SOF) plus precision munitions plus an indigenous ally is a widely applicable template for American defense planning, or it is a nonreplicable product of local idiosyncrasies. In fact, it is neither. The Afghan campaign of last fall and winter was actually much closer to a typical 20th century mid-intensity conflict, albeit one with unusually heavy fire support for one side. And this view has very different implications than either proponents or skeptics of the Afghan Model now claim. Afghan Model skeptics often point to Afghanistan's unusual culture of defection or the Taliban's poor skill or motivation as grounds for doubting the war's relevance to the future. Afghanistan's culture is certainly unusual, and there were many defections. The great bulk, however, occurred after the military tide had turned not before-hand. They were effects, not causes. The Afghan Taliban were surely unskilled and ill-motivated. The non-Afghan al Qaeda, however, have proven resolute and capable fighters. Their host's collapse was not attributable to any al Qaeda shortage of commitment or training. Afghan Model proponents, by contrast, credit precision weapons with annihilating enemies at a distance before they could close with our commandos or indigenous allies. Hence the model's broad utility: with SOF-directed bombs doing the real killing, even ragtag local militias will suffice as allies. All they need do is screen U.S. commandos from the occasional hostile survivor and occupy the abandoned ground thereafter. Yet the actual fighting in Afghanistan involved substantial close combat. Al Qaeda counterattackers closed, unseen, to pointblank range of friendly forces in battles at Highway 4 and Sayed Slim Kalay.

Download or read book The Vietnam Syndrome written by G. Simons and published by Springer. This book was released on 1997-10-27 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the 'Vietnam Syndrome' - the effects for the United States of the American defeat in the Vietnam War. It argues that a full understanding of the Syndrome requires a proper appreciation of key shaping elements in Vietnamese and American history. Attention is given to the racial genocide that attended the birth of the United States, to US imperialism and capitalism, and to the Cold War framework. The nature of America as a plutocracy is emphasised, followed by profiles of policy options and three specific issues: post-war Vietnam, El Salvador and Iraq.