Download or read book Callsign Hades written by Patrick Bury and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In summer 2006 Helmand Province erupted into violence as NATO forces struggled to crush Taliban strongholds. For six weeks the Royal Irish Regiment and the Paras defended Sangin in the face of ever-mounting attacks. At this point young officer Patrick Bury was learning the trade of the infantry in the Brecon Beacons. Paddy had always wanted to be a soldier - a desire fraught with the contradictions of a complex history overridden by a 'warrior calling'. When he arrived in Afghanistan with 1stRoyal Irish, he was surrounded by men oozing bloody combat experience. This was not Sandhurst. It was extreme violence and killing. Hades Four One was his callsign and the infantry mantra rang in his ears: 'To close and kill the enemy, in all weather conditions, in all terrain, by day or night.' Over six months, Paddy and his company dealt with over a hundred IEDs, of which 60 exploded on them, killing his comrades in the most vicious of ways and fuelling a sense of ever-growing dissatisfaction in the young captain. This powerful and thoughful first-hand account about the 'eternal truths of military life' places the reader in Paddy's boots, sharing every thought, ache, smell and taste of life on the frontline in Afghanistan. He describes modern warfare in a way that creates an understanding of the myriad complexities soldiers are faced with, the conditions in which they operate and the moral and emotional challenges they endure.
Download or read book Second Platoon Call Sign Hades written by First Lieutenant Mark A. Bodrog and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2013-11 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war in Afghanistan is considered by most to be America's longest and least talked about war to date. After terrorists attacked the United States on 9/11, less than one percent of America's population answered our nation's call to serve in the Armed Forces. Even fewer Americans made the life choice to become United States Marines. During this war, two Marine Corps platoon's were selected by their Battalion to fully integrate with two platoons of Afghanistan National Army Soldier's in order to create a Combined Action Company (CAC) capable of conducting sustained Counterinsurgency (COIN) operations throughout their Area of Operation's (AO) and adjacent battlespaces. Inside of this book, you will learn about one of those platoons and how they fought the Taliban during their deployment to the Helmand Province, Afghanistan. In this memoir, Bodrog recalls how his platoon of Marines, Sailors and Afghan Soldiers lived, operated and fought in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan as part of the Combined Action Company. In doing so and translucently through the men under his command, the author attempts to immortalize every Marine, servicemen and civilian who sacrificed everything they had to ensure the survival of our great nation, while asking for nothing in return. The missions and stories mentioned in this memoir must never be forgotten or become a lost chapter in our nation's history. Discover what it's like to be one of the bold few who still fight for freedom and gain a deeper appreciation of the Marines and Sailors who served this great nation with Second Platoon: Call Sign Hades.
Download or read book War Stories written by Philip Dwyer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although war memoirs constitute a rich, varied literary form, they are often dismissed by historians as unreliable. This collection of essays is one of the first to explore the modern war memoir, revealing the genre’s surprising capacity for breadth and sophistication while remaining sensitive to the challenges it poses for scholars. Covering conflicts from the Napoleonic era to today, the studies gathered here consider how memoirs have been used to transmit particular views of war even as they have emerged within specific social and political contexts.
Download or read book In Defence of War written by Nigel Biggar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the domination of moral deliberation by rights-talk In Defence of War asserts that belligerency can be morally justified, even while it is tragic and morally flawed. Recovering the early Christian tradition of just war thinking, Nigel Biggar argues in favour of aggressive war in punishment of grave injustice.
Download or read book The Good Kill written by Marc LiVecche and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War wounds the soul. It is not only the violence that warfighters suffer against them that harms, but also the violence that they do. These soul wounds have come to be known as moral injuries: psychic traumas that occur from having done or condoned that which goes against deeply held moral principles. It is not surprising that the committing of atrocities or the accidental killing of the innocent would hurt the soul of warfighters. The problem is that many warfighters at least tacitly follow the commonplace belief that killing another human being is always wrong--it's just that sometimes, as in war, it is necessary. This paradoxical commitment makes the very business of warfighting morally injurious. This problem is also a crisis. Clinical research among combat veterans has established a link between killing in combat and moral injury and between moral injury and suicide. Our warfighters, even those who have served honorably and with the right intentions, are dying by their own hands at devastating rates--casualties not of the physical threats of war, but of the moral ones. It does not have to be this way. The just war tradition, a moral framework for thinking about war that flows out of our Greco-Roman and Hebraic intellectual traditions, is grounded in the basic truth that killing comes in different kinds. While some kinds of killing, like murder, are always wrong, there are other kinds of killing that are morally neutral, such as unavoidable accidents, and still other kinds that are morally permitted--even, sometimes, obligatory. The Good Kill embraces this tradition to argue for the morality of killing in justified wars. Marc LiVecche does not deny the morally bruising realities of combat, but offers potential remedies to help our warfighters manage the bruising without becoming irreparably morally injured.
Download or read book What s Wrong with Rights written by Nigel Biggar and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What's Wrong with Rights? argues that contemporary rights-talk obscures the importance civic virtue, military effectiveness and the democratic law legitimacy. It draws upon legal and moral philosophy, moral theology, and court judgments. It spans discussions from medieval Christendom to contemporary debates about justified killing.
Download or read book Bringing War to Book written by Rachel Woodward and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how military memoirs come to be written and published. Looking at the journeys through which soldiers and other military personnel become writers, the authors draw on over 250 military memoirs published since 1980 about service with the British armed forces, and on interviews with published military memoirists who talk in detail about the writing and production of their books. A range of themes are explored including: the nature of the military memoir; motivations for writing; authors’ reflections on their readerships; inclusions and exclusions within the text; the memories and materials that authors draw on; the collaborations that make the production and publication of military memoirs possible; and the issues around the design of military memoirs' distinctive covers. Written by two leading commentators on the sociology of the military, Bringing War to Book offers a new and original argument about the representations of war and the military experience as a process of social production. The book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including sociology, history, and cultural studies.
Download or read book White Flag written by Michael Ashcroft and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FOREWORD BY GENERAL SIR MIKE JACKSON After the pain of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is hard to imagine the UK being drawn into another war. Defence chiefs warn that there is a real prospect of future conflict, but they have struggled to persuade most politicians to take them seriously. Our leaders have concluded there are no votes in defence, and have progressively run down the armed forces. Today, the army is at its smallest since the Napoleonic Wars; the RAF is less than half its size twenty five years ago, and the Royal Navy will struggle to muster the ships and weapons required to protect our new aircraft carriers. Is there really a risk of war? Is our military less capable and, if so, what could that mean for our future? White Flag? explains what has happened to our armed forces in recent years and asks whether their decline endangers our safety and prosperity.
Download or read book Unwinnable written by Theo Farrell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afghanistan was an unwinnable war. As British and American troops withdraw, discover this definitive account that explains why. It could have been a very different story. British forces could have successfully withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2002, having done the job they set out to do: to defeat al-Qaeda. Instead, in the years that followed, Britain paid a devastating price for their presence in Helmand province. So why did Britain enter, and remain, in an ill-fated war? Why did it fail so dramatically, and was this expedition doomed from the beginning? Drawing on unprecedented access to military reports, government documents and senior individuals, Professor Theo Farrell provides an extraordinary work of scholarship. He explains the origins of the war, details the campaigns over the subsequent years, and examines the West's failure to understand the dynamics of local conflict and learn the lessons of history that ultimately led to devastating costs and repercussions still relevant today. 'The best book so far on Britain's...war in Afghanistan' International Affairs 'Masterful, irrefutable... Farrell records all these military encounters with the irresistible pace of a novelist' Sunday Times
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Military Research Methods written by Alison J. Williams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new handbook is about the practices of conducting research on military issues. As an edited collection, it brings together an extensive group of authors from a range of disciplinary perspectives whose chapters engage with the conceptual, practical and political questions raised when doing military research. The book considers a wide range of questions around research about, on and with military organisations, personnel and activities, from diverse starting-points across the social sciences, arts and humanities. Each chapter in this volume: Describes the nature of the military research topic under scrutiny and explains what research practices were undertaken and why. Discusses the author's research activities, addressing the nature of their engagement with their subjects and explaining how the method or approach under scrutiny was distinctive because of the military context or subject of the research. Reflects on the author’s research experiences, and the specific, often unique, negotiations with the politics and practices of military institutions and military personnel before, during and after their research fieldwork. The book provides a focussed overview of methodological approaches to critical studies of military personnel and institutions, and processes and practices of militarisation and militarism. In particular, it engages with the growth in qualitative approaches to military research, particularly research carried out on military topics outside military research institutions. The handbook provides the reader with a comprehensive guide to how critical military research is being undertaken by social scientists and humanities scholars today, and sets out suggestions for future approaches to military research. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, war and conflict studies, and research methods in general.
Download or read book Weapon of Choice written by Matthew Ford and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Western military technological innovation through the lens of developments in small arms during the twentieth century. These weapons have existed for centuries, appear to have matured only incrementally and might seem unlikely technologies for investigating the trajectory of military-technical change. Their relative simplicity, however, makes it easy to use them to map patterns of innovation within the military-industrial complex. Advanced technologies may have captured the military imagination, offering the possibility of clean and decisive outcomes, but it is the low technologies of the infantryman that can help us develop an appreciation for the dynamics of military-technical change. Tracing the path of innovation from battlefield to back office, and from industry to alliance partner, Ford develops insights into the way that small arms are socially constructed. He thereby exposes the mechanics of power across the military-industrial complex. This in turn reveals that shifting power relations between soldiers and scientists, bureaucrats and engineers, have allowed the private sector to exploit infantry status anxiety and shape soldier weapon preferences. Ford's analysis allows us to draw wider conclusions about how military innovation works and what social factors frame Western military purchasing policy, from small arms to more sophisticated and expensive weapons.
Download or read book Global Politics written by Jenny Edkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-18 with total page 858 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third edition of Global Politics: A New Introduction continues to provide a completely original way of teaching and learning about world politics. The book engages directly with the issues in global politics that students are most interested in, helping them to understand the key questions and theories and also to develop a critical and inquiring perspective. Completely revised and updated throughout, the third edition offers up-to-date examples engaging with the latest developments in global politics, including the Syrian war and the refugee crisis, fossil fuel divestment, racism and Black Lives Matter, citizen journalism, populism, and drone warfare. Global Politics: examines the most significant issues in global politics – from war, peacebuilding, terrorism, security, violence, nationalism and authority to poverty, development, postcolonialism, human rights, gender, inequality, ethnicity and what we can do to change the world; offers chapters written to a common structure, which is ideal for teaching and learning, and features a key question, an illustrative example, general responses and broader issues; integrates theory and practice throughout the text, by presenting theoretical ideas and concepts in conjunction with a global range of historical and contemporary case studies. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from a broad range of disciplines, including international relations, political theory, postcolonial studies, sociology, geography, peace studies and development, this innovative textbook is essential reading for all students of global politics and international relations.
Download or read book On Military Memoirs written by L.H.E. (Esmeralda) Kleinreesink and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In On Military Memoirs Esmeralda Kleinreesink offers insight into military books: their writers, their publishers and their plots. Every Afghanistan war autobiography from the US, the UK, Germany, Canada and the Netherlands is compared quantitatively and qualitatively.
Download or read book The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military written by Rachel Woodward and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military provides a comprehensive overview of the multiple ways in which gender and militaries connect. International and multi-disciplinary in scope, this edited volume provides authoritative accounts of the many intersections through which militaries issues and military forces are shaped by gender. The chapters provide detailed accounts of key issues, informed by examples from original research in a wealth of different national contexts. This Handbook includes coverage of conceptual approaches to the study of gender and militaries, gender and the organisation of state military forces, gender as it pertains to military forces in action, transitions and transgressions within militaries, gender and non-state military forces, and gender in representations of military personnel and practices. With contributions from a range of both established and early career scholars, The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military is an essential guide to current debates on gender and contemporary military issues.
Download or read book Victory written by Cian O'Driscoll and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Committing one's country to war is a grave decision. Governments often have to make tough calls, but none are quite so painful as those that involve sending soldiers into harm's way, to kill and be killed. The idea of 'just war' informs how we approach and reflect on these decisions. It signifies the belief that while war is always a wretched enterprise it may in certain circumstances, and subject to certain restrictions, be justified. Boasting a long history that is usually traced back to the sunset of the Roman Empire, it has coalesced over time into a series of principles and moral categories—e.g., just cause, last resort, proportionality, etc.—that will be familiar to anyone who has ever entered a discussion about the rights and wrongs of war. Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Just War focuses both on how this particular tradition of thought has evolved over time and how it has informed the practice of states and the legal architecture of international society. This book examines the vexed position that the concept of victory occupies within this framework.
Download or read book Counterinsurgency Wars and the Anglo American Alliance written by Andrew Mumford and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew Mumford challenges the notion of a “special relationship” between the United States and United Kingdom in diplomatic and military affairs, the most vaunted and, he says, exaggerated of associations in the post-1945 era. Though they are allies to be sure, national self-interest and domestic politics have often undercut their relationship. This is the first book to combine a history of US-UK interaction during major counterinsurgency campaigns since 1945, from Palestine to Iraq and Afghanistan, with a critical examination of the so called special relationship that has been tested during these difficult, protracted, and costly conflicts. Mumford’s assessment of each nation’s internal political discussions and diplomatic exchanges reveals that in actuality there is only a thin layer of specialness at work in the wars that shaped the postcolonial balance of power, the fight against Communism in the Cold War, and the twenty-first-century “war on terror.” This book is especially timely given that the US-UK relationship is once again under scrutiny because of the Trump administration’s “America First” rhetoric and Britain's changing international relations as a result of Brexit. Counterinsurgency Wars and the Anglo-American Alliance will interest scholars and students of history, international relations, and security studies as well as policy practitioners in the field.
Download or read book The British Army in Afghanistan 2006 14 written by Leigh Neville and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-20 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fighting an elusive and dangerous enemy far from home, the British army in Afghanistan has been involved in asymmetric warfare for the best part of a decade. The eight-year series of deployments jointly known as Operation Herrick, alongside US and other NATO contingents within the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, have been the longest continuous combat commitment of the British Army since World War II. Together with Operation 'Telic' in Iraq, which immediately preceded and overlapped with it, this conflict has shaped the British Army for a generation. Enemy threats have diversified and evolved, with a consequent evolution of British doctrine, tactics and equipment. This book provides a detailed analysis of those specifics within a clear, connected account of the course of the war in Helmand, operation by operation.
