Download or read book From Byron to Bin Laden written by Nir Arielli and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes people fight and risk their lives for a country other than their own? Why did diverse individuals such as the poet Lord Byron, the writer George Orwell, the Argentinean revolutionary Che Guevara, and the young Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden all turn to foreign military service? From Byron to bin Laden makes a historian's examines the phenomenon of war volunteers who have travelled abroad to fight on the basis of a personal decision, without being sent by their governments and not strictly for the sake of material gain. Although fighting for very different causes, these volunteers shared a number of commonalities; they tended to superimpose their beliefs and perceptions on the wars they joined, while a personal search for meaning invariably underlined their actions. Through a comprehensive study of the history of foreign volunteering from the wars of the French Revolution to the present, the book opens up a broad range of questions that relate to individual motivations, ideology, gender, state-citizen relations, international law, military significance, radicalization and the memory of war.--

Download or read book From Byron to bin Laden written by Nir Arielli and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes people fight for countries other than their own? Nir Arielli offers a wide-ranging history of foreign-war volunteers, from the French Revolution to Syria. Challenging notions of foreign fighters as a security problem, Arielli explores motivations, ideology, gender, international law, military significance, and the memory of war.

Download or read book The Holy Warrior Osama Bin Laden and His Jihadi Journey in the Soviet Afghan War written by Reagan Fancher and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fought between 1979 and 1989, the Soviet-Afghan War provided vital combat experience for Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenants in al-Qaeda, allowing them to hone their newly acquired skills in guerrilla warfare to later support Islamist insurgencies worldwide. Yet the ruthless al-Qaeda chief’s success depended on the Soviet leadership’s reluctant prolonging of its military occupation out of fear of leaving Afghanistan in hostile hands. As relative latecomers to the ferocious Afghan frontlines, the inexperienced Arab fighters benefitted militarily from the combat training unwittingly provided by their Soviet foes. After skillfully obtaining this command and battle experience by working within the wartime atmosphere, bin Laden channeled al-Qaeda’s efforts in a global jihadi campaign targeting a second superpower and its allies. While allegations of U.S. support for the Arab jihadis have contributed to a popular image of bin Laden and al-Qaeda as C.I.A. creations, the historical facts appear to demonstrate that the combat opportunities provided by the Soviet occupation forces played a far larger role in transforming them into seasoned guerrilla fighters. In this second edition, Reagan Fancher updates and expands his monograph in an Afterword elaborating on the contemporary U.S.-U.K. perceptions of bin Laden's wartime actions and their results as he applied his battle-honed guerrilla tactics, judo skills, and recruitment capabilities in tactically helping Yemen's anti-communist Salafi guerrillas to emerge victoriously in their country's 1994 Civil War before concluding with an assessment of the founding al-Qaeda leader's impact on history. It offers an opportunity for today's decision-makers to learn from history and avoid creating new generations of Osama bin Ladens.

Download or read book Garibaldi s Radical Legacy written by Enrico Acciai and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-29 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the two world wars, thousands of European antifascists were pushed to act by the political circumstances of the time. In that context, the Spanish Civil War and the armed resistances during the Second World War involved particularly large numbers of transnational fighters. The need to fight fascism wherever it presented itself was undoubtedly the main motivation behind these fighters’ decision to mobilise. Despite all this, however, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that some of these volunteers felt they were the last exponents of a tradition of armed volunteering which, in their case, originated in the nineteenth century. The capacity of war volunteering to endure and persist over time has rarely been investigated in historiography. The aim of this book is to reconstruct the radical and transnational tradition of war volunteering connected to Giuseppe Garibaldi’s legacy in Southern Europe between the unification of Italy (1861) and the end of the Second World War (1945). This book seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the long-term, interconnected, and radical dimensions of the so called Garibaldinism.

Download or read book The Bin Ladens written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bin Ladens rose from poverty to privilege; they loyally served the Saudi royal family for generations--and then one of their number changed history on September 11, 2001. Journalist Steve Coll tells the story of the rise of the Bin Laden family and of the wildly diverse lifestyles of the generation to which Osama bin Laden belongs, and against whom he rebelled. Starting with the family's escape from famine at the beginning of the twentieth century, through its jet-set era in America after the 1970s oil boom, and finally to the family's attempts to recover from September 11, this book unearths extensive new material about the family and its relationship with the United States, and provides a richly revealing and emblematic narrative of our globally interconnected times.--From publisher description.

Download or read book Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies written by Steven O’Connor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-11 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book showcases new historical research on foreign soldiers, including an overview of the early modern period and numerous case studies which cover the last 175 years and stretch over 5 continents. The last two decades have seen the term ‘foreign fighter’ enter our everyday vocabulary. The insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Syrian Civil War and the rise and fall of the Islamic State group have sparked public interest in the phenomenon of people choosing to leave their own country and fight in a foreign conflict. Foreign fighters, their origins, motives, activities and potential danger to their home countries have become subjects of debate, attracting contributions from politicians, military personnel, the media, political scientists, legal scholars but to a much lesser extent from historians. The ten essayss in this volume showcase new historical research on foreign military labour. The aim of the volume is to better understand the experiences and challenges faced by both the foreigners and the host country, particularly its armed forces, and to highlight the significance of these trends to the contemporary debate on foreign fighters. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal European Review of History.

Download or read book Osama bin Laden written by Suzanne Murdico and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2006-01-15 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the life and leadership skills of Osama bin Laden, whose terrorist network, al-Qaeda, is believed to be responsible for terrorist attacks on people and buildings around the world.

Download or read book Byron s Romantic Politics written by Peter Cochran and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-08-08 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Byron exists in two incompatible dimensions: as fully-documented history, and as romantic myth. Often the myth predominates, describing him as a passionate lover, a staunch friend, a great romantic poet, a champion of the working man, a loyal author to his publisher, and a fighter for democracy who sacrificed his life for the Freedom of Greece. This book attempts to prove that the verifiable truth often proves him to be the opposite. Using letters from Byron’s family, friends, and associates which have never been transcribed, collected and sequenced before, Peter Cochran argues that the poet was an unscrupulous sponger on his relatives and friends, that he harboured a horror at the idea of empowering the working man, had no time for democracy, and despised his publisher. His contempt for the Greeks is clear from everything he writes about them, and his motives for going to Greece at the end of his life (which Cochran analyses in more depth than they have ever been analysed before), were a disturbing mixture of self-indulgent fantasy and death-wish. Using large amounts of manuscript evidence, Cochran further argues that almost all editions of Byron’s writing do his style very poor service, constituting not contributions to knowledge of him, but additions to the obfuscating myth.

Download or read book The Osama Bin Laden I Know written by Peter L. Bergen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Osama bin Laden has haunted the popular psyche and stymied the world's mightiest military for the last five years. Despite President Bush's declaration that he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," despite being one of the world's most notorious men, and despite the barrage of coverage surrounding him, Osama bin Laden remains at large -- and shrouded in a fog of anecdote and myth, rumor and fact. Peter Bergen, author of the bestselling book Holy War, Inc., offers an astounding, unparalleled portrait of bin Laden, comprised of Bergen's own interviews with more than fifty people who have known bin Laden personally, from his brother-in-law to his high school English teacher to former members of al Qaeda. The resulting collage of voices and memories affords an unprecedented glimpse into the life and the true nature of the man directly responsible for the largest terror attack in history. No journalist knows more about Osama bin Laden than Peter Bergen. In 1997, well before bin Laden became a household name, Bergen met with him, and has since followed his activities closely. After an insightful introduction -- in which Bergen recounts how, at their meeting, bin Laden "presented himself as a soft-spoken cleric, rather than as the firebreathing leader of a global terrorist organization" -- Bergen stands aside to make way for the voices of dozens of people with firsthand, sometimes intimate experience with the al Qaeda leader. Current conventional wisdom seems to be that bin Laden and his organization have faded in importance, but Bergen argues urgently that that perspective is far from accurate -- indeed, each day that bin Laden remains free adds to al Qaeda's public relations triumph, for his legend only grows among his supporters. More concretely, he continues to provide broad strategic guidance for jihadists -- his many statements released on video or audio tape since 9/11, for instance, have exerted direct influence on terrorists' actions. In 2003 the world suffered more significant terror attacks than had occurred in a single year during the previous two decades -- and in 2004, the number of attacks doubled over 2003. In 2004, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Iraq's most ferocious insurgent leader, pledged his allegiance to bin Laden, a sign of the continued importance of al Qaeda's leader. How did Osama bin Laden transform himself from a shy, polite, middle-of-his-class schoolboy to commander of the world's most formidable terrorist organization? Where was bin Laden on 9/11, and what was his reaction to it? How did he escape from Tora Bora? Is al Qaeda a top-down organization or a loose ideological alliance? What is it about this man that draws hundreds of thousands of followers, and makes men willing to fly airplanes into buildings at his command? This definitive and engaging portrait gives the American public its first true, enduring insight into a man who has declared us his greatest enemy.

Download or read book Kill Bin Laden written by Dalton Fury and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This "New York Times" bestseller offers a firsthand account of the Battle of Tora Bora and an insider's look at the extraordinary nature of America's super secret counterterrorist unit--an elite and mysterious group known as Delta Force. Martin's Griffin.

Download or read book Untold Stories of the Spanish Civil War written by Raanan Rein and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-23 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first scholarly volume to offer an insight into the less known stories of women, children, and international volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. Special attention is given to volunteers of different historical experiences, especially Jews, and voices from less researched countries in the context of the Spanish war, such as Palestine and Turkey. Of an interdisciplinary nature, this volume brings together historians and literary scholars from different countries. Their research is based on newly found primary sources in both national and private archives, as well as on post-essentialist methodological insights for women’s history, Jewish history, and studies on belonging. By bringing together a group of emerging and senior scholars from different countries, we highlight the polyphony of voices of diverse individuals drawn into the Spanish Civil War. Contributors to this volume have explored new or little researched primary sources found in archives and documentary centers, including papers held by relatives of the people we study. The volume is aimed at both scholarly and non-scholarly public, including any readers interested in the Spanish Civil War, twentieth-century European history, Jewish studies, women’s history, or anti-Fascism. The volume can be used in both undergraduate college courses and in postgraduate university seminars.

Download or read book Notes from 39 000 Feet written by Dale Rominger and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-11-11 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Notes from 39,000 Feet Dale Rominger has put together a collection of poignant observations from his experiences around the world. With extraordinary clarity, he describes both everyday moments and historical events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first elections in South Africa. In describing personal encounters in places as far afield as Reykjavik and Luanda and reflecting on social and political events from Harare to Seoul, Rominger presents an array of details which most of us would miss and interprets them in such a way that they haunt us long after we finish reading. Perhaps this is the true value of his work; it is not just a fascinating read, it challenges us to question. In the first section of the book, Making Meaning, the Notes are presented in chronological order, beginning in Reykjavik in 1986, passing through places such as Harare, Varanasi, Gaza City, Seoul, Istanbul, Prague, San Salvador and Kingston, and ending in London in 2010. Some Notes are transcriptions of presentations and lectures given at international gatherings and events. Some are journalistic reflections and some sermon-like meditations. Some are directly associated with church work and others are not. Others are reflections on books he came across on his travels. While there is no central theme, there is a background hum that is hard to miss, a hum that hints at ethical, philosophical, theological points of view that make up a system of meaning thoughts, feelings, beliefs, observations, understandings, all of which combine to reveal a way of seeing the world and how we choose to live within it. The last section of the book, Making Believe, is comprised of two fictitious short stories. The first, The Poetry of Being Human, was written after Romingers return from Central America. The second, Martha Goes to Paris, is a response to George W. Bushs rightwing Christian fundamentalist America. While the first places an intense love story within the social and political upheaval, and often tragedy, of Central America in the 1980s, the second is, in Romingers words, An absurd story for an absurd time. At its heart Notes is both an observation of the world we live in and a personal journey. Rominger does not pull his punches and behind almost every word there is a shadow of anger at the injustices he has witnessed in his travels. But the book is also a personal account of the effect such a life can have on a person. He ends the chapter Swanning Around the World or Passing Through the International Non-Places of Planet Earth with these words: Either none of us is special or we are all special. But the point is, the universe, global economics, global warming, international injustice, contemporary slave trade, sex trafficking, disease, poverty, HIV/AIDS, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts and warlords don't give a damn about us. If God does, he/she/it keeps it a good secret. [I have a] friend in Washington D.C. who...travelled for the church more than I ever have and has been around the world a couple more times than I have. I asked him once if he were happy. He said that he wasnt. That he'd seen too much and knew too much. And like me, he couldnt forget a damn thing. And yet this chapter, as well as many others, is also filled with the laughter and absurdity of life. A quick glance as the bibliography at the end of the book gives the reader some sense of its mood and tone. Rominger cites authors from Woody Allen to Don DeLillo, Chung Hyun Kyung to Paul Ricoeur, Henri Nouwen to Tony Judt. Notes from 39,000 Feet is a tribute to the worlds people in their profound striving for justice and the joy they embrace, whatever the circumstances. It is a testament to the human spirit.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden written by Peter L. Bergen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world’s leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the “riveting” (The New York Times) definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today. In The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergan provides the first reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America’s long war with al-Qaeda and its decedents, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive. The book sheds light on his many contradictions: he was the son of a billionaire yet insisted his family live like paupers. He adored his wives and children, depending on his two wives, both of whom had PhDs, to make critical strategic decisions. Yet, he also brought ruin to his family. He was fanatically religious but willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam. He inspired deep loyalty, yet, in the end, his bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, he failed to achieve any of his strategic goals. In his final years, the lasting image we have of bin Laden is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself, just as another dad flipping through the channels with his remote. In the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound, far from the front lines of his holy war. And yet, despite that unheroic denouement, his ideology lives on. Thanks to exclusive interviews with family members and associates, and documents unearthed only recently, Bergen’s “comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling” (H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World) portrait of Osama bin Laden reveals for the first time who he really was and why he continues to inspire a new generation of jihadists.

Download or read book The Military Tradition in Ukrainian History written by Kostiantyn Petrovych Morozov and published by Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. This book was released on 1995 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University has established the Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies as a medium for occasional papers, lectures, reports, reprints, long articles, and recent theses of particular merit. It also is a venue for monograph-length works that utilize new analyses and methodologies that broaden the field of Ukrainian studies. The series is not geographically limited to Ukraine proper--it also will examine questions of importance to surrounding countries, inasmuch as these questions are significant to the history and current development of Ukraine. This booklet contains the proceedings of the first Annual Conference sponsored by the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, and the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University at Harvard University, May 12-13, 1994. Kostiantyn P. Morozov, first Minister of Defense of independent Ukraine, gave the keynote address. Papers exploring recent Ukrainian military history and the construction and Ukrainianization of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were presented by Professors Zenon Kohut (Director, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies), Mark von Hagen (Columbia University), and John Jaworsky (University of Waterloo). Responses to these papers were given by senior Ukrainian military personnel who attended the conference. The Military Tradition in Ukrainian History will be useful to specialists in East European affairs, military historians, and Ukrainianists.

Download or read book Suicide Pact written by Andrew P. Napolitano and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2014-11-25 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Judge Andrew P. Napolitano exposes the alarming history of presidential power grabs performed in the name of national security. Judge, scholar, bestselling author, and Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew P. Napolitano is back with a shocking chronicle of America’s descent from a free society to a frightening surveillance state. In Suicide Pact, Napolitano details a long, sordid history of governmental—and especially presidential—encroachments on liberty, enacted in the name of protecting America but which serve insead to undermine national security and erode the nation’s founding freedoms. Appealing to all politically aware Americans but especially to highly engaged conservatives and libertarians (including his 576,000 Facebook fans and 240,000 Twitter followers), Napolitano’s sobering-yet-patriotic perspective unmasks rampant political doubletalk and Washington power plays by taking a clear, legally grounded look at how we got here. Blending fascinating history with fresh reporting and analysis on contemporary issues such as drone warfare and executions, NSA surveillance, and secret federal courts, Suicide Pact casts a vision beyond hollow rhetoric to common-sense solutions for returning sanity to our shores.

Download or read book Messages to the World written by Osama Bin Laden and published by Verso. This book was released on 2005-11-17 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English translation of the complete statements by Osama bin Laden, has been placed in its historical and theological context by renowned Arabist, Bruce Lawrence.

Download or read book Politics and War written by David E. Kaiser and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: