Download or read book Imperial Hubris written by Michael Scheuer and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2004-06-30 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though U.S. leaders try to convince the world of their success in fighting al Qaeda, one anonymous member of the U.S. intelligence community would like to inform the public that we are, in fact, losing the war on terror. Further, until U.S. leaders recognize the errant path they have irresponsibly chosen, he says, our enemies will only grow stronger. According to the author, the greatest danger for Americans confronting the Islamist threat is to believe-at the urging of U.S. leaders-that Muslims attack us for what we are and what we think rather than for what we do. Blustering political rhetor.
Download or read book Imperial Hubris written by Michael Scheuer and published by Potomac Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the author, Americans erroneously believe the country's policies--not actions--are under attack. He states that Muslims will go to any length, not to destroy the United States' secular, democratic way of life, but to deter what they view as specific attacks on their lands, their communities, and their religion.
Download or read book Imperial Hubris written by Michael Scheuer and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses about why the West is loosing the war on terror. This work explains that the greatest danger for Americans confronting the radical Islamist threat is to believe that Muslims attack us for what we think rather than for what we do.
Download or read book Imperial Overstretch written by Roger Burbach and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2004-05 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting insights into the neo-conservative personalities surrounding George W. Bush, this work is a disturbing analysis of the prospects for the US presidency and its global ambitions.
Download or read book Osama Bin Laden written by Michael Scheuer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 9/11 almost instantaneously remade American politics and foreign policy. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, water boarding and Guantanamo are examples of its profound and far-reaching effects. But despite its monumental impact--and a deluge of books about al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism--no one has written a serious assessment of the man who planned it, Osama bin Laden. Available biographies depict bin Laden as an historical figure, the mastermind behind 9/11, but no longer relevant to the world it created. These accounts, Michael Scheuer strongly believes, have contributed to a widespread and dangerous denial of his continuing significance and power. In this book, Scheuer provides a much-needed corrective--a hard-headed, closely reasoned portrait of bin Laden, showing him to be a figure of remarkable leadership skills, strategic genius, and considerable rhetorical abilities. The first head of the CIA's bin Laden Unit, where he led the effort to track down bin Laden, Scheuer draws from a wealth of information about bin Laden and his evolution from peaceful Saudi dissident to America's Most Wanted. Shedding light on his development as a theologian, media manipulator, and paramilitary commander, Scheuer makes use of all the speeches and interviews bin Laden has given as well as lengthy interviews, testimony, and previously untranslated documents written by those who grew up with bin Laden in Saudi Arabia, served as his bodyguards and drivers, and fought alongside him against the Soviets. The bin Laden who emerges from these accounts is devout, talented, patient, and ruthless; in other words, a truly formidable and implacable enemy of the West. Acclaim for Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism "Pulls few punches...a fascinating window on America's war with Al Qaeda." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "No serious observer of the war on terrorism can ignore this scathing critique." --Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. "A powerful, persuasive analysis of the terrorist threat and the Bush administration's failed efforts to fight it." --Richard A. Clarke, Washington Post Book World "A fire-breathing denunciation of U.S. counterterrorism policy." --Julian Borger, The Guardian "Presents overwhelmingly persuasive evidence to buttress a host of significant and controversial arguments." --Benjamin Schwarz, Atlantic Monthly "Destined to become a classic in the field of counterterrorism analysis." --Bruce Hoffman, author of Inside Terrorism
Download or read book Through Our Enemies Eyes written by Michael Scheuer and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This seminal work on modern terrorism assesses the changes and continuities in Osama bin Laden's thinking since 2002. In order to win the war against terrorism, argues Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden Unit, we must first stop dismissing militant Muslims as “extremists” or “religious fanatics.” Formulating a successful military strategy requires that we see the enemy as they perceive themselves—highly trained and motivated soldiers who believe their cause is righteous. Scheuer shows that the war has accelerated the transformation of bin Laden and al Qaeda from man and organization to, respectively, a symbol of leadership and heroism and a worldwide movement.
Download or read book Marching Toward Hell written by Michael Scheuer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A veteran CIA counter-terrorism analyst provides a sobering analysis of the U.S. Iraqi War policy while making unsettling predictions about how American security will be affected by the conflict, in a report that reveals how America's foreign policy is undermining key national goals and rendering the country vulnerable to terrorism. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
Download or read book Day of Reckoning written by Patrick J. Buchanan and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-11-27 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WITH HIS INCISIVE MIND AND RAZOR-SHARP PEN, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR PAT BUCHANAN TAKES ON THE GREATEST QUESTION FACING THE NATION: WILL THE AMERICA WE KNOW AND LOVE SURVIVE ?
Download or read book Through Our Enemies Eyes written by Michael Scheuer and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 811 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This seminal work on modern terrorism is the one book to read in order to truly understand the reasons why radical Muslims such as Osama bin Laden and his followers have declared war on America and the West. In order to win the war against terrorism, argues Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, we must first stop dismissing militant Muslims as "extremists" or "religious fanatics." Formulating a successful military strategy requires that we see the enemy as they perceive themselve--highly trained and motivated soldiers who believe their cause is righteous. This revised paperback edition provides a more extensive study of Osama bin Laden and the sources of his thought. Scheuer has added a good deal of bin Laden's words, focusing on those issues that have been most misunderstood or ignored and therefore are most in need of exposition. These include bin Laden's personality; his early years as a nonviolent Saudi dissident and reformer; the causes motivating al Qaeda and its allies, especially their perception that U.S. foreign policy threatens Islam's survival; bin Laden's long history of interest in and support for the Palestinian cause against Israel; his evolutionary growth as an Islamic hero and leader between 1996 and 2001; and the profound impact the Afghan-Soviet War had and continues to have on bin Laden, al Qaeda, and worldwide Sunni Islamic militancy. Only by understanding these words can the West appreciate the threat it faces and formulate a strategy to defeat it.
Download or read book The Violent American Century written by John W. Dower and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2017-03-20 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Tells how America, since the end of World War II, has turned away from its ideals and goodness to become a match setting the world on fire” (Seymour Hersh, investigative journalist and national security correspondent). World War II marked the apogee of industrialized “total war.” Great powers savaged one another. Hostilities engulfed the globe. Mobilization extended to virtually every sector of every nation. Air war, including the terror bombing of civilians, emerged as a central strategy of the victorious Anglo-American powers. The devastation was catastrophic almost everywhere, with the notable exception of the United States, which exited the strife unmatched in power and influence. The death toll of fighting forces plus civilians worldwide was staggering. The Violent American Century addresses the US-led transformations in war conduct and strategizing that followed 1945—beginning with brutal localized hostilities, proxy wars, and the nuclear terror of the Cold War, and ending with the asymmetrical conflicts of the present day. The military playbook now meshes brute force with a focus on non-state terrorism, counterinsurgency, clandestine operations, a vast web of overseas American military bases, and—most touted of all—a revolutionary new era of computerized “precision” warfare. In contrast to World War II, postwar death and destruction has been comparatively small. By any other measure, it has been appalling—and shows no sign of abating. The author, recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, draws heavily on hard data and internal US planning and pronouncements in this concise analysis of war and terror in our time. In doing so, he places US policy and practice firmly within the broader context of global mayhem, havoc, and slaughter since World War II—always with bottom-line attentiveness to the human costs of this legacy of unceasing violence. “Dower delivers a convincing blow to publisher Henry Luce’s benign ‘American Century’ thesis.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Japan s Imperial Army written by Edward J. Drea and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive English-language history of the Japanese imperial army, based largely on Japanese-language sources. Traces the origins, evolution, and impact of the army as an engine of Japan's regional and global ambitions and as a catalyst for the militarization of its homeland.
Download or read book Hubris written by Alistair Horne and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Eminently provocative and readable.”—The Wall Street Journal Sir Alistair Horne has been a close observer of war and history for more than fifty years and in this wise and masterly work, he revisits six battles of the past century and examines the strategies, leadership, preparation, and geopolitical goals of aggressors and defenders to reveal the one trait that links them all: hubris. In Greek tragedy, hubris is excessive human pride that challenges the gods and ultimately leads to total destruction of the offender. From the 1905 Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War, to Hitler's 1941 bid to capture Moscow, to MacArthur's disastrous advance in Korea, to the French downfall at Dien Bien Phu, Horne shows how each of these battles was won or lost due to excessive hubris on one side or the other. In a sweeping narrative written with his trademark erudition and wit, Horne provides a meticulously detailed analysis of the ground maneuvers employed by the opposing armies in each battle. He also explores the strategic and psychological mindset of the military leaders involved to demonstrate how devastating combinations of human ambition and arrogance led to overreach. Making clear the danger of hubris in warfare, his insights hold resonant lessons for civilian and military leaders navigating today's complex global landscape. A dramatic, colorful, stylishly-written history, Hubris is a much-needed reflection on war from a master of his field.
Download or read book No End in Sight written by Charles Ferguson and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2008-02-05 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A ... chronicle of the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerrilla war, warlord rule, criminality, and anarchy ... It features candid interviews with high-ranking officials ... as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, intelligence officers, and prominent analysts... Together, these voices reveal the principal errors of U.S. policy -- using insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, purging professionals from the Iraq government, and disbanding the Iraqi military -- errors that largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today. The book brings the movie up-to-date by evaluating the military's recent 'surge' tactic as well as current administration policy. It concludes with a wide-ranging debate on the crucial question: what do we do now?"--P. [4] of cover.
Download or read book Zero Point Hubris written by Santiago Castro-Gómez and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Operating within the framework of postcolonial studies and decolonial theory, this important work starts from the assumption that the violence exercised by European colonialism was not only physical and economic, but also ‘epistemic’. Santiago Castro-Gómez argues that toward the end of the eighteenth century, this epistemic violence of the Spanish Empire assumed a specific form: zero-point hubris. The ‘many forms of knowing’ were integrated into a chronological hierarchy in which scientific-enlightened knowledge appears at the highest point on the cognitive scale, while all other epistemes are seen as constituting its past. Enlightened criollo thinkers did not hesitate to situate the Black, Indigenous, and mestizo peoples of New Granada in the lowest position on this cognitive scale. Castro-Gómez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating the criollos from the ‘castes’. Epistemic violence—and not only physical violence—is thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.
Download or read book The Last Emperor of Mexico written by Edward Shawcross and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true operatic tragedy of Maximilian and Carlota, the European aristocrats who stumbled into power in Mexico—and faced bloody consequences. In the 1860s, Napoleon III, intent on curbing the rise of American imperialism, persuaded a young Austrian archduke and a Belgian princess to leave Europe and become the emperor and empress of Mexico. They and their entourage arrived in a Mexico ruled by terror, where revolutionary fervor was barely suppressed by French troops. When the United States, now clear of its own Civil War, aided the rebels in pushing back Maximilian’s imperial soldiers, the French army withdrew, abandoning the young couple. The regime fell apart. Maximilian was executed by a firing squad and Carlota, secluded in a Belgian castle, descended into madness. Assiduously researched and vividly told, The Last Emperor of Mexico is a dramatic story of European hubris, imperialist aspirations clashing with revolutionary fervor, and the Old World breaking from the New.
Download or read book The Icarus Syndrome written by Peter Beinart and published by Melbourne Univ. Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Icarus Syndrome, Peter Beinart tells a tale as old as the Greeks - a story about the seductions of success. Beinart describes Washington on the eve of three wars - World War I, Vietnam and Iraq - three moments when American leaders decided they could remake the world in their image. Each time, leading intellectuals declared that history was over, and the spread of democracy was inevitable. Each time, a president held the nation in the palm of his hand. And each time, a war conceived in arrogance brought untold tragedy. In dazzling colour, Beinart portrays three extraordinary generations: the progressives who took America into World War I, led by Woodrow Wilson, the lonely preacher's son who became the closest thing to a political messiah the world had ever seen. The Camelot intellectuals who took America into Vietnam, led by Lyndon Johnson, who lay awake night after night shaking with fear that his countrymen considered him weak. And George W. Bush and the post-cold war neoconservatives, the romantic bullies who believed they could bludgeon the Middle East and liberate it at the same time. Like Icarus, each of these generations crafted 'wings' - a theory about America's relationship to the world. They flapped carefully at first, but gradually lost their inhibitions until, giddy with success, they flew into the sun. But every era also brought new leaders and thinkers who found wisdom in pain. They reconciled American optimism - our belief that anything is possible - with the realities of a world that will never fully bend to our will. In their struggles lie the seeds of American renewal today. Based on years of research, The Icarus Syndrome is a provocative and strikingly original account of hubris in the American century - and how we learn from the tragedies that result.
Download or read book The Hubris Syndrome written by David Owen and published by Methuen Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For some politicians and business leaders, power can become an intoxicating drug, and can affect their actions and decision-making in a most serious way. The ancient Greeks called it hubris, and identified arrogance and contempt for others' opinions as classic traits. They also took comfort in the knowledge that the Gods would punish the guilty ones--nemesis. In this revised edition, David Owen has drawn on new material he has written in Brain and other medical journals. He has also drawn on published memoirs of the main players in the Iraq War and on evidence given to the Iraq Inquiry. All this reinforces his earlier assertion that George W. Bush and Tony Blair developed hubris syndrome during their terms in office. From their behavior, beliefs, and governing style, Owen has analyzed the two leaders, with particular reference to the Iraq War, to show that their handling of the war was a litany of hubristic incompetence. During Blair's premiership, David Owen had several meetings and conversations with him that afforded a unique insight into his modus operandi. In this book, Owen presents a devastating critique of how Blair and Bush manipulated intelligence, ignored informed advice, and failed to plan for the aftermath of regime change in Iraq. Their messianic manner, excessive confidence, and belief that they would be vindicated by a "higher court," brought chaos to Iraq and resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.
