Download or read book Afghanistan s War Without End written by Frank William Skilbeck and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-08 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war in Afghanistan entered its eighteenth year in 2018 making it the longest fought by American forces in U.S. history. Described as a war without end, it began in October 2001 shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. Afghanistan's War Without End, A Story of Love and Duty chronicles the lives of three men from disparate backgrounds who unite to bring peace to Afghanistan and open the way for the war-torn country to secure a rightful place in the international community of nations. It also speaks to the absurdity and futility of war while acknowledging the brave combatants compelled to participate -- some making the ultimate sacrifice. The narrative follows the trio's sensitive interactions and growing empathy over a period of years, documenting each man's anguish, resolve, dedication, sense of duty, and love of their respective countries, as they pool their considerable talents to help bring closure to Afghanistan's war without end.

Download or read book Afghanistan s War Without End written by Frank William Skilbeck and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war in Afghanistan entered its eighteenth year in 2018 making it the longest fought by American forces in U.S. history. Described as a war without end, it began in October 2001 shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. Afghanistan's War Without End, A Story of Love and Duty chronicles the lives of three men from disparate backgrounds who unite to bring peace to Afghanistan and open the way for the war-torn country to secure a rightful place in the international community of nations. It also speaks to the absurdity and futility of war while acknowledging the brave combatants compelled to participate -- some making the ultimate sacrifice. The narrative follows the trio's sensitive interactions and growing empathy over a period of years, documenting each man's anguish, resolve, dedication, sense of duty, and love of their respective countries, as they pool their considerable talents to help bring closure to Afghanistan's war without end.

Download or read book Afghanistan War Without End written by Daniel Ozzy and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Afghanistan s War Without End written by Frank W Skilbeck and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war in Afghanistan entered its eighteenth year in 2018 making it the longest fought by American forces in U.S. history. Described as a war without end, it began in October 2001 shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. Afghanistan's War Without End, A Story of Love and Duty chronicles the lives of three men from disparate backgrounds who unite to bring peace to Afghanistan and open the way for the war-torn country to secure a rightful place in the international community of nations. It also speaks to the absurdity and futility of war while acknowledging the brave combatants compelled to participate -- some making the ultimate sacrifice. The narrative follows the trio's sensitive interactions and growing empathy over a period of years, documenting each man's anguish, resolve, dedication, sense of duty, and love of their respective countries, as they pool their considerable talents to help bring closure to Afghanistan's war without end.

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 War With No End written by Phyllis Bennis and published by Verso. This book was released on 2007-10-17 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published on the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, the beginning of the 'War on Terror', John Berger, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Joe Sacco and others examine the consequences.

Download or read book War Without End written by Dilip Hiro and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appendices include: the United Nations Security Council Resolution #1368 and #1378.

Download or read book Intelligence Wars written by Thomas Powers and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2004-06-30 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition contains new analysis on the situation in Iraq and the war against terrorism. Sold over 10,000 copies in hardcover. No one outside the intelligence services knows more about their culture than Thomas Powers. In this book he tells stories of shadowy successes, ghastly failures, and, more often, gripping uncertainties. They range from the CIA's long cold war struggle with its Russian adversary to debates about the use of secret intelligence in a democratic society, and urgent contemporary issues such as whether the CIA and the FBI can defend America against terrorism.

Download or read book Games without Rules written by Tamim Ansary and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of Destiny Disrupted: an enlightening, accessible history of modern Afghanistan from the Afghan point of view, showing how Great Power conflicts have interrupted its ongoing, internal struggle to take form as a nation

Download or read book Body Count Global Avoidable Mortality Since 1950 written by Gideon Polya and published by Korsgaard Publishing. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BODY COUNT exposes the horrendous extent of the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust that has totaled about 1.3 billion since 1950. Peace is the only way, but silence kills and silence is complicity. We can all do something immediately by informing others and through ethical dealings with people, corporations and countries contributing to the continuing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust that kills 20,000 people DAILY! "Clearly inspired by the total devastation wrought by the Iraqi war, Body Count shows the deadly effects of war, occupation, and global inequality on the survival of the populations of Third World countries. ... Polya points out that lies have historically been used to justify the violence perpetrated by the dominant powers of the world, and the mainstream media have been more than willing to perpetuate the lies." ― Dr. Jacqueline Carrigan "Dr. Gideon Polya documents that three to four times more Muslims have been killed by Washington's 21st century wars than there are Jews in Israel." ― Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Download or read book The Fighters written by C. J. Chivers and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “A CLASSIC OF WAR REPORTING…THERE IS NO DOWNTIME IN THIS RELENTLESS BOOK.”—The New York Times * “REMARKABLE…A MEMORIAL IN PAGES.”—The Washington Post * “GRIPPING AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING.”—USA Today * “EVOCATIVE.”—Publishers Weekly, (Starred Review) * “IT JOINS THE BEST WAR LITERATURE THIS COUNTRY HAS EVER PRODUCED.”—Sebastian Junger, bestselling author of Tribe and War Pulitzer Prize winner C.J. Chivers’s unvarnished New York Times bestseller is a chronicle of modern combat, told through the eyes of the fighters who have waged America’s longest wars: “A classic of war reporting…there is no downtime in this relentless book” (The New York Times). More than 2.7 million Americans have served in Afghanistan or Iraq since September 11, 2001, and C.J. Chivers reported on both wars from their beginnings. The Fighters vividly conveys the physical and emotional experience of war as lived by six combatants: a fighter pilot, a corpsman, a scout helicopter pilot, a grunt, an infantry officer, and a Special Forces sergeant. Chivers captures their courage, commitment, sense of purpose, and ultimately their suffering, frustration, and moral confusion as new enemies arise and invasions give way to counterinsurgency duties for which American forces were often not prepared. The Fighters is a “gripping, unforgettable” (The Boston Globe) portrait of modern warfare. Told with the empathy and understanding of an author who is himself an infantry veteran, The Fighters is “a masterful work of atmospheric reporting, and it’s a book that will have every reader asking—with varying degrees of urgency or anger or despair—the final question Chivers himself asks: ‘How many lives had these wars wrecked?’” (Christian Science Monitor).

Download or read book The American War in Afghanistan written by Carter Malkasian and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book Winner of 2022 Lionel Gelber Prize The first authoritative history of American's longest war by one of the world's leading scholar-practitioners. The American war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, is now the longest armed conflict in the nation's history. It is currently winding down, and American troops are likely to leave soon but only after a stay of nearly two decades. In The American War in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian provides the first comprehensive history of the entire conflict. Malkasian is both a leading academic authority on the subject and an experienced practitioner, having spent nearly two years working in the Afghan countryside and going on to serve as the senior advisor to General Joseph Dunford, the US military commander in Afghanistan and later the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Drawing from a deep well of local knowledge, understanding of Pashto, and review of primary source documents, Malkasian moves through the war's multiple phases: the 2001 invasion and after; the light American footprint during the 2003 Iraq invasion; the resurgence of the Taliban in 2006, the Obama-era surge, and the various resets in strategy and force allocations that occurred from 2011 onward, culminating in the 2018-2020 peace talks. Malkasian lived through much of it, and draws from his own experiences to provide a unique vantage point on the war. Today, the Taliban is the most powerful faction, and sees victory as probable. The ultimate outcome after America leaves is inherently unpredictable given the multitude of actors there, but one thing is sure: the war did not go as America had hoped. Although the al-Qa'eda leader Osama bin Laden was killed and no major attack on the American homeland was carried out after 2001, the United States was unable to end the violence or hand off the war to the Afghan authorities, which could not survive without US military backing. The American War in Afghanistan explains why the war had such a disappointing outcome. Wise and all-encompassing, The American War in Afghanistan provides a truly vivid portrait of the conflict in all of its phases that will remain the authoritative account for years to come.

Download or read book Afghan Modern written by Robert D. Crews and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-14 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rugged, remote, riven by tribal rivalries and religious violence, Afghanistan seems to many a country frozen in time and forsaken by the world. Afghan Modern presents a bold challenge to these misperceptions, revealing how Afghans, over the course of their history, have engaged and connected with a wider world and come to share in our modern globalized age. Always a mobile people, Afghan travelers, traders, pilgrims, scholars, and artists have ventured abroad for centuries, their cosmopolitan sensibilities providing a compass for navigating a constantly changing world. Robert Crews traces the roots of Afghan globalism to the early modern period, when, as the subjects of sprawling empires, the residents of Kabul, Kandahar, and other urban centers forged linkages with far-flung imperial centers throughout the Middle East and Asia. Focusing on the emergence of an Afghan state out of this imperial milieu, he shows how Afghan nation-making was part of a series of global processes, refuting the usual portrayal of Afghans as pawns in the “Great Game” of European powers and of Afghanistan as a “hermit kingdom.” In the twentieth century, the pace of Afghan interaction with the rest of the world dramatically increased, and many Afghan men and women came to see themselves at the center of ideological struggles that spanned the globe. Through revolution, war, and foreign occupations, Afghanistan became even more enmeshed in the global circulation of modern politics, occupying a pivotal position in the Cold War and the tumultuous decades that followed.

Download or read book Why We Lost written by Daniel P. Bolger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A high-ranking general's gripping insider account of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how it all went wrong. Over a thirty-five-year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top-level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions, unusual for a general. Now, as a witness to all levels of military command, Bolger offers a unique assessment of these wars, from 9/11 to the final withdrawal from the region. Writing with hard-won experience and unflinching honesty, Bolger makes the firm case that in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we lost -- but we didn't have to. Intelligence was garbled. Key decision makers were blinded by spreadsheets or theories. And, at the root of our failure, we never really understood our enemy. Why We Lost is a timely, forceful, and compulsively readable account of these wars from a fresh and authoritative perspective.

Download or read book Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond written by Abdulkader H. Sinno and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "After we had exchanged the requisite formalities over tea in his camp on the southern edge of Kabul's outer defense perimeter, the Afghan field commander told me that two of his bravest mujahideen were martyred because he did not have a pickup truck to take them to a Peshawar hospital. They had succumbed to their battle wounds. He asked me to tell his party's bureaucrats across the border that he needed such a vehicle desperately. I double-checked with my interpreter that he was indeed making this request. I wasn't puzzled because the request appeared unreasonable but because he was asking me, a twenty-year-old employee of a humanitarian organization, to intercede on his behalf with his own organization's bureaucracy. I understood on this dry summer day in Khurd Kabul that not all militant and political organizations are alike."—from Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond While popular accounts of warfare, particularly of nontraditional conflicts such as guerrilla wars and insurgencies, favor the roles of leaders or ideology, social-scientific analyses of these wars focus on aggregate categories such as ethnic groups, religious affiliations, socioeconomic classes, or civilizations. Challenging these constructions, Abdulkader H. Sinno closely examines the fortunes of the various factions in Afghanistan, including the mujahideen and the Taliban, that have been fighting each other and foreign armies since the 1979 Soviet invasion. Focusing on the organization of the combatants, Sinno offers a new understanding of the course and outcome of such conflicts. Employing a wide range of sources, including his own fieldwork in Afghanistan and statistical data on conflicts across the region, Sinno contends that in Afghanistan, the groups that have outperformed and outlasted their opponents have done so because of their successful organization. Each organization's ability to mobilize effectively, execute strategy, coordinate efforts, manage disunity, and process information depends on how well its structure matches its ability to keep its rivals at bay. Centralized organizations, Sinno finds, are generally more effective than noncentralized ones, but noncentralized ones are more resilient absent a safe haven. Sinno's organizational theory explains otherwise puzzling behavior found in group conflicts: the longevity of unpopular regimes, the demise of popular movements, and efforts of those who share a common cause to undermine their ideological or ethnic kin. The author argues that the organizational theory applies not only to Afghanistan-where he doubts the effectiveness of American state-building efforts—but also to other ethnic, revolutionary, independence, and secessionist conflicts in North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.

Download or read book Directorate S written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 794 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars, the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11 Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan. Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.

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.