Download or read book Fleeing Afghanistan Stranding in America written by Haji Razmi and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The madness of mass shootings is raging in both of my homes; here, mass murderers dance under the banner of “Gun Freedom”, and there, they worship the flag of “Holy War”; The “lovers” of freedom take lives for their allegiance to the Second Amendment, while the “devotees” of Islam commit carnage for their fidelity to the Quran—other than that, they share the same “values”: They don’t demand money or jewelry from their victims, they do not ask them for intimacy or sexual favor, and, most of the times, they don’t even know their victims’ names, identities, religions, languages, nationalities, or the good and bad of their personalities. They slaughter them indiscriminately just for being human beings. The above is what this book is about; The life of an Afghan interpreter, who lost part of his family to a suicide attack in his country and then immigrated to the US in the hope to raise his children in the safety and security of this great country only to see the rest of his family being destroyed by gun violence.

Download or read book Operation Pineapple Express written by Scott Mann and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An edge-of-your-seat thriller about a group of retired Green Berets who come together to save a former comrade—and 500 other Afghans—being targeted by the Taliban in the chaos of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. In April 2021, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas. The message was clear: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam was part of the Afghan National Army’s first group of American-trained commandos; he passed through Fort Bragg’s legendary Q course and served alongside the US Special Forces for over a decade. But Afghanistan’s government and army were on the edge of collapse, and Nezam was receiving threatening texts from the Taliban. The message reached Nezam’s former commanding officer, retired Lt. Col. Scott Mann, who couldn’t face the idea of losing another soldier in the long War on Terror. Immediately, he sends out an SOS to a group of Afghan vets (Navy SEALs, Green Berets, CIA officers, USAID advisors). They all answer the call for one last mission. Operating out of basements and garages, Task Force Pineapple organizes an escape route for Nezam and gets him into hiding in Taliban-controlled Kabul. After many tense days, he braves the enemy checkpoints and the crowds of thousands blocking the airport gates. He finally makes it through the wire and into the American-held airport thanks to the frantic efforts of the Pineapple express, a relentless Congressional aide, and a US embassy official. Nezam is safe, but calls are coming in from all directions requesting help for other Afghan soldiers, interpreters, and at-risk women and children. Task Force Pineapple widens its scope—and ends up rescuing 500 more Afghans from Kabul in the three chaotic days before the ISIS-K suicide bombing. Operation Pineapple Express is a thrilling, suspenseful tale of service and loyalty amidst the chaos of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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 Fields of Combat written by Erin P. Finley and published by ILR Press. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many of the 1.6 million U.S. service members who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, the trip home is only the beginning of a longer journey. Many undergo an awkward period of readjustment to civilian life after long deployments. Some veterans may find themselves drinking too much, unable to sleep or waking from unspeakable dreams, lashing out at friends and loved ones. Over time, some will struggle so profoundly that they eventually are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress Disorder (PTSD). Both heartbreaking and hopeful, Fields of Combat tells the story of how American veterans and their families navigate the return home. Following a group of veterans and their their personal stories of war, trauma, and recovery, Erin P. Finley illustrates the devastating impact PTSD can have on veterans and their families. Finley sensitively explores issues of substance abuse, failed relationships, domestic violence, and even suicide and also challenges popular ideas of PTSD as incurable and permanently debilitating. Drawing on rich, often searing ethnographic material, Finley examines the cultural, political, and historical influences that shape individual experiences of PTSD and how its sufferers are perceived by the military, medical personnel, and society at large. Despite widespread media coverage and public controversy over the military's response to wounded and traumatized service members, debate continues over how best to provide treatment and compensation for service-related disabilities. Meanwhile, new and highly effective treatments are revolutionizing how the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides trauma care, redefining the way PTSD itself is understood in the process. Carefully and compassionately untangling each of these conflicts, Fields of Combat reveals the very real implications they have for veterans living with PTSD and offers recommendations to improve how we care for this vulnerable but resilient population.

Download or read book America s Role in Nation Building written by James Dobbins and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2003-08-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan set standards for postconflict nation-building that have not since been matched. Only in recent years has the United States has felt the need to participate in similar transformations, but it is now facing one of the most challenging prospects since the 1940s: Iraq. The authors review seven case studies--Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan--and seek lessons about what worked well and what did not. Then, they examine the Iraq situation in light of these lessons. Success in Iraq will require an extensive commitment of financial, military, and political resources for a long time. The United States cannot afford to contemplate early exit strategies and cannot afford to leave the job half completed.

Download or read book Taliban written by Ahmed Rashid and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Following the U.S-Taliban peace deal of February 2020 - and the U.S's promised withdrawal from Afghanistan - the Taliban began terrorizing Afghan security forces, civilians and the government in Kabul. By August 2021, the group had seized control of the entire country. Taliban is a New York Times bestseller by the award-winning journalist Ahmed Rashid. Now considered a modern classic, the book provides rare insight into the history of the Taliban, their political movement, their leaders and their aims. This authoritative account is renowned for being able to explain one of the world's most extreme organizations from their inception in northern Pakistan in the early 1990s to their rise to power. In doing so, Rashid closely details their impact on Afghanistan, the Middle East and Central Asia, and how and why the Taliban spread, including their relationship with both Al-Qaeda and the U.S. The book has sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 40 languages. This third edition marks twenty years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and the author adds a new introduction to reflect on how the group regained their strength, the humanitarian crisis, and what Taliban rule is likely to mean for the region and the world.

Download or read book Honorable Exit written by Thurston Clarke and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A MAIN SELECTION OF THE MILITARY BOOK CLUB A groundbreaking revisionist history of the last days of the Vietnam War that reveals the acts of American heroism that saved more than one hundred thousand South Vietnamese from communist revenge In 1973 U.S. participation in the Vietnam War ended in a cease-fire and a withdrawal that included promises by President Nixon to assist the South in the event of invasion by the North. But in early 1975, when North Vietnamese forces began a full-scale assault, Congress refused to send arms or aid. By early April that year, the South was on the brink of a defeat that threatened execution or years in a concentration camp for the untold number of South Vietnamese who had supported the government in Saigon or worked with Americans. Thurston Clarke begins Honorable Exit by describing the iconic photograph of the Fall of Saigon: desperate Vietnamese scrambling to board a helicopter evacuating the last American personnel from Vietnam. It is an image of U.S. failure and shame. Or is it? By unpacking the surprising story of heroism that the photograph actually tells, Clarke launches into a narrative that is both a thrilling race against time and an important corrective to the historical record. For what is less known is that during those final days, scores of Americans--diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, missionaries, contractors, and spies--risked their lives to assist their current and former translators, drivers, colleagues, neighbors, friends, and even perfect strangers in escape. By the time the last U.S. helicopter left Vietnam on April 30, 1975, these righteous Americans had helped to spirit 130,000 South Vietnamese to U.S. bases in Guam and the Philippines. From there, the evacuees were resettled in the U.S. and became American citizens, the leading edge of one of America's most successful immigrant groups. Into this tale of heroism on the ground Clarke weaves the political machinations of Henry Kissinger advising President Ford in the White House while reinforcing the delusions of the U.S. Ambassador in Saigon, who, at the last minute, refused to depart. Groundbreaking, page-turning, and authoritative, Honorable Exit is a deeply moving history of Americans at a little-known finest hour.

Download or read book A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-09-18 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting and powerful story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love

Download or read book Red Platoon written by Clinton Romesha and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The only comprehensive, firsthand account of the fourteen-hour firefight at the Battle of Keating in Afghanistan by Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha, for readers of Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden and Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell. “‘It doesn't get better.’ To us, that phrase nailed one of the essential truths, maybe even the essential truth, about being stuck at an outpost whose strategic and tactical vulnerabilities were so glaringly obvious to every soldier who had ever set foot in that place that the name itself—Keating—had become a kind of backhanded joke.” In 2009, Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost (COP) Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the US military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after its construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: it was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend. On October 3, 2009, after years of constant smaller attacks, the Taliban finally decided to throw everything they had at Keating. The ensuing fourteen-hour battle—and eventual victory—cost eight men their lives. Red Platoon is the riveting firsthand account of the Battle of Keating, told by Romesha, who spearheaded both the defense of the outpost and the counterattack that drove the Taliban back beyond the wire and received the Medal of Honor for his actions.

Download or read book Living U S China Relations written by David M. Lampton and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-01-05 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses head-on a core current critique of how the Sino-American relationship was managed across eight administrations. The essence of this critique is that naïve U.S. elites confused their hopes for democracy and a globally responsible China with the actual prospects for those desirable ends, and, in the process, unwisely traded away American interests, competitive position, and national security. In short, the U.S. bolstered the principal strategic threat that it now faces. This book is a fact-based challenge to that simplistic narrative. Today, developments in the U.S.-China relationship are converging in a fashion that is setting off fire alarm bells. At this moment, in 2023, the underbrush is plentiful, the winds unfavorable, and the atmosphere parched. The fire hazard between America and China is increasing unlike anything we have seen in a half century. This volume describes our current condition and explains the last half-century that has brought us to this perilous day. The defining and unique characteristic of Living U.S.-China Relations is that it tells the story of U.S.-China ties as the relationship between two societies, not just two states, and it does so through the author’s lived experience over nearly sixty years.

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 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2020. The work follows a narrative format to go through the 2001 US invasion, the state-building of 2002-2005, the Taliban offensive of 2006, the US surge of 2009-2011, the subsequent drawdown, and the peace talks of 2019-2020

Download or read book U S Marines in Afghanistan 2001 2009 written by U S Marine Corps History Division and published by St, John's Press. This book was released on 2017-02-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a collection of 38 articles, interviews, and speeches describing many aspects of the U.S. Marine Corps' participation in Operation Enduring Freedom from 2001 to 2009. This work is intended to serve as a general overview and provisional reference to inform both Marines and the general public until the History Division completes monographs dealing with major Marine Corps operations during the campaign. The accompanying annotated bibliography provides a detailed look at selected sources that currently exist until new scholarship and archival materials become available. From the Preface - From the outset, some experts doubted that the U.S. Marines Corps would play a major role in Afghanistan given the landlocked nature of the battlefield. Naval expeditionary Task Force 58 (TF-58) commanded by then-Brigadier General James N. Mattis silenced naysayers with the farthest ranging amphibious assault in Marine Corps/Navy history. In late November 2001, Mattis' force seized what became Forward Operating Base Rhino, Afghanistan, from naval shipping some 400 miles away. The historic assault not only blazed a path for follow-on forces, it also cut off fleeing al-Qaeda and Taliban elements and aided in the seizure of Kandahar. While Corps doctrine and culture advocates Marine employment as a fully integrated Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF), deployments to Afghanistan often reflected what former Commandant General Charles C. Krulak coined as the "three-block war." Following TF-58's deployment during the initial take down of the Taliban regime, the MAGTF made few appearances in Afghanistan until 2008. Before then, subsequent Marine units often deployed as a single battalion under the command of the U.S. Army Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) to provide security for provincial reconstruction teams. The Marine Corps also provided embedded training teams to train and mentor the fledgling Afghan National Army and Police. Aviation assets sporadically deployed to support the U.S.-led coalition mostly to conduct a specific mission or to bridge a gap in capability, such as close air support or electronic warfare to counter the improvised explosive device threat. From 2003 to late 2007, the national preoccupation with stabilizing Iraq focused most Marine Corps assets on stemming the insurgency, largely centered in the restive al-Anbar Province. As a result of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) taking over command of Afghan operations and Marine Corps' commitments in Iraq, relatively few Marine units operated in Afghanistan from late 2006 to 2007. Although Marines first advocated shifting resources from al-Anbar to southern Afghanistan in early 2007, the George W. Bush administration delayed the Marine proposal for fear of losing the gains made as a result of Army General David H. Petraeus' "surge strategy" in Iraq. By late 2007, the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated to the point that it inspired Rolling Stone to later publish the story "How We Lost the War We Won." In recognition of the shifting tides in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration began to transfer additional resources to Afghanistan in early 2008. The shift prompted senior Marines to again push for a more prominent role in the Afghan campaign, even proposing to take over the Afghan mission from the Army. . . .

Download or read book Big Money written by Kenneth P Vogel and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Hanna -- the turn-of-the-century iron-and-coal-magnate-turned-operative who leveraged massive contributions from the robber barons -- was famously quoted as saying: "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is." To an extent that would have made Hanna blush, a series of developments capped by the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision effectively crowned a bunch of billionaires and their operatives the new kings of politics. Big Money is a rollicking tour of a new political world dramatically reordered by ever-larger flows of cash. Ken Vogel has breezed into secret gatherings of big-spending Republicans and Democrats alike -- from California poolsides to DC hotel bars -- to brilliantly expose the way the mega-money men (and rather fewer women) are dominating the new political landscape. Great wealth seems to attach itself to outsize characters. From the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to the bubbling nouveau cowboy Foster Friess; from the Texas trial lawyer couple, Amber and Steve Mostyn, to the micromanaging Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg -- the multimillionaires and billionaires are swaggering up to the tables for the hottest new game in politics. The prize is American democracy, and the players' checks keep getting bigger.

Download or read book Tora Bora Revisited written by U. s. Senate and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush promised a grieving nation that the United States would capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. Almost a decade later, the Al Qaeda leader is still alive and free, even after an occupation of Afghanistan by U.S. troops of more than eight years.In November 2009, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, chaired by John F. Kerry, issued a report on what could be characterized as one of the greatest joint military and intelligence failures of recent American history: Bin Laden's escape from his stronghold in the mountains of Tora Bora, and his subsequent flight to a location that remains unknown.Who was responsible for the decision to put too few troops on the ground, and what justification could there have been for such a decision? What alternative plans were available? What can we learn from the flaws of the Afghan occupation?Anyone interested in current affairs-and especially in the beginning of the Global War on Terror-will find this essential reading.

Download or read book The Hardest Place written by Wesley Morgan and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: COLBY AWARD WINNER • “One of the most important books to come out of the Afghanistan war.”—Foreign Policy “A saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak.”—Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy and The British Are Coming Of the many battlefields on which U.S. troops and intelligence operatives fought in Afghanistan, one remote corner of the country stands as a microcosm of the American campaign: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan. The area’s rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made it a natural hiding spot for local insurgents and international terrorists alike, and it came to represent both the valor and futility of America’s two-decade-long Afghan war. Drawing on reporting trips, hundreds of interviews, and documentary research, Wesley Morgan reveals the history of the war in this iconic region, captures the culture and reality of the conflict through both American and Afghan eyes, and reports on the snowballing missteps—some kept secret from even the troops fighting there—that doomed the American mission. The Hardest Place is the story of one of the twenty-first century’s most unforgiving battlefields and a portrait of the American military that fought there.

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 The Trump and Harris Doctrines written by Stanley A. Renshon and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: