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 The Afghanistan Question and the Reset in U S Russian Relations written by Richard J. Krickus and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ability of the United States and Russia to cooperate in Afghanistan represents a solid test of their reset in relations. The author provides the historical background to the Afghanistan Question and assesses current events in the Afghan war with three objectives in mind: 1) to determine whether Russian-American cooperation in Afghanistan has been successful; 2) to identify and evaluate the successes and failures of the counterinsurgency strategy as the transition from U.S. to Afghanistan authority gains traction in the 2011-14 time frame; and 3) to provide conclusions and recommendations bearing on developments in Afghanistan.

Download or read book The Afghan Question written by Petr Aleksandrovich Rittikh and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Causes of the Afghan War written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Afghan Committee. Sub-committee on Afghan and Central Asian Questions and published by . This book was released on 1879 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Russo Afghan Question and the Invasion of India written by George Bruce Malleson and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Bruce Malleson was a British army officer and military historian who had served in India and who wrote prolifically on the history of India and Afghanistan. One of his major works was History of Afghanistan from the Earliest Period to the Outbreak of the War of 1878, a political and military history of Afghanistan that was published in London in 1879, shortly after the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80). The Russo-Afghan Question and the Invasion of India, published six years later, has the same theme as the earlier book, namely the strategic importance to the British Empire of Afghanistan as a buffer against Russian expansionism and the growing seriousness of the Russian threat to Afghanistan and by extension to India. The immediate impetus to Malleson's writing the second book was the Russian annexation of Merv (in present-day Turkmenistan) and the formation of a joint Anglo-Russian boundary commission to determine the northern frontier of Afghanistan. The author argues that the territories recently seized by Russia historically belonged to the amir of Afghanistan and should be returned to him. The key strategic point, Malleson argues, is Herat, "the outlying redoubt of India" and in his view the next objective in the Russian campaign of expansion. Malleson calls for a forceful response to the threat from Russia, and specifically the concentration of "all our available troops in the Pishin valley, ready for a prompt advance" to Herat. Chapter nine, "The Armies on Both Sides," contains a detailed accounting of the size, composition, and strength of Russian military units deployed in Central Asia and of the British and Indian troops available for the protection of India. The book presented here is the second edition of The Russo-Afghan Question and the Invasion of India, published in 1885.

Download or read book The Afghan Question from 1841 to 1878 written by George Douglas Campbell Duke of Argyll and published by . This book was released on 1879 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Afghan Question from 1841 to 1878 consists of five chapters extracted and reprinted from a larger work, The Eastern Question, also published in 1879. The author, George Douglas Campbell, eighth duke of Argyll (1823-1900), was secretary of state for India in the first government of Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone (1868-74). Argyll believed that the security of India did not require territorial expansion into Persia or the northwest, and he was critical of British politicians and officials who in his view worried excessively about Russian advances in Central Asia. He became a fierce critic of British policy toward India and Afghanistan under the Conservative government of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, and of British policies leading up to and in the conduct of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80). In the preface to the book Argyll writes: "We have yet to see the final results of the Afghan war. We have indeed hunted our victim, Shere Ali, to the death. We have overrun, with the most perfect ease, a great portion of his country. But our 'scientific frontier' is not yet defined. The wild tribes of Afghanistan have not yet been reconciled to our dominion. The cost and waste of our operations are enormous." Argyll was one of the two largest landowners in Scotland, possessing estates comprising more than 175,000 acres (70,000 hectares), and the head of clan Campbell. His interests included politics, science (especially ornithology and geology), and the improvement of education and agriculture in Scotland.

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 The Afghan question written by Henry Richard and published by . This book was released on 1878 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Afghanistan Question and the Reset in U S Russian Relations written by Richard J Krickus and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ability of the United States and Russia to cooperate in Afghanistan represents a solid test of their reset in relations. The author provides the historical background to the Afghanistan Question and assesses current events in the Afghan war with three objectives in mind: 1) To determine whether Russian-American cooperation in Afghanistan has been successful; 2) To identify and evaluate the successes and failures of the counterinsurgency strategy as the transition from U.S. to Afghanistan authority gains traction in the 2011-14 time frame; and 3) To provide conclusions and recommendations bearing on developments in Afghanistan.

Download or read book Getting it Right in Afghanistan written by Scott Seward Smith and published by United States Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building an enduring and stable political consensus in Afghanistan's complex, multiactor environment requires clear analysis of the conflict. Getting It Right in Afghanistan addresses the real drivers of the insurgency, how Afghanistan's neighbors can contribute to peace in the region, and the need for more inclusive political arrangements in peace and reconciliation processes.

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 War Will and Warlords written by and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compares the reasons for and the responses to the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan since October 2001. Also examines the lack of security and the support of insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the 1970s that explain the rise of the Pakistan-supported Taliban. Explores the border tribal areas between the two countries and how they influence regional stability and U.S. security. Explains the implications of what happened during this 10-year period to provide candid insights on the prospects and risks associated with bringing a durable stability to this area of the world.

Download or read book The Afghan Question written by Duke Of Argyll and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-02-05 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Afghan Question: From 1841 to 1878 I republish in a separate form those Chapters of my recent work on the History of the Eastern Question which refer to the conduct of the Govern ment towards the late Ameer of Afghanistan. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Download or read book The Hardest Place written by Wesley Morgan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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 Arabs at War in Afghanistan written by Mustafa Hamid and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A former senior mujahidin fighter teams up with an ex-counter terrorism analyst in this remarkable account from the frontlines of the jihad

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.

Download or read book The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan written by Robert D. Crews and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [This book] explores ... how has a seemingly anachronistic band of religious zealots managed to retain a tenacious foothold in the struggle for Afghanistan's future ... [It] investigates ... questions relating to the character of the Taliban, its evolution over time, and its capacity to affect the future of the region.--Dust jacket.