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 Papers on the War written by Daniel Ellsberg and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2009-12-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his second public contribution to ending the American intervention in Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg brings together and revises his papers that best explain US policy and strategies during the war. Drawing upon his virtually unique range of experience as a participant, field observer, analyst, and critic, Papers on the War shares a selection of Daniel Ellsberg’s writings as he critiques the presence of US policies in Vietnam. With the major contribution of a greatly expanded and redefined version of his crucial study “The Quagmire Myth and the Stalemate Machine,” Ellsberg reveals consistent patterns of decision-making with respect to Indo-china that ran from Truman’s Administration into Nixon’s. From the first participant permitted to make use of the entire study that led to the Pentagon Papers, this book shares analysis on the invasion of Laos, the internal policies of South Vietnam, the failure of rural pacification, the American way of war, and the renewed escalation in the spring of 1972.

Download or read book Confederate War Papers written by Gustavus Woodson Smith and published by . This book was released on 1884 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Churchill War Papers written by Winston Churchill and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1993 with total page 1898 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The much-anticipated third volume of Churchill's fascinating papers.

Download or read book The Civil War Papers of George B McClellan written by Stephen W. Sears and published by HMH. This book was released on 1989-02-27 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Gettysburg: A “valuable” collection of the letters of this controversial Civil War general (James M. McPherson, The New York Review of Books). No one played as many major roles during the Civil War as Gen. George B. McClellan, nor did any other figure write such candid letters about himself, his motivations, and his intentions. For Civil War buffs, this collection is a gold mine, revealing nuggets of fresh information on military operations and political machinations, from the battle of Antietam through McClellan’s 1864 race for the presidency—as well as the uninhibited correspondence McClellan wrote to his wife—selected and introduced by the prize-winning author Stephen W. Sears, “a first-class writer and splendid historian” (The Wall Street Journal). “A treasure-trove . . . Nothing of importance concerning [McClellan’s] military strategies and tactics or the politics, policies, and issues of the war has been omitted. Sears has edited the collection with consummate economy and skill, and his introductory essays to the book’s eleven sections weave the disparate facts of McClellan’s wartime experience together.” —Library Journal “The letters are most valuable as a revelation of McClellan’s personality, which lay at the root of his military failure. They make clear that his initial success and fame went to his head.” —James M. McPherson, The New York Review of Books “Introduced with insightful essays . . . [McClellan] emerges as the Captain Queeg of the Civil War.” —Harold Holzer, Chicago Tribune

Download or read book The Dissent Papers written by Hannah Gurman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with the Cold War and concluding with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hannah Gurman explores the overlooked opposition of U.S. diplomats to American foreign policy in the latter half of the twentieth century. During America's reign as a dominant world power, U.S. presidents and senior foreign policy officials largely ignored or rejected their diplomats' reports, memos, and telegrams, especially when they challenged key policies relating to the Cold War, China, and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The Dissent Papers recovers these diplomats' invaluable perspective and their commitment to the transformative power of diplomatic writing. Gurman showcases the work of diplomats whose opposition enjoyed some success. George Kennan, John Stewart Service, John Paton Davies, George Ball, and John Brady Kiesling all caught the attention of sitting presidents and policymakers, achieving temporary triumphs yet ultimately failing to change the status quo. Gurman follows the circulation of documents within the State Department, the National Security Council, the C.I.A., and the military, and she details the rationale behind "The Dissent Channel," instituted by the State Department in the 1970s, to both encourage and contain dissent. Advancing an alternative narrative of modern U.S. history, she connects the erosion of the diplomatic establishment and the weakening of the diplomatic writing tradition to larger political and ideological trends while, at the same time, foreshadowing the resurgent significance of diplomatic writing in the age of Wikileaks.

Download or read book Inside the Pentagon Papers written by John Prados and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside the Pentagon Papers addresses legal and moral issues that resonate today as debates continue over government secrecy and democracy's requisite demand for truthfully informed citizens. In the process, it also shows how a closer study of this signal event can illuminate questions of government responsibility in any era. When Daniel Ellsberg leaked a secret government study about the Vietnam War to the press in 1971, he set off a chain of events that culminated in one of the most important First Amendment decisions in American legal history. That affair is now part of history, but the story behind the case has much to tell us about government secrecy and the public's right to know. Commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the Pentagon Papers were assembled by a team of analysts who investigated every aspect of the war. Ellsberg, a member of the team, was horrified by the government's public lies about the war - discrepancies with reality that were revealed by the report's secret findings. His leak of the report to the New York Times and Washington Post triggered the Nixon administration's heavy-handed attempt to halt publication of their stories, which in turn le

Download or read book On War written by Carl von Clausewitz and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book George Washington Writings LOA 91 written by George Washington and published by . This book was released on 1997-02-22 with total page 1252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For two centuries George Washington has stood First in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.

Download or read book American Sphinx written by Joseph J. Ellis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1998-11-19 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER Following Thomas Jefferson from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph J. Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. He gives us the slaveholding libertarian who was capable of decrying mescegenation while maintaing an intimate relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings; the enemy of government power who exercisdd it audaciously as president; the visionarty who remained curiously blind to the inconsistencies in his nature. American Sphinx is a marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy.

Download or read book The Iraq Papers written by John Ehrenberg and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2010 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is a comprehensive document collection of America's misadventure in Iraq. The editors have organized the book around the concept of pre-emption, a policy that represented a significant break with past American foreign policy.

Download or read book Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States written by United States. Department of State and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 922 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book War of 1812 Papers of the Department of State 1789 1815 written by United States. National Archives and Records Service and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Secrets written by Daniel Ellsberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-09-30 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the event which inspired Steven Spielberg’s feature film The Post In 1971 former Cold War hard-liner Daniel Ellsberg made history by releasing the Pentagon Papers - a 7,000-page top-secret study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam - to the New York Times and Washington Post. The document set in motion a chain of events that ended not only the Nixon presidency but the Vietnam War. In this remarkable memoir, Ellsberg describes in dramatic detail the two years he spent in Vietnam as a U.S. State Department observer, and how he came to risk his career and freedom to expose the deceptions and delusions that shaped three decades of American foreign policy. The story of one man's exploration of conscience, Secrets is also a portrait of America at a perilous crossroad. "[Ellsberg's] well-told memoir sticks in the mind and will be a powerful testament for future students of a war that the United States should never have fought." -The Washington Post "Ellsberg's deft critique of secrecy in government is an invaluable contribution to understanding one of our nation's darkest hours." -Theodore Roszak, San Francisco Chronicle

Download or read book The Afghanistan Papers written by Craig Whitlock and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The groundbreaking investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about the longest war in American history"--

Download or read book War Papers written by Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. District of Columbia Commandery and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book War Papers written by and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: