Iraq after America

Iraq after America PDF Author: Joel Rayburn
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
ISBN: 0817916946
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
More than a decade after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, most studies of the Iraq conflict focus on the twin questions of whether the United States should have entered Iraq in 2003 and whether it should have exited in 2011, but few have examined the new Iraqi state and society on its own merits. Iraq after America examines the government and the sectarian and secular factions that have emerged in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of 2003, presenting the interrelations among the various elements in the Iraqi political scene. The book traces the origins of key trends in recent Iraqi history to explain the political and social forces that produced them, particularly during the intense period of civil war between 2003 and 2009. Along the way, the author looks at some of the most significant players in the new Iraq, explaining how they have risen to prominence and what their aims are. The author identifies the three trends that dominate Iraq's post-U.S. political order: authoritarianism, sectarianism, and Islamist resistance, tracing their origins and showing how they have created a toxic political and social brew, preventing Iraq's political elite from resolving the fundamental roots of conflict that have wracked that country since 2003 and before. He concludes by examining some aspects of the U.S. legacy in Iraq, analyzing what it means for the United States and others that, after more than a decade of conflict, Iraq's communities—and its political class in particular—have not yet found a way to live together in peace.

Iraq after America

Iraq after America PDF Author: Joel Rayburn
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
ISBN: 0817916946
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
More than a decade after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, most studies of the Iraq conflict focus on the twin questions of whether the United States should have entered Iraq in 2003 and whether it should have exited in 2011, but few have examined the new Iraqi state and society on its own merits. Iraq after America examines the government and the sectarian and secular factions that have emerged in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of 2003, presenting the interrelations among the various elements in the Iraqi political scene. The book traces the origins of key trends in recent Iraqi history to explain the political and social forces that produced them, particularly during the intense period of civil war between 2003 and 2009. Along the way, the author looks at some of the most significant players in the new Iraq, explaining how they have risen to prominence and what their aims are. The author identifies the three trends that dominate Iraq's post-U.S. political order: authoritarianism, sectarianism, and Islamist resistance, tracing their origins and showing how they have created a toxic political and social brew, preventing Iraq's political elite from resolving the fundamental roots of conflict that have wracked that country since 2003 and before. He concludes by examining some aspects of the U.S. legacy in Iraq, analyzing what it means for the United States and others that, after more than a decade of conflict, Iraq's communities—and its political class in particular—have not yet found a way to live together in peace.

Why We Lost

Why We Lost PDF Author: Daniel P. Bolger
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544370481
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 565

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Blood on Our Hands

Blood on Our Hands PDF Author: Nicolas J. S. Davies
Publisher: Nimble Books LLC
ISBN: 193484098X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

Get Book Here

Book Description
America's crimes against the people of Iraq were shielded from public scrutiny by what senior U.S. military officers called the quiet, disguised, media-free approach developed in Central America in the 1980s. The echo chamber of the Western corporate media fleshed out the Pentagon's propaganda to create a virtual Iraq in the minds of the public, feeding a political discourse that bore no relation to the real war it was waging, the country it was destroying or the lives of its inhabitants. Davies takes apart the wall of propaganda surrounding one of history's most significant military disasters and most serious international crimes: non-existent WMDs; the equally fictitious centuries-old sectarian blood feud in Iraq; and the secrecy of the dirty war waged by American-led death squads. He places each aspect of the war within a context of illegal aggression, hostile military occupation and popular resistance, to uncover the brutal reality of a war that has probably killed at least a million people. From publisher description.

How America Lost Iraq

How America Lost Iraq PDF Author: Aaron Glantz
Publisher: Tarcher
ISBN: 9781585424870
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
A reporter in Iraq shows how the U.S. squandered its early victories and goodwill among the Iraqi public and allowed the newly freed society to descend into violence and chaos. Here is a brutally honest account of a reporter who discovered how popular the U.S. presence was in Iraq-and who watched this change as the Bush administration mishandled the war, leaving us with the intractable conflict we face today.

What We Owe Iraq

What We Owe Iraq PDF Author: Noah Feldman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400826225
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Get Book Here

Book Description
What do we owe Iraq? America is up to its neck in nation building--but the public debate, focused on getting the troops home, devotes little attention to why we are building a new Iraqi nation, what success would look like, or what principles should guide us. What We Owe Iraq sets out to shift the terms of the debate, acknowledging that we are nation building to protect ourselves while demanding that we put the interests of the people being governed--whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, or elsewhere--ahead of our own when we exercise power over them. Noah Feldman argues that to prevent nation building from turning into a paternalistic, colonialist charade, we urgently need a new, humbler approach. Nation builders should focus on providing security, without arrogantly claiming any special expertise in how successful nation-states should be made. Drawing on his personal experiences in Iraq as a constitutional adviser, Feldman offers enduring insights into the power dynamics between the American occupiers and the Iraqis, and tackles issues such as Iraqi elections, the prospect of successful democratization, and the way home. Elections do not end the occupier's responsibility. Unless asked to leave, we must resist the temptation of a military pullout before a legitimately elected government can maintain order and govern effectively. But elections that create a legitimate democracy are also the only way a nation builder can put itself out of business and--eventually--send its troops home. Feldman's new afterword brings the Iraq story up-to-date since the book's original publication in 2004, and asks whether the United States has acted ethically in pushing the political process in Iraq while failing to control the security situation; it also revisits the question of when, and how, to withdraw.

Blind Into Baghdad

Blind Into Baghdad PDF Author: James Fallows
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307482308
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the autumn of 2002, Atlantic Monthly national correspondent James Fallows wrote an article predicting many of the problems America would face if it invaded Iraq. After events confirmed many of his predictions, Fallows went on to write some of the most acclaimed, award-winning journalism on the planning and execution of the war, much of which has been assigned as required reading within the U.S. military. In Blind Into Baghdad, Fallows takes us from the planning of the war through the struggles of reconstruction. With unparalleled access and incisive analysis, he shows us how many of the difficulties were anticipated by experts whom the administration ignored. Fallows examines how the war in Iraq undercut the larger ”war on terror” and why Iraq still had no army two years after the invasion. In a sobering conclusion, he interviews soldiers, spies, and diplomats to imagine how a war in Iran might play out. This is an important and essential book to understand where and how the war went wrong, and what it means for America.

To Start a War

To Start a War PDF Author: Robert Draper
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525561064
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Essential . . . one for the ages . . . a must read for all who care about presidential power.” —The Washington Post “Authoritative . . . The most comprehensive account yet of that smoldering wreck of foreign policy, one that haunts us today.” —LA Times One of BookPage's Best Books of 2020 To Start a War paints a vivid and indelible picture of a decision-making process that was fatally compromised by a combination of post-9/11 fear and paranoia, rank naïveté, craven groupthink, and a set of actors with idées fixes who gamed the process relentlessly. Everything was believed; nothing was true. Robert Draper’s fair-mindedness and deep understanding of the principal actors suffuse his account, as does a storytelling genius that is close to sorcery. There are no cheap shots here, which makes the ultimate conclusion all the more damning. In the spirit of Barbara W. Tuchman’s The Guns of August and Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat, To Start A War will stand as the definitive account of a collective scurrying for evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false—evidence that was then used to justify a verdict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood tide of chaos in the Middle East that shows no signs of ebbing.

Marching Toward Hell

Marching Toward Hell PDF Author: Michael Scheuer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074329971X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Night Draws Near

Night Draws Near PDF Author: Anthony Shadid
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312426033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the only journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Iraq, this riveting account illuminates ordinary people caught between the struggles of nations.

Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy

Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy PDF Author: Steven Metz
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612343899
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Get Book Here

Book Description
Today the U.S. military is more nimble, mobile, and focused on rapid responses against smaller powers than ever before. One could argue that the Gulf War and the postwar standoff with Saddam Hussein hastened needed military transformation and strategic reassessments in the post-Cold War era. But the preoccupation with Iraq also mired the United States in the Middle East and led to a bloody occupation. What will American strategy look like after U.S. troops leave Iraq? Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy examines the ways in which the Gulf War, the WMD standoff, the Iraq War, and the ongoing occupation have driven broader changes in U.S. national security policy and military strategy. Steven Metz answers three overarching questions: 1. How did the conflict with Iraq drive and shape broader changes in national security and military strategy? 2. Did policymakers and military leaders interpret the conflict correctly and make the most effective responses? 3. What does this process tell us about the process of change in America's national security and military strategy and in the evolution of its strategic culture? Metz concludes that the United States has a long-standing, continuing problem "developing sound assumptions when the opponent operates within a different psychological and cultural framework." He sees a pattern of misjudgments about Saddam and Iraq based on Western cultural and historical bias and a pervasive faith in the superiority of America's worldview and institutions. This myopia contributed to America being caught off guard by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, then underestimating his longevity, and finally miscalculating the likelihood of a stable and democratic Iraq after he was toppled. With lessons for all readers concerned about America's role in the world, Dr. Metz's important new work will especially appeal to scholars and students of strategy and international security studies, as well as to military professionals and DOD civilians. With a foreword by Colin S. Gray.