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Author: Carter Malkasian
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197550797
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 601
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Book Description
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.
Author: Carter Malkasian
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197550797
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 601
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Craig Whitlock
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982159014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
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.
Author: Aaron B. O'Connell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022626579X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387
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Book Description
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.
Author: Beth Bailey
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479836265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 Investigates the causes, conduct, and consequences of the recent American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Understanding the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is essential to understanding the United States in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond. These wars were pivotal to American foreign policy and international relations. They were expensive: in lives, in treasure, and in reputation. They raised critical ethical and legal questions; they provoked debates over policy, strategy, and war-planning; they helped to shape American domestic politics. And they highlighted a profound division among the American people: While more than two million Americans served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many in multiple deployments, the vast majority of Americans and their families remained untouched by and frequently barely aware of the wars conducted in their name, far from American shores, in regions about which they know little. Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan gives us the first book-length expert historical analysis of these wars. It shows us how they began, what they teach us about the limits of the American military and diplomacy, and who fought them. It examines the lessons and legacies of wars whose outcomes may not be clear for decades. In 1945 few Americans could imagine that the country would be locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union for decades; fewer could imagine how history would paint the era. Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begins to come to grips with the period when America became enmeshed in a succession of “low intensity” conflicts in the Middle East.
Author: Sharifullah Dorani
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786735822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
Afghanistan has been a theatre of civil and international conflict for much of the twentieth century – stability is essential if there is to be peace in the Greater Middle East. Yet policy-makers in the West often seem to forget the lessons learned from previous administrations, whose interventions have contributed to the instability in the region. Here, Sharifullah Dorani focuses on the process of decision-making, looking at which factors influenced American policy-makers in the build-up to its longest war, the Afghanistan War, and how reactions on the ground in Afghanistan have influenced events since then. America in Afghanistan is a new, full history of US foreign policy toward Afghanistan from Bush's 'War on Terror', to Obama's war of 'Countering Violent Extremism' to Trump's war against 'Radical Islamic Terrorism'. Dorani is fluent in Pashto and Dari and uses unique and unseen Afghan source-work, published here for the first time, to understand the people in Afghanistan itself, and to answer their unanswered questions about 'real' US Afghan goals, the reasons for US failures in Afghanistan, especially its inability to improve governance and stop Pakistan, Iran and Russia from supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan, and the reasons for the bewildering changes in US Afghan policy over the course of 16 and a half years. To that end the author also assesses Presidents Karzai and Ghani's responses to Bush, Obama and Trump's policies in Afghanistan and the region. In addition, the book covers the role Afghanistan's neighbours – Russia, Iran, India, and especially Pakistan – played in America's Afghanistan War. This will be an essential book for those interested in the future of the region, and those who seek to understand its recent past.
Author: David Wildman
Publisher: Olive Branch Press
ISBN: 9781566567855
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Compact, concise, and jargon-free primer that answers all the basic questions and explains the various aspects of the war in Afghanistan. The Bush administration answered the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 with what it called the global war on terror, beginning with the assault and invasion of Afghanistan and then with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. As more and more Americans joined the opposition to the Iraq war, for many, Afghanistan remained the good war. But was Afghanistan ever a good war? And will President Obamas plan and escalation of US troop presence in Afghanistan work? In this easy-to-read volume of frequently asked questions (FAQs), analysts David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis examine a wide range of key issues regarding the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Author: Bruce Riedel
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 081572585X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211
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Book Description
In February 1989, the CIA's chief in Islamabad famously cabled headquarters a simple message: "We Won." It was an understated coda to the most successful covert intelligence operation in American history. In What We Won, CIA and National Security Council veteran Bruce Riedel tells the story of America's secret war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in the war that proved to be the final battle of the cold war. He seeks to answer one simple question—why did this intelligence operation succeed so brilliantly? Riedel has the vantage point few others can offer: He was ensconced in the CIA's Operations Center when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. The invasion took the intelligence community by surprise. But the response, initiated by Jimmy Carter and accelerated by Ronald Reagan, was a masterful intelligence enterprise. Many books have been written about intelligence failures—from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Much less has been written about how and why intelligence operations succeed. The answer is complex. It involves both the weaknesses and mistakes of America's enemies, as well as good judgment and strengths of the United States. Riedel introduces and explores the complex personalities pitted in the war—the Afghan communists, the Russians, the Afghan mujahedin, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis. And then there are the Americans—in this war, no Americans fought on the battlefield. The CIA did not send officers into Afghanistan to fight or even to train. In 1989, victory for the American side of the cold war seemed complete. Now we can see that a new era was also beginning in the Afghan war in the 1980s, the era of the global jihad. This book examines the lessons we can learn from this intelligence operation for the future and makes some observations on what came next in Afghanistan—and what is likely yet to come.
Author: Joseph J. Collins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780160888311
Category : Afghan War, 2001-
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: Wesley Morgan
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812985222
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 697
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Book Description
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.
Author: Joseph J. Collins
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1620874822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 165
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Book Description
The war in Afghanistan is now the United States’ longest running war. For over a decade, the conflict raging in Central Asia has been the stage for some of the shrewdest foreign policy, fiercest wartime strategy, and most delicate diplomacy the world has ever seen. In a country smaller than Texas—and home to 30 million people—an elusive enemy, shifting tribal dynamics, and bordering countries threaten the stability not only of the region, but of the world. There can be no doubt that the war in Afghanistan, as complex as it is fascinating, will be the defining conflict for generations to come. Understanding the War in Afghanistan is an invaluable primer, a book that aims to clarify and explain the country as well as the war. With chapters on the Afghan people, their culture, the history leading up to the war, the Taliban, 9/11, and the various phases of the fighting itself, Understanding the War in Afghanistan is required reading for anyone wanting to understand one of the most important chapters in U.S. history. Included in the book are detailed physiographic, administrative, and linguistic maps of the country to supplement the author’s nuanced analysis of the region and the war.
