Author: Lester W. Grau
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 0788146653
Category : Afghanistan
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
counterinsurgency punctuated by moments of heady excitement and terror. Colonel Grau, the editor and translator, has added his own commentary to produce a useful guide for commanders to meet the challenges of this kind of war and to help keep his fellow soldiers alive. This book will also be of interest to the historian and general reader, who will discover that advances in technology have had little impact on this kind of war, and that many of the same tactics the British Army used on the Northwest Frontier still apply today.
Author: Lester W. Grau
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136615423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
This collection of vignettes was written by Soviet junior officers describing their experiences fighting the Mujahideen guerillas. It is not a history of the Soviet-Afghan war, but snapshots of combat as seen by young platoon leaders, company commanders, battalion commanders and military advisers.
Author: Ali Ahmad Jalali
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahadeen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War is a 1998 non-fiction book written by former Afghan Army Colonel Ali Ahmad Jalali and American military scholar Lester W. Grau. The book was commissioned by the United States Marine Corps Studies and Analysis Division to complement Grau's previous book, "The Bear Went Over the Mountain." Jalali and Grau had planned travel into Afghanistan to interview Mujahideen fighters in late 1996, but were forced to remain in Pakistan when a Taliban offensive campaign started to seize major portions of Afghanistan, eventually capturing Kabul on September 27. Jalali interviewed approximately 40 Mujahideen during the month which the authors spent in Pakistan and an associate, Major Nasrullah Safi, conducted interviews inside Afghanistan for two months to collect additional data.
Author: Russia (Federation). Generalʹnyĭ shtab
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
Offers a candid view of a war that played a significant role in the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union. Presents analysis absolutely vital to Western policymakers, as well as to political, diplomatic, and military historians and anyone interested in Russian and Soviet history. Provides insights regarding current and future Russian struggles in ethnic conflicts both at and within their borders, struggles that could potentially destroy the Russian Federation.
Author: Ali Ahmad Jalali
Publisher: Zenith Press
ISBN: 161060069X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 446
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Book Description
DIVWhen the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, few experts believed the fledgling Mujahideen resistance movement had a chance of withstanding the modern, mechanized onslaught of the Soviet Army. But somehow, the Mujahideen prevailed against a larger and decisively better equipped foe. No one predicted the Soviet Union would withdraw in defeat in 1989. With more than 100 first-hand reports from Mujahideen combat veterans and maps illustrating locations and disposition of forces, this book is a tactical look at a decentralized army of foot-mobile guerrillas as they wage war against a superior force. Learn about Mujahideen ambushes, raids, shelling attacks, fights against heliborne insertions, attacks on Soviet strong points, and urban combat in this rare look at the Soviet-Afghan conflict./div
Author: Katherine I. Miller
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603448152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186
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Book Description
Hundreds of novels have been written about young men coming of age in war. And millions of young men have, in fact, come of age in combat. This is the story of one of them, as told by his daughter, based on the daily letters he wrote to his family in 1944 and 1945. After ten months of stateside training, nineteen-year-old Joe Ted (Bud) Miller shipped out from New York harbor in November 1944 and served with the 63rd Infantry in France and Germany. Although he fought with his unit at the Colmar Pocket and earned a Bronze Star for his role in pushing through the Siegfried Line, his letters focus less on the details of battle than on the many aspects of his life in the military: food, PX, movies, biographies of friends and platoon-mates, training activities, travelogues, and the behavior (good and bad) of officers. Bud’s journalistic skills show in his letters and fill his reports with a wealth of objective detail, as well as articulate reflections on his feelings about his experiences. Katherine I. Miller, a communication scholar, brings to her father’s letters—which form the centerpiece of the book—her scholarly training in analyzing issues such as the development of masculinity in historical context, the formation of adult identity, and the psychological effects of war. Further insights gained from additional personal and family archives, interviews with surviving family members, official paperwork, the unit history of the 63rd Infantry Division (254th Regiment), unit newspapers, pictorial histories, maps, and accounts by other unit members aided her in crafting this “interpretive biography.” The book also serves as a window onto more general questions of how individuals navigate complicated turning points thrown at them by external events and internal struggles as they move from youth to adulthood.
Author: Frances FitzGerald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743203771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 588
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Book Description
Way Out There in the Blue is a major work of history by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Fire in the Lake. Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan, the most puzzling president of the last half of the twentieth century. Reagan's presidency and the man himself have always been difficult to fathom. His influence was enormous, and the few powerful ideas he espoused remain with us still -- yet he seemed nothing more than a charming, simple-minded, inattentive actor. FitzGerald shows us a Reagan far more complex than the man we thought we knew. A master of the American language and of self-presentation, the greatest storyteller ever to occupy the Oval Office, Reagan created a compelling public persona that bore little relationship to himself. The real Ronald Reagan -- the Reagan who emerges from FitzGerald's book -- was a gifted politician with a deep understanding of the American national psyche and at the same time an executive almost totally disengaged from the policies of his administration and from the people who surrounded him. The idea that America should have an impregnable shield against nuclear weapons was Reagan's invention. His famous Star Wars speech, in which he promised us such a shield and called upon scientists to produce it, gave rise to the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan used his sure understanding of American mythology, history and politics to persuade the country that a perfect defense against Soviet nuclear weapons would be possible, even though the technology did not exist and was not remotely feasible. His idea turned into a multibillion-dollar research program. SDI played a central role in U.S.-Soviet relations at a crucial juncture in the Cold War, and in a different form it survives to this day. Drawing on prodigious research, including interviews with the participants, FitzGerald offers new insights into American foreign policy in the Reagan era. She gives us revealing portraits of major players in Reagan's administration, including George Shultz, Caspar Weinberger, Donald Regan and Paul Nitze, and she provides a radically new view of what happened at the Reagan-Gorbachev summits in Geneva, Reykjavik, Washington and Moscow. FitzGerald describes the fierce battles among Reagan's advisers and the frightening increase of Cold War tensions during Reagan's first term. She shows how the president who presided over the greatest peacetime military buildup came to espouse the elimination of nuclear weapons, and how the man who insisted that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire" came to embrace the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and to proclaim an end to the Cold War long before most in Washington understood that it had ended. Way Out There in the Blue is a ground-breaking history of the American side of the end of the Cold War. Both appalling and funny, it is a black comedy in which Reagan, playing the role he wrote for himself, is the hero.
Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428910808
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 68
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Book Description
The defense debate tends to treat Afghanistan as either a revolution or a fluke: either the "Afghan Model" of special operations forces (SOF) plus precision munitions plus an indigenous ally is a widely applicable template for American defense planning, or it is a nonreplicable product of local idiosyncrasies. In fact, it is neither. The Afghan campaign of last fall and winter was actually much closer to a typical 20th century mid-intensity conflict, albeit one with unusually heavy fire support for one side. And this view has very different implications than either proponents or skeptics of the Afghan Model now claim. Afghan Model skeptics often point to Afghanistan's unusual culture of defection or the Taliban's poor skill or motivation as grounds for doubting the war's relevance to the future. Afghanistan's culture is certainly unusual, and there were many defections. The great bulk, however, occurred after the military tide had turned not before-hand. They were effects, not causes. The Afghan Taliban were surely unskilled and ill-motivated. The non-Afghan al Qaeda, however, have proven resolute and capable fighters. Their host's collapse was not attributable to any al Qaeda shortage of commitment or training. Afghan Model proponents, by contrast, credit precision weapons with annihilating enemies at a distance before they could close with our commandos or indigenous allies. Hence the model's broad utility: with SOF-directed bombs doing the real killing, even ragtag local militias will suffice as allies. All they need do is screen U.S. commandos from the occasional hostile survivor and occupy the abandoned ground thereafter. Yet the actual fighting in Afghanistan involved substantial close combat. Al Qaeda counterattackers closed, unseen, to pointblank range of friendly forces in battles at Highway 4 and Sayed Slim Kalay.
Author: Alan Pollock Alan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910646410
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
View more details of this book at www.walkerbooks.com.au
Author: Dodge Billingsley
Publisher: Helion and Company
ISBN: 1911096761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
Stories of combat from a man who embedded with Chechen guerrilla forces: “His insights . . . are second to none.” —Thomas de Waal, author of Black Garden Books on guerrilla war are seldom written from the tactical perspective, and even less seldom from the guerrilla’s perspective. Fangs of the Lone Wolf: Chechen Tactics in the Russian-Chechen Wars 1994-2009 is an exception. These are the stories of low-level guerrilla combat as told by the survivors. They cover fighting from the cities of Grozny and Argun to the villages of Bamut and Serzhen-yurt, and finally the hills, river valleys, and mountains that make up so much of Chechnya. The author embedded with Chechen guerrilla forces and knows the conflict, country, and culture. Yet, as a Western outsider, he is able to maintain perspective and objectivity. He traveled extensively to interview Chechen former combatants now displaced, some in hiding or on the run from Russian retribution and justice. Crisp narration, organization by type of combat, accurate color maps, and insightful analysis and commentary help to convey the complexity of “simple guerrilla tactics” and the demands on individual perseverance and endurance that guerrilla warfare exacts. The book is organized into vignettes that provide insight on the nature of both Chechen and Russian tactics utilized during the two wars. They show the chronic problem of guerrilla logistics, the necessity of digging in fighting positions, the value of the correct use of terrain and the price paid in individual discipline and unit cohesion when guerrillas are not bound by a military code and law. Guerrilla warfare is probably as old as man, but has been overshadowed by maneuver war by modern armies and recent developments in the technology of war. As Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Chechnya demonstrate, guerrilla war is not only still viable, but increasingly common. Fangs of the Lone Wolf provides a unique insight into what is becoming modern and future war. Includes maps and photographs
