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America And Iraq
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Book Synopsis Blind Into Baghdad by : James Fallows
Download or read book Blind Into Baghdad written by James Fallows and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-02-25 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by : Beth Bailey
Download or read book Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan written by Beth Bailey and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book To Start a War written by Robert Draper and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.
Book Synopsis Iraq after America by : Joel Rayburn
Download or read book Iraq after America written by Joel Rayburn and published by Hoover Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? by : Jane K. Cramer
Download or read book Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? written by Jane K. Cramer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume presents the foremost scholarly thinking on why the US invaded Iraq in 2003, a pivotal event in both modern US foreign policy and international politics. In the years since the US invasion of Iraq it has become clear that the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not as urgent as the Bush administration presented it and that Saddam Hussein was not involved with either Al Qaeda or 9/11. Many consider the war a mistake and question why Iraq was invaded. A majority of Americans now believe that the public were deliberately misled by the Bush administration in order to bolster support for the war. Public doubt has been strengthened by the growing number of critical scholarly analyses and in-depth journalistic investigations about the invasion that suggest the administration was not candid about its reasons for wanting to take action against Iraq. This volume begins with a survey of private scholarly views about the war’s origins, then assesses the current state of debate by organising the best recent thinking by foreign policy and international relations experts on why the US invaded Iraq. The book covers a broad range of approaches to explaining Iraq – the role of the uncertainty of intelligence, cognitive biases, ideas, Israel, and oil, highlighting areas of both agreement and disagreement. This book will be of much interest to students of the Iraq War, US foreign and security policy, strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics and IR/Security Studies in general.
Download or read book Wanting War written by Jeffrey Record and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-01-31 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wanting War is the first comprehensive analysis of the often contradictory reasons why President George W. Bush went to war in Iraq and of the war's impact on future U.S. armed intervention abroad. Though the White House sold the war as a necessity to eliminate an alleged Iraqi threat, other agendas were at play. Drawing on new assessments of George W. Bush's presidency, recent memoirs by key administration decision makers, and Jeffrey Record's own expertise on U.S. military interventions since World War II, Wanting War contends that Bush's invasion of Iraq was more about the arrogance of post–Cold War American power than it was about Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, Iraq was selected not because it posed a convincing security threat but because Baghdad was militarily helpless. Operation Iraqi Freedom was a demonstration of American power, especially the will to use it. Ironically, as Record points out, a war launched to advertise American combativeness is likely to lead U.S. foreign policymakers and military leaders to be averse to using force in all but the most favorable circumstances. But this new respect for the limits of America's conventional military power, especially as an instrument of ffecting political change in foreign cultures, and for the inherent risks and uncertainties of war, may prove to be one of the Iraq War's few positive legacies. Record argues that the American experience in Iraq ought to be a cautionary tale for those who advocate for further U.S. military action.
Book Synopsis A Time of Our Choosing by : Todd S. Purdum
Download or read book A Time of Our Choosing written by Todd S. Purdum and published by Times Books. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authoritative account of America's most controversial war since Vietnam, a conflict in which "shock and awe" were not confined to the battlefield It was a war like no other the United States had ever fought. It began with the bombing of Saddam Hussein's bunker and ended with statues of the Iraqi dictator being toppled in downtown Baghdad, and it marked a turning point in America's relations with its enemies, its allies, and its sense of itself. Yet most Americans experienced the war as impressionistic and often confusing—the story of one battle here, one unit there, a report from one city, then another, without the larger context we so urgently needed. Each reporter had his "slice" of the war, it seemed, but no one had the whole story or the broad view. A Time of Our Choosing fills that gap brilliantly, drawing on the unparalleled resources and reportage of The New York Times. Todd S. Purdum, one of the paper's most gifted storytellers, traces the war in Iraq from the first rumblings after 9/11, to the diplomatic recriminations at the United Nations, to the battles themselves and their aftermath. He deftly rolls out the whole canvas before our eyes, showing how the individual "slices" fit together into a single, gripping drama. Purdum also explores the complex legacy of America's near-unilateral action. Since the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush has vowed that the United States would confront its enemies "at a time of our choosing," and Purdum shows in vivid terms what this choice has meant for our now transformed world.
Book Synopsis The Assassins' Gate by : George Packer
Download or read book The Assassins' Gate written by George Packer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named One of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, USA Today, Time, and New York magazine. Winner of the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book on International Affairs Winner of the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq. It brings to life the people and ideas that created the Bush administration's war policy and led America to the Assassins' Gate—the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The Assassins' Gate also describes the place of the war in American life: the ideological battles in Washington that led to chaos in Iraq, the ordeal of a fallen soldier's family, and the political culture of a country too bitterly polarized to realize such a vast and morally complex undertaking. George Packer's best-selling first-person narrative combines the scope of an epic history with the depth and intimacy of a novel, creating a masterful account of America's most controversial foreign venture since Vietnam.
Book Synopsis Why America Fights by : Susan A. Brewer
Download or read book Why America Fights written by Susan A. Brewer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-17 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in hardcover by Oxford University Press, 2009.
Download or read book Dark Victory written by Jeffrey Record and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A prominent national security analyst provides a critical examination of the origins, objectives, conduct, and consequences of the U.S. war against Iraq in this major new study. Focusing on the intersection of world politics, U.S. foreign policy, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Jeffrey Record presents a full-scale policy analysis of the war and its aftermath. As he looks at the political and strategic legacies of the 1991 Gulf War, the impact of 9/11 and neo-conservative ideology on the George W. Bush White House, and the formulation of the Bush Doctrine on the use of force, he assesses rather than describes, judges rather than recites facts. He decries the Bush administration's threat conflation of Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and calls U.S. plans inadequate to meet postwar challenges in Iraq. With the support of convincing evidence, the author concludes that America's war against Iraq was both unnecessary and damaging to long-term U.S. security interests. He argues that there was no threatening Saddam-Osama connection and that even if Iraq had the weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration believed necessitated war, it could have been readily deterred from using them, just as it had been in 1991. Record faults the administration for preventive, unilateralist policies that alienated friends and allies, weakened international institutions important to the United States, and saddled America with costly, open-ended occupation of an Arab heartland. He contends that far from being a major victory against terrorism, the war provided Islamic jihadists an expanded recruiting base and a new front of operations against Americans. Such a solid, thought-provoking study merits attention.
Download or read book What We Owe Iraq written by Noah Feldman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis Unintended Consequences by : Peter W. Galbraith
Download or read book Unintended Consequences written by Peter W. Galbraith and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called by New York Times columnist David Brooks the "smartest and most devastating" critic of President George W. Bush's Iraq policies, Peter Galbraith was the earliest expert to describe Iraq's breakup into religious and ethnic entities, a reality now commonly accepted. The Iraq war was intended to make the United States more secure, bring democracy to the Middle East, intimidate Iran and Syria, help win the war on terror, consolidate American world leadership, and entrench the Republican Party for decades. Instead, Bush handed Iran its greatest strategic triumph in four centuries U.S. troops now fight to support an Iraqi government led by religious parties intent on creating an Iranian-style Islamic republic As part of the surge, the United States created a Sunni militia led by the same Baathists the U.S. invaded Iraq to overthrow administration gave Iran and North Korea a free pass to advance their nuclear programs Obsessed with Iraq's nonexistent WMD, the Bush administration gave Iran and North Korea a free pass to advance their nuclear programs Turkey, a key NANATO ally long considered a model pro-Western Muslim democracy, became one of the most anti-American countries in the world U.S. prestige around the world reached an all-time low Iraq: Galbraith challenges the assertion that the surge will lead to victory. By creating a Sunni army, the surge has, in fact, contributed to Iraq's breakup and set the stage for an intensified civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. If the United States wishes to escape the Iraq quagmire, it must face up to the reality that the country has broken up and cannot be put back together. Iran: Having helped Iran's allies take control in Baghdad, the Bush administration no longer has a viable military option to stop Iran's nuclear program. Galbraith discusses how a president more pragmatic than Bush might get Iran to freeze its nuclear program as part of a package deal to upgrade relations between two countries equally threatened by Sunni extremism. Turkey, Syria, and Israel: A war intended to make Israel more secure, undermine Syria's Assad regime, and strengthen ties with Turkey has had the opposite result. Nationalism: In the coming decades, other countries may follow Iraq's example in fragmenting along ethnic and religious lines. Galbraith draws on his considerable experience in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia to predict where and what the United States might do about it. The United States: George W. Bush substituted wishful thinking for strategy and as a result made America weaker. Galbraith provides some rules for a national strategy that will appeal equally to conservatives and liberals -- indeed, to anyone who believes the United States needs an effective national security strategy.
Download or read book Fiasco written by Thomas E. Ricks and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-07-25 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • One of the Washington Post Book World's 10 Best Books of the Year • Time's 10 Best Books of the Year • USA Today's Nonfiction Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book "Staggeringly vivid and persuasive . . . absolutely essential reading." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "The best account yet of the entire war." —Vanity Fair The definitive account of the American military's tragic experience in Iraq Fiasco is a masterful reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq through mid-2006, now with a postscript on recent developments. Ricks draws on the exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American personnel, including more than one hundred senior officers, and access to more than 30,000 pages of official documents, many of them never before made public. Tragically, it is an undeniable account—explosive, shocking, and authoritative—of unsurpassed tactical success combined with unsurpassed strategic failure that indicts some of America's most powerful and honored civilian and military leaders.
Book Synopsis The War Over Iraq by : Lawrence F. Kaplan
Download or read book The War Over Iraq written by Lawrence F. Kaplan and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the crisis with Iraq continues, Americans have questions. Is war really necessary? What can it accomplish? What broad vision of U.S. foreign policy underlies the determination to remove Saddam Hussein? What were the failures of the last couple of decades that brought us to a showdown with a dictator developing weapons of mass destruction? What is the relationship between war with Iraq and the events of 9-11? The answers to these questions are found in this timely book by two of America's leading foreign policy thinkers. Kristol and Kaplan lay out a detailed rationale for action against Iraq. But to understand why we must fight Saddam, the authors assert, it is necessary to go beyond the details of his weapons of mass destruction, his past genocidal actions against Iran and his own people, and the U.N. resolutions he has ignored. The explanation begins with how the dominant policy ideas of the last decade--Clintonian liberalism and Republican realpolitik--led American policymakers to turn a blind eye to the threat Iraq has posed for well over a decade. As Kristol and Kaplan make clear, the war over Iraq is in large part a war of competing ideas about America's role in the world. The authors provide the first comprehensive explanation of the strategy of "preemption" guiding the Bush Administration in dealing with this crisis. They show that American foreign policy for the 21st century is being forged in the crucible of our response to Saddam. The war over Iraq will presumably be the end of Saddam Hussein. But it will be the beginning of a new era in American foreign policy. William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan are indispensable guides to the era that lies ahead.
Book Synopsis America and Europe after 9/11 and Iraq by : Sarwar A. Kashmeri
Download or read book America and Europe after 9/11 and Iraq written by Sarwar A. Kashmeri and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-11-30 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American foreign policy toward Europe is merrily rolling along the path of least resistance, in the belief that there is nothing really amiss with the European-American relationship that multilateralism will not fix. Not true, argues Kashmeri. The alliance is dead, cannot be fixed, and must be renegotiated. It has not grown to accommodate Europe's emergence as a major power. A kind of United States of Europe, with foreign priorities different from those of the United States, has arrived at America's doorstep. But America is still forging foreign policy for Europe using Cold War realities; both Democrats and Republicans expect the European Union to fall into step, and report for service as needed—under American leadership. Europe, however, has other plans, and as it becomes more powerful on the world stage, competing visions of European leadership have emerged. The Iraq War has brought them into stark relief. For example, as Kashmeri points out, the Atlantic divide over Iraq was more about French-British competition for leadership of Europe than it was about a division between American goals and European goals. He portrays British foreign policy as out of touch with reality, as a policy that has done a disservice to the United States as a result of the Blair government's exaggerated and self-serving view of the British-American special relationship. Kashmeri concludes with prescriptions for forging a new alliance based on a special relationship with the European Union. This agenda is inspired by the thoughts of the leaders who spoke to the author specifically for this book, among them former president George H. W. Bush, former British prime minister John Major, James A. Baker III, Wesley K. Clark, Brent Scowcroft, Paul Volcker, U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, and Caspar W. Weinberger.
Download or read book America and Iraq written by David Ryan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-01-13 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume provides an overview on US involvement in Iraq from the 1958 Iraqi coup to the present-day, offering a deeper context to the current conflict. Using a range of innovative methods to interrogate US foreign policy, ideology and culture, the book provides a broad set of reflections on past, present and future implications of US-Iraqi relations, and especially the strategic implications for US policy-making. In doing so, it examines several key aspects of relationship such as: the 1958 Iraqi Revolution; the impact of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War; the impact of the Nixon Doctrine on the regional balance of power; US attempts at rapprochement during the 1980s; the 1990-91 Gulf War; and, finally, sanctions and inspections. Analysis of the contemporary Iraq crisis sets US plans against the ‘reality’ they faced in the country, and explores both attempts to bring security to Iraq, and the implications of failure.
Book Synopsis Life of an American Soldier in Iraq by : Michael V. Uschan
Download or read book Life of an American Soldier in Iraq written by Michael V. Uschan and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the lives of American soldiers at the onset of war with Iraq, their feelings, living conditions, safety concerns, and more.
