Losing Iraq PDF Download

Author: David L. Phillips
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786736208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
According to conventional wisdom, Iraq has suffered because the Bush administration had no plan for reconstruction. That's not the case; the State Department's Future of Iraq group planned out the situation carefully and extensively, and Middle East expert David Phillips was part of this group. White House ideologues and imprudent Pentagon officials decided simply to ignore those plans. The administration only listened to what it wanted to hear. Losing Iraq doesn't't just criticize the policies of unilateralism, preemption, and possible deception that launched the war; it documents the process of returning sovereignty to an occupied Iraq. Unique, as well, are Phillips's personal accounts of dissension within the administration. The problems encountered in Iraq are troubling not only in themselves but also because they bode ill for other nation-building efforts in which the U.S. may become mired through this administration's doctrine of unilateral, preemptive war. Losing Iraq looks into the future of America's foreign policy with a clear-eyed critique of the problems that loom ahead.

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

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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.

Author: Frank Ledwidge
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300229097
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
This new edition of Frank Ledwidge’s eye-opening analysis of British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan unpicks the causes and enormous costs of military failure. Updated throughout, and with fresh chapters assessing and enumerating the overall military performance since 2011—including Libya, ISIS, and the Chilcot findings—Ledwidge shows how lessons continue to go unlearned. “A brave and important book; essential reading for anyone wanting insights into the dysfunction within the British military today, and the consequences this has on the lives of innocent civilians caught up in war.”—Times Literary Supplement

Author: Ali A. Allawi
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300135378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
Involved for over thirty years in the politics of Iraq, Ali A. Allawi was a long-time opposition leader against the Baathist regime. In the post-Saddam years he has held important government positions and participated in crucial national decisions and events. In this book, the former Minister of Defense and Finance draws on his unique personal experience, extensive relationships with members of the main political groups and parties in Iraq, and deep understanding of the history and society of his country to answer the baffling questions that persist about its current crises. What really led the United States to invade Iraq, and why have events failed to unfold as planned? The Occupation of Iraq examines what the United States did and didn't know at the time of the invasion, the reasons for the confused and contradictory policies that were enacted, and the emergence of the Iraqi political class during the difficult transition process. The book tracks the growth of the insurgency and illuminates the complex relationships among Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds. Bringing the discussion forward to the reconfiguration of political forces in 2006, Allawi provides in these pages the clearest view to date of the modern history of Iraq and the invasion that changed its course in unpredicted ways.

Author: Stephen C. Pelletière
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313083819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
According to the Bush administration, the war in Iraq ended in May 2003 when the president pronounced mission accomplished from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Yet, fighting, resistance, and American casualties continue. Stephen Pelletière argues that it is Iraqi suspicion of the Americans' motive—the belief that the United States is out to tear the state apart—that is fueling the current rebellion. Resistance in Iraq has become a national struggle, tied to the mood of Iraqis generally, as well as to anger fed by experiences of the whole people over the course of the last quarter century. Americans see Iraq as a failed state because they lack knowledge of those experiences and of Iraqi history. That is what Pelletière has set out to remedy. In doing so, he relates American behavior in Iraq to the wider sphere of U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf specifically and the Middle East overall, positioning the war as part of a larger geo-political struggle that encompasses not just the Iraqis or the Iranians, but the Israelis and all of the other client states of the United States in the Middle East.

Author: Philip H. Gordon
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250217040
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
One of Foreign Affairs' Best of Books of 2021 and "Books For The Century"! "Book of the Week" on Fareed Zakaria GPS Financial Times Best Books of 2020 The definitive account of how regime change in the Middle East has proven so tempting to American policymakers for decades—and why it always seems to go wrong. "It's a first-rate work, intelligently analyzing a complex issue, and learning the right lessons from history." —Fareed Zakaria Since the end of World War II, the United States has set out to oust governments in the Middle East on an average of once per decade—in places as diverse as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan (twice), Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The reasons for these interventions have also been extremely diverse, and the methods by which the United States pursued regime change have likewise been highly varied, ranging from diplomatic pressure alone to outright military invasion and occupation. What is common to all the operations, however, is that they failed to achieve their ultimate goals, produced a range of unintended and even catastrophic consequences, carried heavy financial and human costs, and in many cases left the countries in question worse off than they were before. Philip H. Gordon's Losing the Long Game is a thorough and riveting look at the U.S. experience with regime change over the past seventy years, and an insider’s view on U.S. policymaking in the region at the highest levels. It is the story of repeated U.S. interventions in the region that always started out with high hopes and often the best of intentions, but never turned out well. No future discussion of U.S. policy in the Middle East will be complete without taking into account the lessons of the past, especially at a time of intense domestic polarization and reckoning with America's standing in world.

Author: Kelly Kennedy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429910046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
They Fought for Each Other presents a searing chronicle of the soldiers of Battalion 1-26 who confronted the worst neighborhood in Baghdad and lost more men than any battalion since the Vietnam War. Based on "Blood Brothers," the award-nominated series that ran in Army Times, this is the remarkable story of a courageous military unit that sacrificed their lives to change Adhamiya, Iraq from a lawless town where insurgents roamed freely, to a safe and secure neighborhood. Army Times writer Kelly Kennedy was embedded with Charlie Company in 2007, went on patrol with the soldiers and spent hours in combat support hospitals, leading to this riveting chronicle of an Army battalion that lost 31 soldiers in Iraq. During that period, one soldier threw himself on a grenade to save his friends, a well-liked first sergeant shot himself to death in front of his troops, and a platoon staged a mutiny. The men of Charlie 1-26 would earn at least 95 combat awards, including one soldier who would go home with three Purple Hearts and a lost dream. This is a timeless story of men at war and a heartbreaking account of American sacrifice in Iraq.

Author: James Stephenson
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597973394
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
In emergency medicine, "the golden hour" is the first hour after injury during which treatment greatly increases survivability. In post-conflict transition terminology, it is the first year after hostilities end. Without steadily improving conditions then, popular support declines and chances for economic, political, and social transformation begin to evaporate. James Stephenson believes we have lost Iraq's golden hour. A veteran of postconflict reconstruction on three continents, he ran the Iraq mission of the Agency for International Development in 2004-05 with more than a thousand employees and expatriate contractors. The Coalition Provisional Authority, which oversaw the largest reconstruction and nation-building exercise ever, was a dysfunctional organization the Department of Defense cobbled together with temporary employees and a few experienced professionals from the State Department and other agencies. Iraqis soon became disillusioned, and the insurgency grew. Losing the Golden Hour tells of hubris, incompetence, courage, fear, and duty. It is about foreign assistance professionals trying to overcome the mistakes of an ill-conceived occupation and help Iraqis create a nation after decades of despair. Neither criticizing nor defending U.S. foreign policy, Stephenson offers an informed assessment of Iraq's future. Selected for the Diplomats and Diplomacy Book Series of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired.

Author: Mark N. Katz
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142140558X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Assesses what went wrong in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlines how the U.S. can restructure its foreign policy by following lessons learned in the Cold War.

Author: Michael Hastings
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
ISBN: 0522854931
Category : Iraq War, 2003-
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The much-anticipated book by first time author Michael Hastings which was sold by the Wylie agency in a very high-profile deal to Scribner in the USA. MUP is proud to have acquired the ANZ rights to I Lost My Love in Baghdad. In January 2007, Andi Parhamovich was killed in Baghdad. She was a 28-year-old American aid worker whose car had been ambushed in one of Baghdad's worst neighbourhoods. Andi was also engaged to the author, Newsweek's Iraqi correspondent Michael Hastings. Hastings charts the ups and downs of their relationship, a modern love story played out against the ultra-violent backdrop of Iraq. From the day they met in New York to her tragic killing, it is a story that tries to answer questions about our involvement in the war in Iraq. This is Michael Hastings' scathing, savage picture of a hopeless war gone horribly wrong.