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LONG BOOK DESCRIPTION: Unparalleled access to all levels of the Afghan government and coalition forces is the result of John Cook's tenure in Afghanistan. Over the past four and a half years, he has developed an intimate and alarming insight into what has become a hand-wringing quagmire of politically correct, socially and culturally sensitive policies and programs that continue to be implemented, and that can only result in catastrophic failure for the United States, the coalition and the average Afghan. Mr. Cook offers unprecedented insight as he digs deep to rip away at the misguided and destructive policies, including the infamous "Rules of Engagement" that doom our soldiers for the sake of political correctness and cultural sensitivity. This raw and disturbing account covers the truths regarding the appalling and cruel treatment of women, the squandering of foreign aid by, and corruption of, the "Karzai-centric" government that includes the betrayal of its own people. He presents eye-opening insight into the tribal structure that has traditionally guided the Afghan mindset and, despite efforts to "westernize", will not go away. He details the inexplicable and infuriating policies regarding failures associated with poppy eradication, and it is the poppies that are the fuel for terrorist activities. He further provides explanations for the Taliban's continuing control and the problems associated with our "well-intentioned" but misguided counterinsurgency strategies against the Taliban and al Qaeda - strategies that fail our mission and our soldiers. In this reasoned, forceful and intellectually honest treatise, he also courageously dissects the disturbing role of Islam and forces the reader to come face to face with the reality that Islam, not the Taliban, is the real enemy in Afghanistan. After reading Afghanistan: The Perfect Failure, we can only conclude we must no longer turn a blind eye to what is happening in Afghanistan. Mr. Cook's dissection is powerful and provocative. The American public deserves more than the thin veil of reporting that has been done on the subjects in this expose. Due to his longevity in this war torn country and high- level access, few, if any, have had the opportunity to gain the inside and knowledge afforded John Cook; none have had the courage to publicly reveal the shameful truth.
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.
LONG BOOK DESCRIPTION: Unparalleled access to all levels of the Afghan government and coalition forces is the result of John Cooks tenure in Afghanistan. Over the past four and a half years, he has developed an intimate and alarming insight into what has become a hand-wringing quagmire of politically correct, socially and culturally sensitive policies and programs that continue to be implemented, and that can only result in catastrophic failure for the United States, the coalition and the average Afghan. Mr. Cook offers unprecedented insight as he digs deep to rip away at the misguided and destructive policies, including the infamous Rules of Engagement that doom our soldiers for the sake of political correctness and cultural sensitivity. This raw and disturbing account covers the truths regarding the appalling and cruel treatment of women, the squandering of foreign aid by, and corruption of, the Karzai-centric government that includes the betrayal of its own people. He presents eye-opening insight into the tribal structure that has traditionally guided the Afghan mindset and, despite efforts to westernize, will not go away. He details the inexplicable and infuriating policies regarding failures associated with poppy eradication, and it is the poppies that are the fuel for terrorist activities. He further provides explanations for the Talibans continuing control and the problems associated with our well-intentioned but misguided counterinsurgency strategies against the Taliban and al Qaeda - strategies that fail our mission and our soldiers. In this reasoned, forceful and intellectually honest treatise, he also courageously dissects the disturbing role of Islam and forces the reader to come face to face with the reality that Islam, not the Taliban, is the real enemy in Afghanistan. After reading Afghanistan: The Perfect Failure, we can only conclude we must no longer turn a blind eye to what is happening in Afghanistan. Mr. Cooks dissection is powerful and provocative. The American public deserves more than the thin veil of reporting that has been done on the subjects in this expose. Due to his longevity in this war torn country and high- level access, few, if any, have had the opportunity to gain the inside and knowledge afforded John Cook; none have had the courage to publicly reveal the shameful truth.
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.
By the end of 2001, the United States and its local allies had chased the hated Taliban government out of Afghanistan. They had begun a process to create a new constitution and elect a government, and the United Nations was leading a broad coalition starting reconstruction and development. Canada made major commitments to this project, but the Taliban are back. The war restarted and looks to have no end in sight. As John Warnock so deftly explains, this situation is only understandable within a broad geopolitical framework. Under the guise of intending to capture Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, Afghanistan became a target for U.S. imperialism and its desire to dominate the world and its oil and gas resources. Shamefully, but not surprisingly, successive Canadian governments have participated in this imperialist adventure in Central Asia.
As Ambassador and Special Envoy on Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992, Peter Tomsen has had close relationships with Afghan leaders and has dealt with senior Taliban, warlords, and religious leaders involved in the region's conflicts over the last two decades. Now Tomsen draws on a rich trove of never-before-published material to shed new light on the American involvement in the long and continuing Afghan war. This book offers a deeply informed perspective on how Afghanistan's history as a "shatter zone" for foreign invaders and its tribal society have shaped the modern Afghan narrative. It brings to life the appallingly misinformed secret operations by foreign intelligence agencies, including the Soviet NKVD and KGB, the Pakistani ISI, and the CIA. American policy makers, Tomsen argues, still do not understand Afghanistan; nor do they appreciate how the CIA's covert operations and the Pentagon's military strategy have strengthened extremism in the country. At this critical time, he shows how the U.S. and the coalition it leads can assist the region back to peace and stability.
An unflinching account—in words and pictures—of America's longest war by our most outspoken graphic journalist Ted Rall traveled deep into Afghanistan—without embedding himself with U.S. soldiers, without insulating himself with flak jackets and armored SUVs—where no one else would go (except, of course, Afghans). He made two long trips: the first in the wake of 9/11, and the next ten years later to see what a decade of U.S. occupation had wrought. On the first trip, he shouted his dispatches into a satellite phone provided by a Los Angeles radio station, attempting to explain that the booming in the background—and sometimes the foreground—were the sounds of an all-out war that no one at home would entirely own up to. Ten years later, the alternative newspapers and radio station that had financed his first trip could no longer afford to send him into harm's way, so he turned to Kickstarter to fund a groundbreaking effort to publish online a real-time blog of graphic journalism (essentially, a nonfiction comic) documenting what was really happening on the ground, filed daily by satellite. The result of this intrepid reporting is After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests—a singular account of one determined journalist's effort to bring the realities of life in twenty-first-century Afghanistan to the world in the best way he knows how: a mix of travelogue, photography, and award-winning comics.
“A fascinating ground level account of the effect of absurd and inappropriate Washington strategies on Afghans and on American soldiers.”—Abdulkader Sinno, author of Organizations at War in Afghanistan & Beyond Award-winning journalist Douglas A. Wissing’s poignant and eye-opening journey across insurgency-wracked Afghanistan casts an unyielding spotlight on greed, dysfunction, and predictable disaster while celebrating the everyday courage and wisdom of frontline soldiers, idealistic humanitarians, and resilient Afghans. As Wissing hauls a hundred pounds of body armor and pack across the Afghan warzone in search of the ground truth, US officials frantically spin a spurious victory narrative, American soldiers try to keep their body parts together, and Afghans try to stay positive and strain to figure out their next move after the US eventually leaves. As one technocrat confided to Wissing, “I am hopeless—but optimistic.” Along with a deep inquiry into the 21st-century American way of war and an unforgettable glimpse of the enduring culture and legacy of Afghanistan, Hopeless but Optimistic includes the real stuff of life: the austere grandeur of Afghanistan and its remarkable people; warzone dining, defecation, and sex; as well as the remarkable shopping opportunities for men whose job is to kill. Silver Medal, War & Military, Foreword Indies Awards Silver Medal, Current Events, Independent Publisher Book Awards “A scathing dispatch from an embedded journalist in Afghanistan . . . Pungent, embittered, eye-opening observations of a conflict involving lessons still unlearned.”—Kirkus Reviews “Here we confront in granular detail the waste and folly that is America’s war in Afghanistan.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The Age of Illusions
Nearly 100,000 U.S. soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan at the height of the campaign, fighting the longest war in the nation's history. But what do Americans know about the land where this conflict is taking place? Many have come to have a grasp of the people, history, and geography of Iraq, but Afghanistan remains a mystery. Originally published by the U.S. Army to provide an overview of the country's terrain, ethnic groups, and history for American troops and now updated and expanded for the general public, Afghanistan Declassified fills in these gaps. Historian Brian Glyn Williams, who has traveled to Afghanistan frequently over the past decade, provides essential background to the war, tracing the rise, fall, and reemergence of the Taliban. Special sections deal with topics such as the CIA's Predator drone campaign in the Pakistani tribal zones, the spread of suicide bombing from Iraq to the Afghan theater of operations, and comparisons between the Soviet and U.S. experiences in Afghanistan. To Williams, a historian of Central Asia, Afghanistan is not merely a theater in the war on terror. It is a primeval, exciting, and beautiful land; not only a place of danger and turmoil but also one of hospitable villagers and stunning landscapes, of great cultural diversity and richness. Williams brings the country to life through his own travel experiences—from living with Northern Alliance Uzbek warlords to working on a major NATO base. National heroes are introduced, Afghanistan's varied ethnic groups are explored, key battles—both ancient and current—are retold, and this land that many see as only a frightening setting for prolonged war emerges in three dimensions.
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.