Fusing perspectives from politics, media studies and cultural studies, and focusing on Iraq, this title offers detailed insights into the impact of different media forms. Fusing perspectives from politics, media studies and cultural studies, "Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication" offers insights into impacts on strategic political communication of the emergence of web-based participatory media ('Web 2.0') across the first decade of the 21st century. Countering the control engendered in strategic political communication, Steve Mann's concepts of hierarchical sousveillance (politically motivated watching of the institutional watchers) and personal sousveillance (apolitical, human-centred life-sharing) is applied to web 2.0. Focusing on interplays of user-generated and mainstream media about, and from, Iraq, detailed case studies explore different levels of control over strategic political communication during key moments, including the start of the 2003 Iraq war, the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, and Saddam Hussein's execution in 2006. These are contextualized by overviews of political and media environments from 2001-09. Dr Bakir outlines broader implications of sousveillant web-based participatory media for strategic political communication, exploring issues of agenda-building, control, and the cycle of emergence, resistance and reincorporation of web 2.0. Sousveillance cultures are explored, delineating issues of anonymity, semi-permanence, instanteneity resistance and social change.

Ideal for general readers as well as professionals conducting extensive research, this informative book offers a collection of documents on the origins and conduct of the Iraq War. The Iraq War: A Documentary and Reference Guide gives readers the opportunity to investigate this costly and controversial conflict as professional researchers do-by looking closely at key samples of historical evidence. As readers will see, that evidence proves to be extraordinarily revealing about the drive to war, the course of the initial invasion, the counterinsurgency, the "surge," and the continuing difficulties in unifying and stabilizing the country. From relevant exchanges in the 2000 Bush/Gore debates to interviews with Saddam Hussein to the latest reorganization of the Coalition Provisional Authority, The Iraq War gives readers an insider's view of the conflict's key decisions and events. Each chapter brings together primary and secondary sources on an important phase of the war, with the author providing context, analysis, and insight from a historian's perspective. The book also provides a solid framework for working with the documentary record-a particularly difficult task in this case, as so many vital sources will remain classified and inaccessible for years to come. More than 100 excerpts of government documents, military briefings, Congressional reports, media articles, and more, all related to specific phases of the Iraq War An introductory chapter on the processes and challenges of researching the historic record Commentary in each chapter showing what can be interpreted from the collected sources Sidebars offering biographical notes on key figures; explanations of key terms and concepts; accounts of international treaties, laws, and agreements, and background notes on historical events

"This is the story of Abu Ghraib that you haven't heard, told by the soldier sent by the Army to restore order and ensure that the abuses that took place there never happen again." In April 2004, the world was shocked by the brutal pictures of beatings, dog attacks, sex acts, and the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. As the story broke, and the world began to learn about the extent of the horrors that occurred there, the U.S. Army dispatched Colonel Larry James to Abu Ghraib with an overwhelming assignment: to dissect this catastrophe, fix it, and prevent it from being repeated.
A veteran of deployments to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a nationally well-known and respected Army psychologist, Colonel James's expertise made him the one individual capable of taking on this enormous task. Through Colonel James's own experience on the ground, readers will see the tightrope military personnel must walk while fighting in the still new battlefield of the war on terror, the challenge of serving as both a doctor/healer and combatant soldier, and what can-and must-be done to ensure that interrogations are safe, moral, and effective.
At the same time, Colonel James also debunks many of the false stories and media myths surrounding the actions of American soldiers at both Abu Ghraib and GuantanamoBay, and he reveals shining examples of our men and women in uniform striving to serve with honor and integrity in the face of extreme hardship and danger.
An intense and insightful personal narrative, Fixing Hell shows us an essential perspective on Abu Ghraib that we've never seen before.

'A riveting, unvarnished and wholly unforgettable portrait of America's most storied commandos at war.' - Joby Warrick, author of Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction A stirringly evocative, thought-provoking, and often jaw-dropping account of SEAL Team Operator Robert O'Neill's awe-inspiring 400-mission career. O'Neill describes his idyllic childhood in Butte, Montana; his impulsive decision to join the SEALs; the arduous evaluation and training process; and the even tougher gauntlet he had to run to join the SEALs' most elite unit. The Operatordescribes the nonstop action of O'Neill's deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, evoking the black humor of years-long combat, and reveals firsthand details of the most discussed anti-terrorist operation in military history.

In March 2004, the unprovoked ambush, killing and desecration of the bodies of American civilian security contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, caused the National Command Authorities in Washington, DC. to demand that the newly arrived Marine Expeditionary Force there take action against the perpetrators and other insurgent forces. Planned Stability and Support Operations were cast aside as insurgent fighters dared the Marines to enter Fallujah. Marine infantrymen, tankers, helicopter crews, and amphibious vehicle drivers all pitched into high-intensity battles and firefights during the first fights of Fallujah in April 2004. Across the board cooperation and innovation marked these fighting Marines in combined arms fights that no one expected. Marines fought in the streets, conducted house-to-house searches, cleared buildings of enemy, and used tank main guns in direct support of urban environment operations. Helicopter crews supported operations on the ground with rockets and machine-gun fire, and Amtrac Marines transported forces to face enemy RPG and machine-gun fire. Marines from infantry squad members to a battalion commander were interviewed by Marine Corps field historians within days or weeks of the events at nearby combat outposts and camps. This book combines these interview notes and the words of the men themselves to create a unique narrative of Marines in this combat.

After the swift defeat of the Taliban in 2001, American optimism has steadily evaporated in the face of mounting violence; a new "war of a thousand cuts" has now brought the country to its knees. In the Graveyard of Empires is a political history of Afghanistan in the "Age of Terror" from 2001 to 2009, exploring the fundamental tragedy of America's longest war since Vietnam. After a brief survey of the great empires in Afghanistan-the campaigns of Alexander the Great, the British in the era of Kipling, and the late Soviet Union-Seth G. Jones examines the central question of our own war: how did an insurgency develop? Following the September 11 attacks, the United States successfully overthrew the Taliban regime. It established security throughout the country-killing, capturing, or scattering most of al Qa'ida's senior operatives-and Afghanistan finally began to emerge from more than two decades of struggle and conflict. But Jones argues that as early as 2001 planning for the Iraq War siphoned off resources and talented personnel, undermining the gains that had been made. After eight years, he says, the United States has managed to push al Qa'ida's headquarters about one hundred miles across the border into Pakistan, the distance from New York to Philadelphia. While observing the tense and often adversarial relationship between NATO allies in the Coalition, Jones-who has distinguished himself at RAND and was recently named by Esquire as one of the "Best and Brightest" young policy experts-introduces us to key figures on both sides of the war. Harnessing important new research and integrating thousands of declassified government documents, Jones then analyzes the insurgency from a historical and structural point of view, showing how a rising drug trade, poor security forces, and pervasive corruption undermined the Karzai government, while Americans abandoned a successful strategy, failed to provide the necessary support, and allowed a growing sanctuary for insurgents in Pakistan to catalyze the Taliban resurgence. Examining what has worked thus far-and what has not-this serious and important book underscores the challenges we face in stabilizing the country and explains where we went wrong and what we must do if the United States is to avoid the disastrous fate that has befallen many of the great world powers to enter the region.

Military cemeteries are one of the most prominent cultural landscapes of Israel. Their story reflects largely the main social processes that Israeli society has been undergoing since the War of Independence (1948) until today. Until the end of the 1970s, the military tombstones and their surroundings were uniform and equal, according to rules set by the State. However, since the 1980s families of the fallen soldiers started to add on the tombstone personal expressions, as well as personal objects, photographs, military artifacts etc. Thus the military tombstone and the Israeli military cemetery became one of the expressions of the dramatic transformation, from a society which emphasized the importance of the collective, to a society which intensifies the significance of the individual. The book is based on many archival documents, as well as interviews and photographs, all of which shed light on one of the most sensitive issues in Israeli society and express its importance as a central component of Israeli identity.

This book explores the important role that the Korean War played in Turkish culture and society in the 1950s. Despite the fact that fewer than 15,000 Turkish soldiers served in Korea, this study shows that the Turkish public was exposed to the war in an unprecedented manner, considering the relatively small size of the country's military contribution. It examines how the Turkish people understood the war and its causes, how propaganda was used to 'sell' the war to the public, and the impact of these messages on the Turkish public. Drawing on literary and visual sources, including archival documents, newspapers, protocols of parliamentary sessions, books, poems, plays, memoirs, cartoons and films, the book shows how the propaganda employed by the state and other influential civic groups in Turkey aimed to shape public opinion regarding the Korean War. It explores why this mattered to Turkish politicians, viewing this as instrumental in achieving the country's admission to NATO, and why it mattered to Turkish people more widely, seeing instead a war in the name of universal ideas of freedom, humanity and justice, and comparing the Turkish case to other states that participated in the war.

***SOON TO BE A MAJOR HOLLYWOOD FILM*** 'This is aerial drama at its best. Fast, powerful, and moving.' Erik Larson Devotion tells the gripping story of the US Navy's most famous aviator duo - Tom Hudner, a white New Englander, and Jesse Brown, a black sharecropper's son from Mississippi. Against all odds, Jesse beat back racism to become the Navy's first black aviator. Against all expectations, Tom passed up Harvard to fly fighter planes for his country. While much of America remained divided by segregation, the two became wingmen in Fighter Squadron 32 and went on to fight side-by-side in the Korean War. Adam Makos follows Tom and Jesse's dramatic journey to the war's climatic battle at the Chosin Reservoir, where they fought to save an entire division of trapped Marines. It was here that one of them was faced with an unthinkable choice - and discovered how far they would go to save a friend.

This book examines the United States neoconservative movement, arguing that its support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was rooted in an intelligence theory shaped by the policy struggles of the Cold War. The origins of neoconservative engagement with intelligence theory are traced to a tradition of labour anti-communism that emerged in the early 20th century and subsequently provided the Central Intelligence Agency with key allies in the state-private networks of the Cold War era. Reflecting on the break-up of Cold War liberalism and the challenge to state-private networks in the 1970s, the book maps the neoconservative response that influenced developments in United States intelligence policy, counterintelligence and covert action. With the labour roots of neoconservatism widely acknowledged but rarely systematically pursued, this new approach deploys the neoconservative literature of intelligence as evidence of a tradition rooted in the labour anti-communist self-image as allies rather than agents of the American state. This book will be of great interest to all students of intelligence studies, Cold War history, United States foreign policy and international relations.

In 1950, just five years after the end of World War II, Britain and America again went to war--this time to try and combat the spread of communism in East Asia following the invasion of South Korea by communist forces from the North. This book charts the course of the UK-US 'special relationship' from the journey to war beginning in 1947 to the fall of the Labour government in 1951. Ian McLaine casts fresh light on relations between Truman and Attlee and their officials, diplomats and advisors, including Acheson and MacArthur. He shows how Britain was persuaded to join a war it could ill afford and was forced to rearm at great cost to the economy. The decision to participate in the war caused great strain to the Labour party--provoking the Bevan-Gaitskell split which was to keep the party out of office for the next decade. McLaine's revisionist study shows how disastrous the war was for the British--and for the Labour party in particular. It sheds important new light on UK-US relations during a key era in diplomatic and Cold War history.

The first account of the new Taliban-showing who they are, what they want, and how they differ from their predecessors Since the fall of Kabul in 2021, the Taliban have effective control of Afghanistan-a scenario few Western commentators anticipated. But after a twenty-year-long bitter war against the Republic of Afghanistan, reestablishing control is a complex procedure. What is the Taliban's strategy now that they've returned to power? In this groundbreaking new account, Hassan Abbas examines the resurgent Taliban as ruptures between moderates and the hardliners in power continue to widen. The group is now facing debilitating threats-from humanitarian crises to the Islamic State in Khorasan-but also engaging on the world stage, particularly with China and central Asian states. Making considered use of sources and contacts in the region, and offering profiles of major Taliban leaders, Return of the Taliban is the essential account of the movement as it develops and consolidates its grasp on Afghanistan.

'Soft' Counterinsurgency reviews the promise and actual achievement of Human Terrain Teams, the small groups of social scientists that were eventually embedded in every combat brigade in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book, based on interviews with both HTT personnel and their military commanders, examines the military's need for sociocultural information, the ethical issues surrounding research carried out in combat zones, and the tensions between military and social science organizational cultures. The account provides a close, detailed account of HTT activities, a critical reflection on the possibilities of creating a 'softer, ' less violent counterinsurgency, and the difficulty of attempting to make war more 'intelligent' and discriminating.

What happens when a career Marine officer stops believing in the doctrine of the Corps and the official pretexts for war? In 2006, Winston Tierney deployed to Iraq's Anbar Province with the Fourth Reconnaissance Battalion, excited and proud to serve his country in the fight against international terrorism. After several trips to Iraq over the next nine years he returned depleted by hatred, mendacity, alcohol abuse and PTSD, he felt he had "seen behind the curtain"-and didn't like what he saw. This hard-hitting memoir depicts the brutal realities of the conflict in Iraq at street level, while giving a clear-eyed treatise on the immorality of war and the catastrophe of America's failures in the Middle East.

A Times Political Book of the Year 2022 A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war's echoing legacy. Elliot Ackerman left the American military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and, later, as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August of 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. The official evacuation process was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe. Ackerman was drawn into an impromptu effort to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America's longest war, but the success they achieved afforded a degree of redemption: and, for Ackerman, a chance to reconcile his past with his present. The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week at its bitter end. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves in a personal history of the war's long progress, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11. It is a play in five acts with a tragic denouement. Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war's trajectory will find a trenchant accounting here. And yet The Fifth Act is not an exercise in finger-pointing: it brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, who fought the war with courage and dedication, in good faith and at great personal cost. Understanding combatants' experiences and sacrifices demands reservoirs of wisdom and the gifts of an extraordinary storyteller. In Elliot Ackerman, this story has found that author.The Fifth Act is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.

This book analyses the problematique of governance and administration of cultural diversity within the modern state of Afghanistan and traces patterns of national integration. It explores state construction in twentieth-century Afghanistan and Afghan nationalism, and explains the shifts in the state's policies and societal responses to different forms of governance of cultural diversity. The book problematizes liberalism, communitarianism, and multiculturalism as approaches to governance of diversity within the nation-state. It suggests that while the western models of multiculturalism have recognized the need to accommodate different cultures, they failed to engage with them through intercultural dialogue. It also elaborates the challenge of intra-group diversity and the problem of accommodating individual choice and freedom while recognising group rights and adoption of multiculturalism. The book develops an alternative approach through synthesising critical multiculturalism and interculturalism as a framework on a democratic and inclusive approach to governance of diversity. A major intervention in understanding a war-torn country through an insider account, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics and international relations, especially those concerned with multiculturalism, state-building, nationalism, and liberalism, as well as those in cultural studies, history, Afghanistan studies, South Asian studies, Middle East studies, minority studies, and to policymakers.

In this fully illustrated introduction, Dr Carter Malkasian provides a concise overview of the so-called "Forgotten War" in Korea. From 1950 to 1953, the most powerful countries in the world engaged in a major conventional war in Korea. Yet ironically this conflict has come to be known as the USA's "Forgotten War." Esteemed historian Dr Carter Malkasian explains how this conflict in a small peninsula in East Asia had a tremendous impact on the entire international system and the balance of power between the two superpowers, America and Russia. In this illustrated history, he examines how the West demonstrated its resolve to thwart Communist aggression and the armed forces of China, the Soviet Union and the United States came into direct combat for the only time during the Cold War. Updated and revised for the new edition, with specially commissioned color maps and new images throughout, this is a detailed introduction to a significant turning point in the Cold War.

American military power in the War on Terror has increasingly depended on the capacity to see the enemy. The act of seeing-enhanced by electronic and digital technologies-has separated shooter from target, eliminating risk of bodily harm to the remote warrior, while YouTube videos eroticize pulling the trigger and video games blur the line between simulated play and fighting. Light It Up examines the visual culture of the early twenty-first century military. Focusing on the Marine Corps, which played a critical part in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, John Pettegrew argues that U.S. military force in the Iraq War was projected through an "optics of combat." Powerful military technology developed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has placed war in a new posthuman era. Pettegrew's interviews with marines, as well as his analysis of first-person shooter videogames and combat footage, lead to startling insights into the militarization of popular digital culture. An essential study for readers interested in modern warfare, policy makers, and historians of technology, war, and visual and military culture.

Based on in-depth interviews with tribal Sheiks involved in the Awakening and their American military counterparts, Confronting al Qaeda is a study of decision-making processes and the political psychology of the Sunni Awakening in al Anbar. It traces the change in American military strategy that made the Awakening collaboration between the Sunni tribes and the U.S. forces possible. It explains how the evolution of the tribal leaders' perspective and of the American military strategy led to defeat al Qaeda in al Anbar. The process of these changing mutual images is detailed as well as how the cooperation between groups led to further evolution of perceptions. Political and military realities urgently forced these perceptual and social identity shifts initially, but the process of cooperation and engagement accelerated these shifts through increasingly mutually beneficial cooperation and interaction during the battle with al Qaeda in Iraq.

During the Korean War nearly a thousand British servicemen, along with a handful of British civilians, were captured by North Korean and Red Chinese forces. In various camps in the vicinity of Pyongyang and villages along the Yalu River these men found themselves subjected to a prolonged effort by the enemy to undermine their allegiance to the Crown and enlist them in various propaganda campaigns directed against the UN war effort. British Prisoners of the korean War is the first academic study to examine in detail exactly what happened to the major groups of British military and civilian prisoners held in different locations at various junctures between 1950 and 1953. It explores the extent to which factors such as exposure to the actions of the North Koreans as against the Red Chinese, evolving physical conditions, enemy re-education efforts, communist attempts at blackmail, British attitudes towards the Americans, and personal background and leadership qualities among captives themselves influenced the willingness and ability of the British prisoners to collaborate or resist. Thanks to the availability of hitherto classified or underutilized source materials, it is now possible to test the common popular assumption-based on official accounts and memoirs from the 1950s-that, in marked contrast to their American cousins, British captives in the Korean War were pretty much immune to communist efforts at subverting their loyalty. The results suggest that British attitudes and actions while in enemy hands were rather more nuanced and varied than previously assumed.

During two decades of fighting in Afghanistan, U.S. service members confronted numerous challenges in their mission to secure the country from the threat of al-Qaeda and the Taliban and assist in rebuilding efforts. Because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan occurred simultaneously, much of the American public conflated them or failed to notice the Afghanistan War; and most of the war's archival material remains classified and closed to civilian researchers. Drawing on interviews and letters home, this book relates the Afghanistan War through the experiences of American troops, with firsthand accounts of both combat and humanitarian operations, the environment, living conditions and interactions with the locals.

Afghan women were at the forefront of global agendas in late 2001, fueled by a mix of media coverage, humanitarian intervention and military operations. Calls for "liberating" Afghan women were widespread. Women's roles in Afghanistan have long been politically divisive, marked by struggles between modernization and tradition. Women, politics, and the state have always been intertwined in Afghanistan, and conflicts have been fueled by attempts to challenge or change women's status. It may appear that we have come full circle twenty years later, in late 2021, when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban once more. Women's rights in Afghanistan have been stripped away, and any gains-however tenuous-now appear lost. Today, the country navigates both a humanitarian and a human rights crisis. This book measures the rhetoric of liberation and the physical and ideological occupations of Afghanistan over the twenty-year period from 2001 through 2021 through the voices, perspectives, and experiences of those who are implicated in this reality-Afghan women.