With its fleet of large transport aircraft, the United States military can put personnel and equipment anywhere on the globe within hours. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in particular, virtually every soldier, every bullet, every pint of blood, and every bite of food have arrived in the war zone by airlift. Transport aircrews have accompanied the troops from the beginning, flying them in, supplying them, bringing them out for medical treatment or rotations home, and in the most heart-breaking missions, carrying them on their final journey back to grieving relatives.This book tells the story of one Air National Guard airlift wing as related by its members. The 167th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard consisted of a squadron of 12 C-130 cargo planes, their crews, and all the supporting sections - in all, more than 1,200 people. The author, a former Associated Press reporter turned aviator, flew as an active member of that unit and interviewed nearly 70 servicemen and women for this book. Their stories include C-130 aircrews who dodged heat-seeking missiles, mechanics who made combat repairs, flight nurses who treated and transported the wounded, even two motor pool truck drivers struck by a roadside bomb. The interviewees vividly describe their day-to-day work in the war zone, revealing the inner workings of a part of the military not usually well covered by the news media.

The Korean War occupies a unique place in American history and foreign policy. Because it followed closely after World War II and ushered in a new era of military action as the first hot conflict of the cold war, the Korean War was marketed as an entirely new kind of military campaign. But how were the war-weary American people convinced that the limited objectives of the Korean War were of paramount importance to the nation?
In this ground-breaking book, Steven Casey deftly analyzes the Truman and Eisenhower administrations' determined efforts to shape public discourse about the war, influence media coverage of the conflict, and gain political support for their overall approach to waging the Cold War, while also trying to avoid inciting a hysteria that would make it difficult to localize the conflict. The first in-depth study of Truman's and Eisenhower's efforts to garner and sustain support for the war, Selling the Korean War weaves a lucid tale of the interactions between the president and government officials, journalists, and public opinion that ultimately produced the twentieth century concept of limited war.
It has been popularly thought that the public is instinctively hostile towards any war fought for less than total victory, but Casey shows that limited wars place major constraints on what the government can say and do. He also demonstrates how the Truman administration skillfully rededicated and redefined the war as it dragged on with mounting casualties. Using a rich array of previously untapped archival resources--including official government documents, and the papers of leading congressmen, newspaper editors, and war correspondents--Casey's work promises to bethe definitive word on the relationship between presidents and public opinion during America's "forgotten war."

Within hours of the September 11 attacks, Sean M. Maloney deciphered that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were the aggressors behind the despicable act. A war in Afghanistan then was inevitable. As a military historian, Maloney was determined to go there to study and record the events for posterity, if for no other reason than the education of his future students at Canada's Royal Military College.What resulted is an in-depth and up-close look at the planning stages, deployment, and aftermath of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. In "Enduring the Freedom," Maloney presents a rare on-the-spot view from such important locations as Kabul, Bagram, and Kandahar. He describes the American-led intervention in Afghanistan and the conduct of the war through early 2003, then discusses the events of 2003 from the three locales in detail.Some critics contend that the war in Afghanistan is another Vietnam. Maloney rebuts that appraisal, pointing out that as opposed to the vague language of the Vietnam era, American objectives were clearly stated for Afghanistan. Those objectives were: to destroy al Qaeda's networks, training camps, resources, and communication systems; to destroy any governmental entity providing support or sanctuary to al Qaeda; and to undertake reconstruction efforts to ensure international terrorists can never again use the country as a base. The first objective has more or less been achieved. How to accomplish the last two is still widely debated, and Maloney offers some insightful thoughts and opinions. Finally, he offers educated advice going forward in the hopeful completion of Operation Enduring Freedom.

In the late 1970s, just as China was embarking on a sweeping program of post-Mao reforms, it also launched a one-child campaign. This campaign, which cut against the grain of rural reforms and childbearing preferences, was the culmination of a decade-long effort to subject reproduction to state planning. Tyrene White here analyzes this great social engineering experiment, drawing on more than twenty years of research, including fieldwork and interviews with a wide range of family-planning officials and rural cadres.

White explores the origins of China's "birth-planning" approach to population control, the implementation of the campaign in rural China, strategies of resistance employed by villagers, and policy consequences (among them infanticide, infant abandonment, and sex-ratio imbalances). She also provides the first extensive political analysis of China's massive 1983 sterilization drive. The birth-planning project was the last and longest of the great mobilization campaigns, surviving long after the Deng regime had officially abandoned mass campaigns as instruments of political control.

Arguing that the campaign had become an indispensable institution of rural governance, White shows how the one-child campaign mimicked the organizational style and rhythms both of political campaigns and economic production campaigns. Against the backdrop of unfolding rural reforms, only the campaign method could override obstacles to rural enforcement. As reform gradually eroded and transformed patterns of power and authority, however, even campaigns grew increasingly ineffective, paving the way for long-overdue reform of the birth-planning program.

An analysis of combat support experiences associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) that compares these experiences with those associated with Joint Task Force Noble Anvil (JTF NA), the U.S. component of Operation Allied Force, in Serbia, and the first 100 days of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), in Afghanistan. Its objectives were to indicate the performance of U.S. Air force combat support in JTF NA, OEF, and OIF, and examine how Agile Combat Support concepts were implemented in OIF.

When thirty-three-year-old Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief made the decision to risk his life and his family to save Private First Class Jessica Lynch -- an American soldier he did not know -- it was more than the everyday reckoning with death that permeates wartime. It was the culmination of a life spent at odds with the repressive regime that held his country.

Mohammed's story is a coming of age tale in a society where violence and betrayal were everyday events, where one in five adult males worked for the state's security apparatus, where a president-for-life demanded absolute loyalty and adulation. Yet even as he navigates a culture tarnished by brutality and corruption, Mohammed reveals unexpected sides of Iraq -- scenes of surprising tenderness and stubborn generosity -- and emerges as an unlikely hero whose values transcend ideology: honor, compassion, and an unshakable belief in the sanctity of human life.

During the Iraq War, coauthor Capt. Jason Conroy commanded Charlie Company, which was part of Task Force 1-64, 2d Brigade Combat Team, part of the U.S. Army’s 3d Infantry Division. A tank unit equipped with mammoth M1A1 Abrams tanks, Conroy’s company was literally at the tip of the U.S. Army’s spear and one of the first elements into Baghdad. Veteran journalist Ron Martz was embedded in Charlie Company. Together, from the unique perspective of an armor unit that was in nearly continuous combat for four straight weeks, Conroy and Martz tell the unvarnished story of what went right and what went deadly wrong in Iraq. Conroy and his soldiers were able to overcome supply shortages, intelligence failures, and miserable weather to battle their way into downtown Baghdad, a place where they were told they would never have to fight. Heavy Metal evaluates the Army’s performance, including its use of tactics that were developed during the war but for which the soldiers had never trained. Through the exciting personal stories of the young troopers of Charlie Company - who experienced a very different war from what was seen back home on TV - Heavy Metal tells us much about the qualities of today’s American soldier, about twenty-first-century desert and urban warfare, and about how the Army should prepare to fight future wars.

The Burmese army took political power in Burma in 1962 and has ruled the country ever since. The persistence of this government - even in the face of long-term non-violent opposition led by activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 - has puzzled scholars. In a book relevant to debates about democratization, Mary P. Callahan seeks to explain the extraordinary durability of the Burmese military regime. In her view, the origins of army rule are to be found in the relationship between war and state formation. civil sectors. That imbalance was accentuated soon after formal independence by one of the earliest and most persistent covert Cold War conflicts, involving CIA-funded Kuomintang incursions across the Burmese border into the People's Republic of China. Because this raised concerns in Rangoon about the possibility of a showdown with Communist China, the Burmese Army received even more autonomy and funding to protect the integrity of the new nation-state. group of anti-colonial guerrilla bands into the professional force that seized power in 1962. The army edged out all other state and social institutions in the competition for national power. Making Enemies draws upon Callahan's interviews with former military officers and her archival work in Burmese libraries and halls of power. Callahan's access allows her to correct existing explanations of Burmese authoritarianism and to supply new information about the coups of 1958 and 1962.

In the spring of 2003, a stunned world watched the armed forces of the United States and Britain conduct a military campaign against Iraq. As a result, the Iraqi regime was dismantled, and much of the conventional wisdom about modern war was irrevocably altered. Yet as U.S. and British forces occupy Basra, Tikrit, and Mosul, the Iraqi nation has slipped into anarchy--and the phrase "shock and awe" has begun to sound more appropriate as a description of the war's aftermath, rather than its opening. Such has been the twisted trail of the Iraq War's dramatic events. But like so many other conflicts, the war ultimately seems to pose more questions than it solved. This book is the first in-depth analysis of the second war against Saddam Hussein's regime. What are the repercussions of the pre-war political fights in Washington, Paris, and the UN? Was meeting initial military goals really due to Anglo-American arms, or had Saddam's regime simply been too degraded to fight? Why didn't Baghdad become a second Stalingrad? Why weren't the occupying forces prepared to impose order? And then there is the significant question: Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Respected military analyst Anthony Cordesman incisively examines the key issues swirling around the most significant U.S. war since Vietnam. Beginning the search for answers is essential to understanding America's awesome power and its place in a new age of international terror and regional conflict.

This book presents the personal narratives of six Palestinians—four men and two women—whose stories are central to describing the greater Palestinian plight in the Gaza Strip, the Intifada, the beginning of the 1993 peace process, and beyond. Each Palestinian has related crucial events in his or her life story, and by reading their accounts, we come to see the struggle through their eyes and put a human face on events that Western media and consciousness have only partially explored. The story of the Intifada in the Gaza Strip, with its tragic and inspiring outcomes, is slowly fading from the world's collective memory. In the final weeks of 1987, however, this small strip of land became the major battleground of what the authors consider one of the few authentic national rebellions of the second half of the 20th century. This book presents the personal narratives of six Palestinians—four men and two women—whose stories are central to describing the greater Palestinian plight in the Gaza Strip, the Intifada, the beginning of the 1993 peace process, and beyond. Each Palestinian has related crucial events in his or her life story, and by reading their accounts, we come to see the struggle through their eyes and put a human face on events that Western media and consciousness have only partially explored. This book is an important corrective for scholars, students, researchers, and the general reading public concerned about the contemporary Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is a history of Israel's expansionist policies, documenting Israel's policy of expelling Palestinians either by war or peaceful means. It demonstrates that the imperialist tendencies in Israel run the political gamut from Left to Right and are not limited to extremists alone. Masalha argues that the heart of the conflict between Zionist immigrants/settlers and the native Palestinians has always been about land, territory, demography and water. He documents how Israeli policy has made it a priority to expel the Palestinians, either by war or peaceful measures. But these imperialist tendencies are not restricted to extremist zealots. The author uncovers the expansionist policies found in Labour Zionism and Kookist ideology. Chapters cover the whole land of Israel movement, Zionist revisionism, parties and movements of the far Right and the evolution of Israeli Jewish public attitudes since 1967.

In this new analysis of democracy in Japan, Bradley Richardson refutes the widely accepted hypothesis that postwar Japan has been a semiauthoritarian and consensual state, heavily influenced by corporations and led by the government bureaucracy. On the contrary, Richardson's extensive newspaper and documentary research shows that Japanese political life has been extremely fragmented and discordant at all levels - in the bureaucracy, legislatures, parties, and interest groups and in business and industry. In Japanese Democracy, Richardson explores power relations and demonstrates how Japan's political system is unlike Great Britain's and similar to those of the United States and Italy, where politics is decentralized and decisions are made at many levels. He draws some important conclusions: that Japan's postwar industrial policy has not always been successful, that the country is as much an economic welfare state as it is an economic "miracle", and that the lack of strong leadership has kept Japan from playing a more assertive role in the international arena. As in the United States, private interests hold central policymaking processes hostage, and weak leadership prevails.

"Hiking through peaceful villages in central Bali, we found it difficult to envision the fires of retribution that lit the island's skyline just four years ago". Thus in 1969 a reporter for National Geographic summed up the dilemma facing those who think about Bali. How can the bloody massacres that shook the island in the 1960s be reconciled with the pervasive view of Bali as an earthly paradise whose people live in harmony with nature and each other? Geoffrey Robinson explores this discrepancy, and in doing so exposes the multiple myths about Bali. His work offers the first thorough political history of this varied and complex island. Scrutinizing the Balinese experience under Dutch colonial rule and during the National Revolution (1945-1949), the Sukarno era (1950-1965), and the military coup and countercoup of 1965, "the year of living dangerously", Robinson discloses previously unexplored conflicts of class and culture which have permeated the island's recent history. He shows how the wide shifts in Balinese politics throughout this century - from the apparent harmony of the colonial period to the chronic violence of revolution and coup - are best understood by relating the island's social, cultural, and economic circumstances to the larger political environment, both national and international. A cogent explanation of Bali's troubled past and paradoxically untroubled reputation, this book is at once a unique history and a critique of popular and scholarly portrayals of modern Bali.

How the war in Vietnam came to represent the outer limits of feasible American intervention, how the working of the democratic process finally forced President Johnson to abandon a policy of escalation, and why the particular events of March 1968 signaled the end of an era constitute the subject matter of this prize-winning, firsthand account. As under secretary of the Air Force from October 1967 to February 1969, Townsend Hoopes had an insider s perspective on events. His book is both compelling memoir and searching historical inquiry. For this new paperback edition, Mr. Hoopes has written a supplemental chapter interpreting the final events of 1973-75 and assessing with masterful clarity the whole period of American involvement in Vietnam, from 1945 to 1975."

Since the end of the draft in the United States, the nation's wars have been fought by all-volunteer forces, creating an enormous divide between the civilian public and its military. Recent wars have taken place during the information age, allowing cable news and the ""new media"" of the internet to change, sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis, the way wars are understood. As a result, a multitude of competing and often flawed narratives have emerged that, ultimately, merely explain events in terms of self-serving political and cultural perspectives. Author Caleb S. Cage, a veteran of the war in Iraq, brings a unique perspective to the understanding of how we talk about war. Why does the American public believe that those who served are somehow both heroes and victims, while the typical service member rarely embraces either identity? How does what happens on the front line get communicated to those back home, and what happens to that information as it travels? Is it possible that works of fiction are telling the most ""real"" versions of what is happening ""over there""? War Narratives is a tightly packed and provocative book containing a series of connected essays on the many competing narratives-both fiction and nonfiction-that are used to explain recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, how those narratives are perceived through preexisting social, political, and literary lenses, and how they often fall short. As Cage points out, narratives are not merely the stories shared or even how they are told; these expressions reflect choices.

This is the story of the first jet versus jet war, the largest in number of victories and losses, and one of the few military bright spots in the Korean War. It tells how an outnumbered force of F-86 Sabres, limited by range and restricted by the rules of engagement, decisively defeated its foe. Kenneth Werrell uses previously untapped sources and interviews with sixty former F-86 pilots to explore new aspects of the subject and shed light on controversies previously neglected.

Kandahar. An ancient desert crossroads, and as of fall of 2001, ground zero for the Taliban and al-Qa'ida in southern Afghanistan. In the north, the U.S.-supported Northern Alliance, the Afghan organization opposed to the Taliban regime, has made progress on the battlefield and Kabul has fallen. But in the south, the country is still under the Taliban's sway, and al-Qa'ida continues to operate there. With no "Southern Alliance" for the U.S. to support, a new strategy is called for. Veteran CIA officer Duane Evans is dispatched to Pakistan to "get something going in the South." This is the true story of Evans's unexpected journey from the pristine halls of Langley to the badlands of southern Afghanistan. Within hours after he watched the horrors of 9/11 unfold during a chance visit to FBI Headquarters, Evans begins a personal and relentless quest to become part of the U.S. response against al-Qa'ida. This memoir tracks his efforts to join one of CIA's elite teams bound for Afghanistan, a journey that eventually takes him to the front lines in Pakistan, first as part of the advanced element of CIA's Echo team supporting Hamid Karzai, and finally as leader of the under-resourced and often overlooked Foxtrot team. Relying on rusty military skills from Evans's days as a Green Beret and brandishing a traded-for rifle, he moves toward Kandahar, one of only a handful of Americans pushing forward across the desert in the company of Pashtun warriors into some of the most dangerous, yet mesmerizingly beautiful, landscape on earth. The ultimate triumph of the CIA and Special Forces teams, when absolutely everything was on the line, is tempered by the US tragedy that catalyzed what is now America's longest war. Evans's very personal adventure that unfolds within the pages of Foxtrot in Kandahar: A Memoir of a CIA Officer in Afghanistan at the Inception of America's Longest War, which concludes with an analysis of opportunities lost in the years since his time in Afghanistan, should be required reading for everyone interested in modern warfare.

Wars have played an interregnal part in American history. Some of these are well remembered, some are not. Among the more significant wars that have been largely ignored is the Korean War (1950-1953) fought less than five years after the end of World War II. Much of the history of this watershed event has been lost or misinterpreted, primarily because the undefined goals of the conflict, the inability of the home front to properly engage, and the failure to achieve complete victory has tarnished it. Resulting from the intense propaganda issued and the vastly limited press coverage, much of what is known is the result of battlefield stories that are basically true but which miss much of the more significant information. These myths appear in the American memory and are told over and over again. In taking a closer look at these myths, such as 'Who started the war' and 'Did the Marines win the Korean War?' a clearer and somewhat unique understanding of the war is presented.

This classic history of the Korean War-from its origins through the armistice-is now available in a paperback edition including a substantive introduction that considers the heightened danger of a new Northeast Asian war as Trump and Kim Jung-un escalate their rhetoric. Wada Haruki, one of the world's leading scholars of the war, draws on archival and other primary sources in Russia, China, the United States, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan to provide the first full understanding of the Korean War as an international conflict from the perspective of all the actors involved. Wada traces the North Korean invasion of South Korea in riveting detail, providing new insights into the behavior of Kim Il Sung and Syngman Rhee. He also provides new insights into the behavior of Communist leaders in Korea, China, Russia, Eastern Europe, and their rivals in other nations. He traces the course of the war from its origins in the North and South Korean leaders' failed attempts to unify their country by force, ultimately escalating into a Sino-American war on the Korean Peninsula. Although sixty-five years have passed since the armistice, the Korean conflict has never really ended. Tensions remain high on the peninsula as Washington and Pyongyang, as well as Seoul and Pyongyang, continue to face off. It is even more timely now to address the origins of the Korean War, the nature of the confrontation, and the ways in which it affects the geopolitical landscape of Northeast Asia and the Pacific region. With his unmatched ability to draw on sources from every country involved, Wada paints a rich and full portrait of a conflict that continues to generate controversy.

The never-before-told story of one of the most decorated units in the war in Afghanistan and its fifteen-month ordeal that culminated in the 2008 Battle of Wanat, the war's deadliest A single company of US paratroopers--calling themselves the "Chosen Few"--arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next fifteen months in a desperate struggle, living under almost continuous attack, forced into a slow and grinding withdrawal, and always outnumbered by Taliban fighters descending on them from all sides. Month after month, rocket-propelled grenades, rockets, and machine-gun fire poured down on the isolated and exposed paratroopers as America's focus and military resources shifted to Iraq. Just weeks before the paratroopers were to go home, they faced their last--and toughest--fight. Near the village of Wanat in Nuristan province, an estimated three hundred enemy fighters surrounded about fifty of the Chosen Few and others defending a partially finished combat base. Nine died and more than two dozen were wounded that day in July 2008, making it arguably the bloodiest battle of the war in Afghanistan. The Chosen Few would return home tempered by war. Two among them would receive the Medal of Honor. All of them would be forever changed.

'Being a JTAC is the closest a soldier on the ground in the midst of battle can get to feeling like one of the gods - unleashing pure hellfire, death and destruction' - Duncan Falconer Meet Sergeant 'Bommer' Grahame, one of the deadliest soldiers on the battlefield. He's an elite army JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller- pronounced 'jay-tack') - a specially trained warrior responsible for directing Allied air power with high-tech precision. Commanding Apache gunships, A10 tank-busters, F15s and Harrier jets, he brings down devastating fire strikes against the attacking Taliban, often danger close to his own side. Due to his specialist role, Sergeant Grahame usually operates in the thick of the action, where it's at its most fearsome and deadly. Conjuring the seemingly impossible from apparently hopeless situations, soldiers in battle rely on the skill and bravery of their JTAC to enable them to win through in the heat of the danger zone. Fire Strike 7/9 tells the story of Bommer Grahame and his five-man Fire Support Team on their tour of Afghanistan. Patrolling deep into enemy territory, they were hunted and targeted by the Taliban, shot at, blown-up, mortared and hit by rockets on numerous occasions. Under these conditions Sergeant Grahame notched up 203 confirmed enemy kills, making him the difference between life and death both for his own troops and the Taliban.

A historical analysis of the policies and military strategies applied during the Korean War stalemate period Korean Showdown: National Policy and Military Strategy in a Limited War, 1951-1952 takes a holistic and integrative approach to strategy, operations, and tactics during the Korean War's stalemate period and demonstrates how these matters shaped each other and influenced, or were influenced by, political and strategic policy decision-making. Bryan R. Gibby offers an analysis of the major political and military decisions affecting how the war was conducted operationally and diplomatically by examining American, Chinese, North Korean, and South Korean operations in the context of fighting a limited war with limited means, but for objectives that were not always limited in scope or ambition. The foundational political decision was Harry Truman's voluntary repatriation policy, which extended the war by up to eighteen months. Its military counterpart was the American-led Operation Showdown, the last deliberate military offensive to coerce concessions at the negotiation table. Showdown's failure (and the Communists' own equally disappointing military efforts) opened up new avenues for solving the war short of a militarily imposed solution. Gibby's research draws on primary sources from American, Korean, and Chinese archives and publications. Many of these sources have not yet been mined in diplomatic and military histories of the Korean War. This innovative book also addresses a significant gap in the study of Korean military operations-the linkage between ground and air pressure campaigns, as well as the many Chinese and American operations conducted to establish negotiation positions. Gibby also explores many political and propagandist developments that assumed great importance in the summer of 1952, such as prisoner of war riots, the bombing of hydroelectric dams, and the South Korean constitutional crisis, which significantly influenced American and Chinese military decision-making. Ultimately, this volume serves as a cautionary analysis of the limits of force, the necessity to understand an adversary, and the importance of strategic consensus. It also offers an effective case study on an underappreciated period of civil-military tension during the Cold War and on how civilian politicians and military leaders must collaborate to determine a realistic and effective strategy.

This is the first book to scrutinize the root causes of problems today with Afghan reconstruction. It begins in 1880 with the coming to power of Emir Abdur Rahman and departure of an occupying British army. On the northern border, Russian forces were also poised. Determined to preserve Afghan independence, Abdur Rahman devised a nation-building project grounded on centralized, autocratic rule and based on security, modernization and economic reform. Though continued by his successors, this project ultimately failed. A key reason for this was that, even as Abdur Rahman implemented policies that might be understood as `Western' and `rational', the great powers of the day took their cue from traditional institutional relationships in Afghanistan; local patronage relations were extended to the international level. In the process, Afghanistan became a rentier state, Abdur Rahman's model abandoned in favor of foreign subsidies increasingly diverted from security and economic development. Successive foreign powers, especially the Soviet Union and United States, have upheld this centralized, rentier model of governance and development despite it consistently failing over the years. This work explores dynamics seldom covered in other studies of Afghanistan, including conflict between state-imposed pashtunization and multiple local/ethnic identities, likewise contradictions between the clericalism and secularism deployed in the nation-building process. It explores the largely overlooked ebb and flow of institutional development in Afghanistan, at all levels, in the context of international interest in the country, with special attention to Soviet and US/Coalition strategies and their effects. It also focuses on the power of patronage relations in establishing and retaining control in Afghanistan, and how the extension of such relations to the international level transformed Afghanistan into a rentier state that struggles to unite its people. Described by one Afghanistan expert as an excellent piece of work, very well documented with close attention to detail, this study offers sober analysis and critical insights. It will interest scholars and students of Afghan affairs plus policy-makers, diplomats, soldiers, international organizations and NGOs, businesses, journalists and many others engaged with Afghanistan and issues of political, military and economic power, democratization and civil-military relations in the region.