In war, there is no easy victory. When troops invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, most people expected an easy victory. Instead, the gamble we took was a grave mistake, and its ramifications continue to reverberate through the lives of millions, in Iraq and the West. As we gain more distance from those events, it can be argued that many of the issues facing us today - the rise of the Islamic State, increased Islamic terrorism, intensified violence in the Middle East, mass migration, and more - can be traced back to the decision to invade Iraq. In The Iraq War, award-winning documentary maker James Bluemel collects first-hand testimony from those who lived through the horrors of the invasion and whose actions were dictated by such extreme circumstances. It takes in all sides of the conflict - working class Iraqi families watching their country erupt into civil war; soldiers and journalists on the ground; American families dealing with the grief of losing their son or daughter; parents of a suicide bomber coming to terms with unfathomable events - to create the most in-depth and multi-faceted portrait of the Iraq War to date. Accompanying a major BBC series, James Bluemel's book is an essential account of a conflict that continues to shape our world, and a startling reminder of the consequences of our past decisions.

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.

The US-led coalition which launched an invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003 led to a decade-long military presence in the country. In the run-up to that invasion, many comparisons were made with the 1991 Gulf War. Ahmed Ijaz Malik takes these two instances of military intervention by Republican US governments to highlight how the official discourse of leaders and decision-makers has an impact on foreign policy and its results. By taking these two examples, he examines how discourse affects real events, and the extent to which the legacy of the Cold War has influenced the decisions which are made at the upper echelons of the US government. US Foreign Policy and the Gulf Wars critically analyses the post-Cold War liberal cosmopolitan and realist discourses related to these two instances of US military intervention. Using an approach which Malik labels 'critical realism', this book examines the ways in which discourses often act as ideological covers for material interests, whilst still not holding a deterministic view whereby these interests alone shape policies. From this perspective, this book assesses the themes of 'Just War', humanitarianism and cosmopolitanism. It furthermore uses the approach of 'critical realism' to engage with a variety of arguments on the emerging role of the US - as they were displayed in academic discourses and other intellectual contributions around each of the 1991 and 2003 wars. Malik relates these discussions to an analysis of the official discourses, documents and policies displayed prior to the 1991 and 2003 wars, as well as to an examination of the resulting actual conduct. Since the implications of the US military presence in the Middle East are so central to the study of International Relations and Security Studies, this book will be invaluable for specialists in these disciplines, as well as for those interested in policy formation and the wider Middle East.

This book takes a fresh look at the Korean War by considering the conflict from a Northeast Asian regional perspective. It highlights the connections of the war to earlier conflicts in the region and examines the human impact of the war on neighboring countries, focusing particularly on the ways in which the Korean War shaped regional cross-border movements of people, goods, and ideas (including hopes and fears). It also considers the lasting consequences of these movements for the region's society and politics.

From the earliest days of his 34-year military career, Victor 'Brute' Krulak displayed a facility for applying creative ways of fighting to the Marine Corps. He went on daring spy missions during the Second Sino-Japanese War, pioneered the use of amphibious vehicles and masterminded the invasion of Okinawa. In Vietnam, his Marines were more successful than the Army and many think that Vietnam might have been different had all US forces employed Krulak's ideas. And yet it can be argued that all of his wartime accomplishments pale in comparison to what he did after World War II: he single-handedly stopped the U.S. government from abolishing the Marine Corps. Now the biographer Robert Coram presents us with a remarkably rounded and deeply intimate portrait of the legendary marine who receives much of the credit for America's victory in the Pacific, the successful D-Day landing and ultimately America's triumph in World War II. Coram gained unprecedented access to the man behind the military myth - and besides revealing the full extent of his achievements, reveals his deepest secret-one that he feared could have destroyed his career.

"In The Naval Air War in Korea, Dr. Hallion has captured the fact, feel- ing, and fancy of a very important conflict in aviation history, in- cluding the highly significant facets of the transition from piston to jet-propelled combat aircraft."--Norman Polmar, author of Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 18th Edition

War exposes the divide between who we think we are and how we behave in extreme situations. Sheri Snively, who served as a Quaker chaplain with the U.S. Navy, has crafted a vivid, unsettling, and ultimately hopeful personal account of the effects of the Iraq war on soldiers and civilians in Heaven in the Midst of Hell. As she served with the Marines working amid the boredom, ten-sion, and seemingly meaningless carnage at a trauma hospital between Ramadi and Fallujah, Commander Snively experienced first-hand the grim reality of combat. As she recounts the way she and the soldiers around her experience war, she negotiates a compassionate path to healing -- marked not by formulaic answers, but by an open and ques-tioning spirit. Illustrated with the author's own evocative photographs, this is a compelling and unforgettable journey into the human soul.

A gripping personal account of success and failure in Iraq during the crucial first year after the fall of the Ba'athist regime This compelling book presents an unparalleled record of what happened after U.S. forces seized Baghdad in the spring of 2003. Army Colonel Peter R. Mansoor, the on-the-ground commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division-the "Ready First Combat Team"-describes his brigade's first year in Iraq, from the sweltering, chaotic summer after the Ba'athists' defeat to the transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government a year later. Uniquely positioned to observe, record, and assess the events of that fateful year, Mansoor now explains what went right and wrong as the U.S. military confronted an insurgency of unexpected strength and tenacity. Drawing not only on his own daily combat journal but also on observations by embedded reporters, news reports, combat logs, archived e-mails, and many other sources, Mansoor offers a contemporary record of the valor, motivations, and resolve of the 1st Brigade and its attachments during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet this book has a deeper significance than a personal memoir or unit history. Baghdad at Sunrise provides a detailed, nuanced analysis of U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, and along with it critically important lessons for America's military and political leaders of the twenty-first century.

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.

"Breaking Ranks" brings a new and deeply personal perspective to the war in Iraq by looking into the lives of six veterans who turned against the war they helped to fight. Based on extensive interviews with each of the six, the book relates why they enlisted, their experiences in training and in early missions, their tours of combat, and what has happened to them since returning home. The compelling stories of this diverse cross section of the military recount how each journey to Iraq began with the sincere desire to do good. Matthew Gutmann and Catherine Anne Lutz show how each individual's experiences led to new moral and political understandings and ultimately to opposing the war.

Based entirely on unpublished primary sources, Tsering Shakya's groundbreaking history of modern Tibet shatters the popular conception of the country as an isolated Shangri-la unaffected by broader international developments. Shakya gives a balanced, blow-by-blow account of Tibet's ongoing struggle to maintain its independence and safeguard its cultural identity while being sandwiched between the heavyweights of Asian geopolitics: Britain, India, China, and the United States. With thorough documentation, Shakya details the Chinese depredations of Tibet, and reveals the failures of the Tibetan leadership's divided strategies. Rising above the simplistic dualism so often found in accounts of Tibet's contested recent history, The Dragon in the Land of Snows lucidly depicts the tragedy that has befallen Tibet and identifies the conflicting forces that continue to shape the aspirations of the Tibetan people today.

In 2008 Major Russell Lewis commanded a company of two hundred soldiers from the British Army's legendary Parachute Regiment on a six-month tour in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan. Company Commander is his story, a riveting first-person account of incredible bravery, telling what it is like to have 200 Paras depending on you constantly, to make decisions which can and do cost lives, to see men under your command killed and injured and being under the most intense pressure imaginable every minute of every day for six long months. Company Commander is a true leader's story - a unique and vivid mix of front-line battles and strategic decision making and an intensely personal and inspiring account of a tour in the most perilous theatre of war on the planet.

Early in the morning of 2 August 1990, aircraft of the Iraqi Air Force bombed Kuwaiti air bases, and then the Iraqi Republican Guards stormed into the country. Thus began what would be called the 'Gulf War' - also the 'II Gulf War', and sometimes the 'II Persian Gulf War' - fought between January and March 1991. Although encountering some problems, the Iraqi forces occupied Kuwait in a matter of few days. However, when President Saddam Hussein of Iraq unleashed his military upon Kuwait, little did he know what kind of reaction he would provoke from the Western superpowers, and what kind of devastation his country would suffer in return. Concerned about the possibility of Iraq continuing its advance into Saudi Arabia, the USA - in coordination with Great Britain, France, and several local allies - reacted by deploying large contingents of their air-, land- and naval forces to the Middle East. Months of fruitless negotiations and the continuous military build-up - Operation Desert Shield - followed, as tensions continued to increase. Determined to retain Kuwait, and despite multiple warnings from his own generals, Saddam Hussein rejected all demands to withdraw. The USA and its allies, 'the Coalition', were as determined to drive out the invader and restore Kuwaiti independence. Gradually, they agreed this would have to be by force. Following an authorisation from the United Nations, the Coalition launched the Operation Desert Storm, on 17 January 1991, opening one of the most intensive air campaigns in history. The last conventional war of the 20th Century saw the large, but essentially traditional, Iraqi Army overwhelmed by forces trained and equipped to exploit the latest technologies. Desert Storm reveals the whole war fought between Iraq and an international coalition, from the start of this campaign to its very end. Largely based on data released from official archives, spiced with numerous interviews, and illustrated with over 100 photographs, 18 colour profiles and maps, it offers a refreshing insight into this unique conflict.

Here you sit at dinner with charming people in a dining room like any other. Yet you know that your hostess has lost a son, that her sister lost children in the 1973 war...in the domestic ceremony of passed dishes and filled glasses the thoughts of a destructive enemy are hard to grasp. What you do know is that there is one fact of Jewish life left unchanged by the creation of a Jewish State: 'You cannot take your right to love for granted...'

This volume presents the best scholarly thinking about why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, a pivotal event in modern US foreign policy and international politics. The years since the announcement of the invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush in 2003 have revealed that the WMD threat was not the urgent threat the administration declared and that Saddam Hussein was not involved with Al Qaeda or 9/11. At least in part because of these revelations a majority of Americans (not to mention a majority of people globally) now believe that invading Iraq was a mistake and that the Bush administration misled the public to build support for war. Lending credibility to public doubts is a growing number of critical scholarly analyses and in-depth journalistic investigations about the invasion, which mostly suggests that the administration was not fully candid about its reasons for wanting to move against Iraq when it did. Thus the question remains: Why did the United States invade Iraq? The central purpose of this volume is to spur and inform the debate by organizing the best recent thinking of foreign policy and international relations experts about why the U.S. invaded Iraq. Taking a broad range of arguments -- about the role of ideas, Israel, and oil, in partcular - and organizing them around a coherent structure, the book highlights current areas of agreement and disagreement, and allows scholars directly to talk to each other. The volume 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.

Approximately 2.5 million men and women have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in the service of the U.S. War on Terror. Marian Eide and Michael Gibler have collected and compiled personal combat accounts from some of these war veterans. In modern warfare no deployment meets the expectations laid down by stories of Appomattox, Ypres, Iwo Jima, or Tet. Stuck behind a desk or the wheel of a truck, many of today's veterans feel they haven't even been to war though they may have listened to mortars in the night or dodged improvised explosive devices during the day. When a drone is needed to verify a target's death or bullets are sprayed like grass seed, military offensives can lack the immediacy that comes with direct contact. After Combat bridges the gap between sensationalized media and reality by telling war's unvarnished stories. Participating soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force personnel (retired, on leave, or at the beginning of military careers) describe combat in the ways they believe it should be understood. In this collection of interviews, veterans speak anonymously with pride about their own strengths and accomplishments, with gratitude for friendships and adventures, and also with shame, regret, and grief, while braving controversy, misunderstanding, and sanction. In the accounts of these veterans, Eide and Gibler seek to present what Vietnam veteran and writer Tim O'Brien calls a "true war story" - one without obvious purpose or moral imputation and independent of civilian logic, propaganda goals, and even peacetime convention.

How can the current civil wars in the Middle East be resolved? This volume brings together academics, experts, and practitioners to explore this question. The book covers the history of civil wars in the region during the 20th century, and then examines the specific causes, drivers, and dynamics of the ongoing civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Updated for a second edition, the book argues that while these are very different cases of civil war, there are patterns that are important to point out at the outset. First, while each of the conflicts appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon, each has a long historical tail. Second, each of the civil wars had deep and complex domestic drivers and dynamics over issues of governance, political identity, and resources; at the same time, all of the conflicts have had deep regional and international components. Finally, all of these civil wars have been affected by the presence or entrance of armed transnational non-state actors, which have had far greater involvement in the Middle Eastern civil wars compared to other regions. The book concludes that these conflicts will require a mixture of local, regional, and international interventions to bring them to an end, but that none of the conflicts are likely to end cleanly through either a negotiated settlement or a clear victory by one party or the other. Despite this pessimistic overall assessment, the book emphasizes that policymakers should use knowledge of civil wars in the Middle East to develop and pursue specific national, regional and global policies. These should be built around mitigating the worst effects of the conflicts and towards ultimate resolution.

It is August 1990, and Iraq has just invaded Kuwait, setting off a chain reaction of events leading up to the first Gulf War. Vicki Cody's husband, the commander of an elite Apache helicopter battalion, is deployed to Saudi Arabia-and for the next nine months they have to rely on written letters in order to stay connected. From Vicki's narrative and journal entries, the reader gets a very realistic glimpse of what it is like for the spouses and families back home during a war, in particular what it was like at a time when most people did not own a personal computer and there was no Internet-no iPhones, no texting, no tweeting, no Facetime. Her writing also illuminates the roller coaster of stress, loneliness, sleepless nights, humor, joys, and, eventually, resilience, that make up her life while her husband is away. Meanwhile, Dick's letters to her give the reader a front row seat to the unfolding of history, the adrenaline rush of flying helicopters in combat, his commitment to his country, and his devotion to his family back home. Together, these three components weave a clear, insightful, and intimate story of love and its power to sustain us.

Dwight D. Eisenhower once quipped, 'You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics'. Military acquisition and procurement - that is, how a nation manages investments, technologies, programs, and support - is critical to wartime success or failure. When unexpected battlefield problems arise, how do the government, the military, and industry work together to ensure effective solutions?During the American counterinsurgent campaign in Iraq, the improvised explosive device emerged as a disruptive and devastating threat. As Humvees, and their occupants, were ripped apart by IEDs, it was clear that new solutions had to be found. These solutions already existed but had not been procured, highlighting the need for more effective marketing to the military by industry. The ultimate successful response - the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle, or MRAP - required years of entrepreneurial marketing by the defense industry. In Securing theMRAP, James Hasik explores how these vehicles, which the American military mostly rejected despite the great need for them, eventually came to be adopted as the Pentagon's top procurement priority. Hasik traces the story of the MRAP from the early 1970s to the future of mine-resistant vehicles on the battlefields of tomorrow. An important contribution to the seemingly disparate fields of marketing and defence policy, Securing the MRAP is an eye-opening revelation to defence industrialists, military officers, and government officials who want to understand how to avoid another IED-Humvee debacle.

Join Air Force veteran Dr. W. Lee Warren as he chronicles his fascinating, heartbreaking, and enlightening experience as a neurosurgeon in an Iraq War combat hospital. Warren's life as a neurosurgeon in a trauma center began to unravel long before he shipped off to serve the U.S. Air Force in Iraq in 2004. When he traded a comfortable, if demanding, practice in San Antonio, Texas, for a ride on a C-130 into the combat zone, he was already reeling from months of personal struggle. At the 332nd Air Force Theater Hospital at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, Warren realized his experience with trauma was just beginning. In his 120 days in a tent hospital, he was trained in a different specialty--surviving over a hundred mortar attacks and trying desperately to repair the damages of a war that raged around every detail of every day. No place was safe, and the constant barrage wore down every possible defense, physical or psychological. One day, clad only in a T-shirt, gym shorts, and running shoes, Warren was caught in the open while round after round of mortars shook the earth and shattered the air with their explosions, stripping him of everything he had been trying so desperately to hold on to. In No Place to Hide, Warren tells his story in a brand-new light, sharing how you can: Discover who you are under pressure Lean on faith in your darkest days Find the strength to carry on, no matter what you're facing Whether you are in the midst of your own struggles with faith, relationships, finances, or illness, No Place to Hide will teach you that how you respond in moments of crisis can determine your chances of survival. Praise for No Place to Hide: "No Place to Hide captures simply, eloquently, and passionately what it means to be a physician in time of war. Over ten years of war, we safely air evacuated more than ninety thousand injured and ill from Iraq and Afghanistan--five thousand were the sickest of the sick. This very personal story captures the essence of what it takes to be a military physician and the challenge for our nation to reintegrate all who deploy to war." --Lt. Gen. (ret.) C. Bruce Green, MD, 20th AF Surgeon General "Through Warren's eyes we observe not only the delicate mechanics of brain surgery but also its lifelong effects on real people and their families, both when the surgery succeeds and when it fails. Thank you, Lee Warren, for letting us see the world through your own unique vantage point. Thank you for the lives you saved, for the compassion you showed, for the faith you rediscovered, for reminding us of the precious gift of life." --Philip Yancey, bestselling author of The Jesus I Never Knew