Understanding War in Afghanistan - Couverture souple

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 016088831X ISBN 13 : 9780160888311

Editeur : National Defense University Press,U.S., 2011

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

FROM THE PREFACE, by the Author. This monograph is an intellectual primer on war in Afghanistan. I come to this task through a string of accidents that has kept me involved with war in Afghanistan as a Soldier and an academic for over 30 years. It began in graduate school at Columbia University in New York City, where I was privileged to study with some of the Nation’s greatest experts on the Soviet Union and Central Europe, and with another superb crew of scholars on war and peace issues. These interests came together with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. From 1980 to 1984, I worked on my dissertation on the Soviet invasion under the guidance of two consummate professionals: Professors Marshall Shulman, the former Advisor to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on Soviet affairs; and Zalmay Khalilzad, a young academic strategist who later became a colleague in the Pentagon and still later Ambassador to Afghanistan, his boyhood home, and then to Iraq. Three colleagues at West Point were very helpful in my study of Afghanistan: then-Colonel Ty Cobb, my boss, and a future senior director on the National Security Council (NSC) staff; Visiting Professor Jerry Hudson, a superb Soviet expert and a demanding coach; and the late Louis Dupree, the world’s leading Afghanistan specialist, a scholar with a soldier’s heart. David Isby and Bill Olson have also been friends and tutors on Southwest Asia since 1980. My former student and Army colleague Tom Lynch has joined their ranks and has been especially helpful on the issue of modern-day Pakistan. Sadly, a few years after leaving Columbia and my concurrent teaching tour in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, I watched the Afghan war with the Soviet Union end, only to be replaced by a civil war, then a war against the Taliban, and then a war prosecuted by the Taliban and al Qaeda against the Northern Alliance. As a result of this endless war, Afghanistan has become one of the most devastated countries on Earth. In 2001, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations (2001–2004), I was privileged to lead a team of Pentagon policy experts who worked a key part of the Pentagon’s Afghanistan portfolio. Inside the Pentagon, we took our orders from Under Secretary Doug Feith and worked closely with his deputy, Bill Luti, and later the Defense Department’s senior reconstruction and stabilization coordinator Dov Zakheim, the department’s comptroller. My team interacted with an active and productive interagency effort led by Ambassador Bill Taylor, and later the NSC staff’s Tony Harriman. In my seven trips to the region, the devastation of the country and the difficulty of counterinsurgency stood out starkly. On my last trip, I flew home next to the gurney of a severely wounded paratrooper from the Alaska-based 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) of 25th Infantry Division. The severity of his wounds and the devotion of his Air Force medics were vivid reminders of the costs of this war and the continuing sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. I returned to academic life in 2004 and now teach at the National War College, where I have been engaged in a full-time study of war on the low end of the conflict spectrum.

Présentation de l'éditeur

This monograph aims to provide military leaders, civil servants, diplomats, and students with the intellectual basis they need to prepare for further study or for assignments in Afghanistan, a nation that has been at war for 33 years. Officers in the Af-Pak Hands Program may also find it a useful starting point, but their intensive studies will quickly take them beyond the scope of this work. Students or scholars may also find it a useful primer for learning about Afghanistan. By analyzing the land and its people, recapping Afghan history, and assessing the current situation, this work hopes to set a foundation upon which leaders and scholars can begin their preparation for more specific tasks. It also will examine the range of choice for future U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and give suggestions for future study. Much of the outline of recent events will be familiar to many readers. Just 2 days before their 9/11 attack on the United States, al Qaeda operatives posing as journalists succeeded in assassinating the commander of Northern Alliance forces, Ahmed Shah Massoud, inside his own headquarters in northern Afghanistan. This act was an al Qaeda favor to its Taliban brothers, a reward for their past support, and a down payment on the grief that was about to descend on the Taliban from the United States and its allies. With the heinous terrorist acts of 9/9 and 9/11, the Afghan and American people became tied together in a common war against al Qaeda and its fellow traveler, the Taliban.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: National Defense University Press,U.S.
• Date d'édition: 2011
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 016088831X
• ISBN 13: 9780160888311
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 157
• Éditeur: Defense Department
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible