Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars - Hardcover

Bolger, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0544370481 ISBN 13: 9780544370487

Verlag: Eamon Dolan / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

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.

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I am a United States Army general, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous; step one is admitting you have a problem. Well, I have a problem. So do my peers. And thanks to our problem, now all of America has a problem, to wit: two lost campaigns and a war gone awry.

I was never the overall commander in either Afghanistan or Iraq. You’d find me lower down on the food chain, but high enough. I was present when key decisions were made, delayed, or avoided. I made, delayed, or avoided a few myself.

Our primary failing in the war involved generalship. If you prefer the war-college lexicon, we — guys like me — demonstrated poor strategic and operational leadership. For soldiers, strategy and operational art translate to “the big picture” (your goal) and “the plan” (how you get there). We got both wrong, the latter more than the former. Some might blame the elected and appointed civilian leaders. There’s enough fault to go around, and in this telling, the suits will get their share. But I know better, and so do the rest of the generals. We have been trained and educated all our lives on how to fight and win. This was our war to lose, and we did.

— from WHY WE LOST
 

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Eamon Dolan / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0544370481
• ISBN 13: 9780544370487
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 544
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN; https://www.hmhco.com/shop; ; 125 HIGH STREET; BOSTON; MA; 2110; USA
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