Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom were the first major wars of the 21st century. They will not be the last. They have significantly impacted how the U.S. Government and military think about prosecuting wars. They will have a generational impact on the U.S. military, as its future leaders, particularly those in the ground forces, will for decades be men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is imperative that leaders at all levels, both military and civilian, share their experiences to ensure that we, as a military and as a country, gain appropriate insights for the future. When General George W. Casey, Jr., was the Army chief of staff, he encouraged leaders at the war colleges, staff colleges, and advanced courses to write about what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan so that others could be better prepared when they faced similar challenges. This book is General Casey's effort to follow his own advice, offering narratives and insights about his tenure as commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq so that future leaders can be better prepared for the next conflict.

Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom were the first major wars of the 21st century. They will not be the last. They have significantly impacted how the U.S. Government and military think about prosecuting wars. They will have a generational impact on the U.S. military, as its future leaders, particularly those in the ground forces, will for decades be men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is imperative that leaders at all levels, both military and civilian, share their experiences to ensure that we, as a military and as a country, gain appropriate insights for the future. When General George W. Casey, Jr., was the Army chief of staff, he encouraged leaders at the war colleges, staff colleges, and advanced courses to write about what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan so that others could be better prepared when they faced similar challenges. This book is General Casey's effort to follow his own advice, offering narratives and insights about his tenure as commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq so that future leaders can be better prepared for the next conflict.

Summarizes a report on the planning and execution of operations in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM through June 2004. Recommends changes to Army plans, operational concepts, doctrine, and Title 10 functions.

This is the real story of how George W. Bush came to double-down on Iraq in the highest stakes gamble of his entire presidency. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly thirty senior officials, including President Bush himself, The Last Card offers an unprecedented look into the process by which Bush overruled much of the military leadership and many of his trusted advisors, and authorized the deployment of roughly 30,000 additional troops to the warzone in a bid to save Iraq from collapse in 2007. The adoption of a new counterinsurgency strategy and surge of new troops into Iraq altered the American posture in the Middle East for a decade to come. In The Last Card we have access to the deliberations among the decision-makers on Bush's national security team as they embarked on that course. In their own words, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and others, recount the debates and disputes that informed the process as President Bush weighed the historical lessons of Vietnam against the perceived strategic imperatives in the Middle East. For a president who had earlier vowed never to dictate military strategy to generals, the deliberations in the Oval Office and Situation Room in 2006 constituted a trying and fateful moment. Even a president at war is bound by rules of consensus and limited by the risk of constitutional crisis. What is to be achieved in the warzone must also be possible in Washington, D.C. Bush risked losing public esteem and courted political ruin by refusing to disengage from the costly war in Iraq. The Last Card is a portrait of leadership—firm and daring if flawed—in the Bush White House. The personal perspectives from men and women who served at the White House, Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon, and in Baghdad, are complemented by critical assessments written by leading scholars in the field of international security. Taken together, the candid interviews and probing essays are a first draft of the history of the surge and new chapter in the history of the American presidency.

Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), the U.S.-led coalition military operation in Iraq, was launched on March 20, 2003, with the goal of removing Saddam Hussein¿s regime and destroying its ability to use weapons of mass destruction. The focus of OIF has shifted from regime removal to helping the Gov¿t. of Iraq improve security, establish a system of governance, and foster economic development. This report addresses these policy issues: Identifying how U.S. national interests and strategic objectives, in Iraq and the region, should guide further U.S. engagement; Monitoring and evaluating the impact of the changes in the U.S. presence and role in Iraq; and Laying the groundwork for a traditional bilateral relationship. Map. A print on demand report.

The Iraq War (2003–2011) was the most significant conflict in the early 21st century. This book examines the ongoing importance of this war for the Middle East and the world today through first-person accounts of the war and primary source documents. Voices of the Iraq War: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life illuminates the complex and poorly reported realities of the conflict that those without direct experience cannot possibly fathom, presenting detailed personal accounts of what the conflict in Iraq was like across multiple disciplines and through a variety of viewpoints. The accounts are based on interviews with American, Iraqi-American, and British officers who deployed and fought throughout the country of Iraq. The book begins with the story of an Iraqi boy who flees Iraq with his family after Desert Storm and then returns to Iraq as a translator to assist U.S. forces nearly 16 years later. The book is filled with personal accounts of combat and training as well as other real-world experiences that define what the Iraq War meant to thousands of U.S. and allied service members. These personal accounts are supported with national level policy speeches and official statements that help readers put the individual stories and events in national, regional, and global perspective. The book concludes by examining the impact of this war on thousands of young men and women that will last for decades to come.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 Investigates the causes, conduct, and consequences of the recent American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Understanding the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is essential to understanding the United States in the first decade of the new millennium and beyond. These wars were pivotal to American foreign policy and international relations. They were expensive: in lives, in treasure, and in reputation. They raised critical ethical and legal questions; they provoked debates over policy, strategy, and war-planning; they helped to shape American domestic politics. And they highlighted a profound division among the American people: While more than two million Americans served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many in multiple deployments, the vast majority of Americans and their families remained untouched by and frequently barely aware of the wars conducted in their name, far from American shores, in regions about which they know little. Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan gives us the first book-length expert historical analysis of these wars. It shows us how they began, what they teach us about the limits of the American military and diplomacy, and who fought them. It examines the lessons and legacies of wars whose outcomes may not be clear for decades. In 1945 few Americans could imagine that the country would be locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union for decades; fewer could imagine how history would paint the era. Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begins to come to grips with the period when America became enmeshed in a succession of “low intensity” conflicts in the Middle East.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2007 "Surge" of American troops in Iraq, the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in Anbar Province was widely hailed as one of America's signature victories. US Marines and soldiers fought for years there, in grinding battles such as Fallujah and Ramadi that define the experience of Iraq. Eventually, the fractious tribal sheiks in that province, with the help of American troops, united in an "Awakening" that dealt AQI a stunning defeat. The Awakening's success argued that the United States could intervene in a war-torn country and, with the right strategy, bring stability and peace. It seemed to exemplify snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. A decade later, the situation in Anbar Province is dramatically different. In 2014, much of Anbar fell to the AQI's successor organization, the Islamic State, which swept through the region with shocking ease. In Illusions of Victory, Carter Malkasian looks at the wreckage to explain why the Awakening's initial promise proved misleading and why victory was unsustainable. Malkasian begins by tracing the origins of the Awakening, then turns his attention to what happened in its wake. After the United States left, Iraq's Shi'a government sidelined Sunni leaders throughout the country. AQI, brought back to life as the Islamic State, expanded in northern and western Iraq and quickly found a receptive audience among marginalized Sunnis. In short order, the progress that had resulted from the Awakening fell apart. Malkasian draws many lessons from Anbar. Chief among them, the most stunning of victories may not last. The fact that the leading model of success fell apart severely damages the idea that the United States can send the military to a country for a few years and create lasting peace. Even the most successful example was bound to deeper social, sectarian, and religious forces insensitive to temporary boots on the ground. From today's perspective, rather than decisive success, Anbar exemplifies how intervention itself is a costly, long-term project. The most brilliant victory could not escape this wisdom.

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.