"After two helicopters in a sister squadron are shot down, a U.S. Special Forces unit operating in Afghanistan is sent deep into insurgent territory to find and destroy a mysterious new organization called Al Ayeelaa."--

From one of the most important army officers of his generation, a memoir of the revolution in warfare he helped lead, in combat and in Washington When John Nagl was an army tank commander in the first Gulf War of 1991, fresh out of West Point and Oxford, he could already see that America’s military superiority meant that the age of conventional combat was nearing an end. Nagl was an early convert to the view that America’s greatest future threats would come from asymmetric warfare—guerrillas, terrorists, and insurgents. But that made him an outsider within the army; and as if to double down on his dissidence, he scorned the conventional path to a general’s stars and got the military to send him back to Oxford to study the history of counterinsurgency in earnest, searching for guideposts for America. The result would become the bible of the counterinsurgency movement, a book called Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. But it would take the events of 9/11 and the botched aftermath of the Iraq invasion to give counterinsurgency urgent contemporary relevance. John Nagl’s ideas finally met their war. But even as his book began ricocheting around the Pentagon, Nagl, now operations officer of a tank battalion of the 1st Infantry Division, deployed to a particularly unsettled quadrant of Iraq. Here theory met practice, violently. No one knew how messy even the most successful counterinsurgency campaign is better than Nagl, and his experience in Anbar Province cemented his view. After a year’s hard fighting, Nagl was sent to the Pentagon to work for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, where he was tapped by General David Petraeus to coauthor the new army and marine counterinsurgency field manual, rewriting core army doctrine in the middle of two bloody land wars and helping the new ideas win acceptance in one of the planet’s most conservative bureaucracies. That doctrine changed the course of two wars and the thinking of an army. Nagl is not blind to the costs or consequences of counterinsurgency, a policy he compared to “eating soup with a knife.” The men who died under his command in Iraq will haunt him to his grave. When it comes to war, there are only bad choices; the question is only which ones are better and which worse. Nagl’s memoir is a profound education in modern war—in theory, in practice, and in the often tortured relationship between the two. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about the fate of America’s soldiers and the purposes for which their lives are put at risk.

A thriller featuring CIA officer Joe Johnson, who later becomes a war crimes investigator, set in 1988 in Afghanistan and the US. Johnson is investigating the whereabouts of Stinger missiles supplied to mujahideen fighting against the Russian military who are occupying Afghanistan. But Johnson runs into deep trouble in a conflict with the KGB.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ... successfully repulsed by the villagers, aided by a small guard of Military Police, which opportunely arrived on the very day before the assault was made. But for this timely succour Tokmanpur would in all probability have been a heap of smoking ruins; as it was, the robbers were beaten off with a loss of several men and one prisoner. The village now reposed for a time in security, and the hearts of its occupants were reassured. Under the grove of mango-trees adjoining a fine old tank, were picketed two long lines of horses, whose riders were scattered about; some seeing to their chargers being rubbed down, others cleaning their accoutrements, some quietly smoking, others playing pachici (a game like chess), and a few lazily dozing. In one corner of the grove a number of camels were ruminating over their allowance of forage. In another the villagers had established a sort of market, in which the troopers and camp-followers were chaffering for rice and flour, poultry and vegetables. Apart from the small tents of the soldiery was one a little larger and of a different shape; this was the commanding officer's. In front of it three men stood in earnest conversation. The three were Fred Scamperby, Abdul Rahlm, now Ressaldar of his troop, and Jorawur Shikari. Fred had written to his uncle to send him Jorawur, when he had been deputed to watch Beni Sing's movements, and the Shikari, though daily more enraptured with his new nose, was as keen as ever to avenge the loss of his old one on the person of his former chief. He was eagerly talking in subdued tones, whilst the Englishman and Abdul Rakim gravely listened. The latter had grown a very handsome man; tall and stalwart, with an erect and soldierly bearing, a fine open face with clear hazel...