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Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice
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Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice Hardcover - 2014

by Nagl, John A


From the publisher

"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 inthe first Gulf War of 1991, fresh out of West Pointand Oxford, he could already see that America smilitary superiority meant that the age ofconventional combat was nearing an end. Nagl wasan early convert to the view that America s greatestfuture threats would come from asymmetricwarfare guerrillas, terrorists, and insurgents.But that made him an outsider within the army;and as if to double down on his dissidence, hescorned the conventional path to a general s starsand got the military to send him back to Oxford tostudy the history of counterinsurgency in earnest, searching for guideposts for America. The resultwould become the bible of the counterinsurgencymovement, a book called "Learning to Eat Soup witha Knife." But it would take the events of 9/11 andthe botched aftermath of the Iraq invasion togive counterinsurgency urgent contemporaryrelevance. John Nagl s ideas finally met their war.But even as his book began ricocheting aroundthe Pentagon, Nagl, now operations officer ofa tank battalion of the 1st Infantry Division, deployed to a particularly unsettled quadrantof Iraq. Here theory met practice, violently. Noone knew how messy even the most successfulcounterinsurgency campaign is better than Nagl, and his experience in Anbar Province cementedhis view. After a year s hard fighting, Nagl wassent to the Pentagon to work for Deputy Secretaryof Defense Paul Wolfowitz, where he was tappedby General David Petraeus to coauthor the newarmy and marine counterinsurgency field manual, rewriting core army doctrine in the middle of twobloody land wars and helping the new ideas winacceptance in one of the planet s most conservativebureaucracies. That doctrine changed the course oftwo wars and the thinking of an army.
Nagl is not blind to the costs or consequencesof counterinsurgency, a policy he compared to eating soup with a knife. The men who diedunder his command in Iraq will haunt him to hisgrave. When it comes to war, there are only badchoices; the question is only which ones are betterand which worse. Nagl s memoir is a profoundeducation in modern war in theory, in practice, and in the often tortured relationship betweenthe two. It is essential reading for anyone whocares about the fate of America s soldiers and thepurposes for which their lives are put at risk."

Details

  • Title Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice
  • Author Nagl, John A
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 288
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Press, Hudson Street, New York U.S.A.
  • Date 2014-10
  • ISBN 9781594204982

About the author

John A. Nagl is a retired lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army. A graduate of West Point and a Rhodes Scholar, he received his Ph.D. from St. Antony s College, Oxford, where he wrote his thesis on counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam. Nagl served as the military assistant to deputy secretaries of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Gordon England, where he coauthored the U.S. Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual with generals David Petraeus and James M. Mattis. He is the former president of the Center for a New American Security and the ninth headmaster of the Haverford School in Pennsylvania."
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Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice
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Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

by John A. Nagl

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Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

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Knife Fights : A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

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Knife Fights : A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

by Nagl, John A

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Knife Fights : A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

by Nagl, John A

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Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

by Nagl, John A

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