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Blood Year

The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism

David Kilcullen

Oxford UP, 2016

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In this engagingly written overview, counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen offers a sharp analysis of the Middle East’s decline. He describes himself as a “midlevel player” in these events – as an “Australian professional soldier, as a civilian intelligence officer, then as a US government employee” in the War on Terror. Kilcullen delivers an intriguing look at the Islamic State’s ingenious battle tactics, and warns that its “leaderless resistance” model portends further attacks on the Western world. While always politically neutral, getAbstract recommends Kilcullen’s excellent reporting to those seeking objective insight into a contentious region.

Summary

ISIS Prevails

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the US blundered into a war on terrorism in a region it scarcely understood. Justifying a “horribly ill-judged invasion,” George W. Bush sold dreams of democracy and tranquility in the Muslim world. President Barack Obama later embraced a similarly fantastical view, believing the War on Terror was all but won. He referred to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a mere “jayvee [junior varsity] team.”

After years of contention, any possible progress toward a democratic vision disappeared in June 2014, when ISIS captured Mosul, a city of two million people in northern Iraq. With ISIS operatives decapitating men and enslaving women, it’s clear the Middle East is “dangerously destabilized” and roiling with chaos and bloodshed. The summer of 2014 started the “blood year” and marked the unraveling of a decade’s worth of Western warfare in the Middle East. ISIS unleashed mayhem in Iraq, Libya’s government fell, and civil wars split Yemen and Syria.

The Build Up

An al-Qaeda bombing in Indonesia in October 2002 killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. As Australia ramped up counterterrorism...

About the Author

Author of Out of the Mountains, The Accidental Guerilla and Counterinsurgency, David Kilcullen is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and chair of Caerus Associates. He’s served as an “Australian professional soldier, as a civilian intelligence officer, then as a US government employee.” He was General David Petraeus’s senior advisor in Iraq in 2007.

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A. N. 9 years ago

If the target and goals we set to achieve seems to be getting impossible, certainly ways and know how we opt to achieve that particular goals is indeed wrong. so we need to change our tactics and strategies at earliest.