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    Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism
    Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism
    Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism
    Audiobook9 hours

    Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism

    Written by David Kilcullen

    Narrated by John Pruden

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    2014 has the potential to go down as a crucial year in modern world history. A resurgent and bellicose Russia took over Crimea and fueled a civil war in Eastern Ukraine. Post-Saddam Iraq, in many respects a creature of the United States because of the war that began in 2003, lost a third of its territory to an army of hyper-violent millennialists. The peace process in Israel seemed to completely collapse. Finally, after coalescing in Syria as a territorial entity, the Islamic State swept into northern Iraq and through northeastern Syria, attracting legions of recruits from Europe and the Middle East.

    David Kilcullen was one of the architects of America's strategy in the late phases of the second Gulf War, and also spent time in Afghanistan and other hotspots. In Blood Year, he provides a wide-angle view of the current situation in the Middle East and analyzes how America and the West ended up in such dire circumstances. This is an essential book for anyone interested in understanding not only why the region that the U.S. invaded a dozen years ago has collapsed into utter chaos, but also what it can do to alleviate the grim situation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 14, 2017
    ISBN9781515986300
    Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism
    Author

    David Kilcullen

    David Kilcullen is a professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of New South Wales and a professor of practice in global security at Arizona State University. A former soldier and diplomat, he served as a counterinsurgency advisor during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr Kilcullen is also the author of the highly acclaimed The Accidental Guerrilla, Out of the Mountains, and Blood Year.

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    Reviews for Blood Year

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    • 5/5
      An incredible, timely book. Kilcullen was a major participant in the formation of strategies used in our wars in the Middle East/Africa. He readily acknowledges the mistakes that "we" made; by concentrating on the theory of "disaggregation" (mainly going after the leaders of Al Qaeda, it was assumed that it would break up the group into smaller entities, which local the local government could deal with, but in reality it just dispersed the group to other areas and allowed them to start up new groups, including ISIS). That our practices, such as "extraordinary rendition", undermined our standing as the "good guys", drove a wedge between us and the locals, and made it very hard to pressure other regimes into encouraging human rights (do as we say, not as we do). By shifting our focus from terrorism to Iraq, we alienated allies; and after our reasons for the invasion were proven falsehoods, it made it hard for others to trust our "intelligence". How (Rumsfeld) insistence on using the minimum force in Iraq was a disaster, our disarming of the Iraqi army and the Ba'athists created a large, potentially useful group into enemies (who ended up forming future terrorist organizations). Kilcullen goes so far as to likening "Bush's decision to invade Iraq to Hitler's invasion of Russia". By taking our eye off the Taliban and placing it on Iraq, it allowed them to form anew. How our actions worried Iran that "they were next", and pushed Iran into defending themselves through striving for nuclear weapons, and keeping Iraq and Afghanistan unstable (to keep us busy and not give us time/material to extend into Iran). How our actions and threats, unfollowed and disregarded when pushed (the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a "game changer", and then we did nothing) encouraged regimes like Syria to conclude they had nothing to fear from us. How ISIS had evolved their strategies again an again, while we are stuck fighting them with old strategies and failed to adapt. How our timidity in the fight has opened the door to Russia to step-in and take over. How Obama's strategy of "retrenchment" (choosing to "leave" the war instead of ending it) has failed. How we cannot just choose to disengage and avoid the fight because we are tired (isolationist theory), because society today is so interconnected with travel, trade and interaction with the world. Kilcullen's answer is that the solution is not simple, we have to admit that we messed up (the invasion of Iraq, our addiction to killing terrorist leaders to solve the problem, our withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, opportunism in Libya, and passivity in dealing with Syria), and that until our strategy changes, these disasters will continue. There is just so, so much information in this book, it will make your head spin. And wonder what in the world we should do, is there even a solution to the problem. Even so, the book is fascinating, extremely well written and documented, and flows very well. I highly encourage you to give it a try.
    • 5/5
      A detailed, informed and at times brutally honest review of the last few years of war with Islamic State but also of the last decade of counter terrorism since 9/11. The author writes with authority on the subject and demonstrates his ability not to over burden the reader with needless detail. Instead, he gets right to the point and reveals the exact state of play and the evolution of current circumstances. A very intelligent assessment and a must read for those who want to know the truth of current affairs, instead of the media or political spin that so often clouds the facts.
    • 2/5
      I think this is Kilcullen at his worst. To give you a reference I think "Out of the mountains" is his best by far. And to clarify Kilcullen at his worst is still a good read, but the well developed main idea constructed step by step by a multitude of interesting, and entertaining, examples is missing here. In all the books feels like a collection of independent articles that for the most part include already well known information.