Sublime

The missions enabled JSOC to build a detailed picture of the network that moved jihadists from Aleppo and Damascus airports through the Syrian section of the Euphrates River Valley until they crossed into Iraq near Al Qaim. After several years, one name stood out as Zarqawi’s master facilitator in Syria: Abu Ghadiya. The United States tried to brin

As chief of OPD, Eisenhower was not just the War Department’s chief planner. He became Marshall’s deputy for the day-to-day conduct of the war.

By late October, as the French and British offensives to the west continued to succeed, Pershing and his staff began to recognize that Foch’s strategy to end the war in 1918 might actually work. Acutely aware of the AEF’s poor showing—and that jockeying among the Allies for postwar influence had begun—Pershing dispatched Fox Conner to meet the pres

To understand how the U.S. could face defeat at the hands of a weaker insurgent enemy for the second time in a generation, we must look at the structural influences that produce our general officer corps.1 —Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling

AFGHANISTAN

Sean Naylor’s Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command is another case in point (Naylor 2016).

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Although appointed to oversee the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, the choice of McChrystal belies the popular notion of a wholesale shift to a less kinetic campaign intent on building relations with the local population. In his earlier role, McChrystal had led Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for 5 years; this was t

Much later, intelligence officials and terrorism experts who studied the early war years marveled at Zarqawi’s strategic cunning. Whether deliberately or by coincidence, he picked targets that would confound U.S. ambitions for Iraq and ensure that the occupation of the country would be long and painful. The opening salvo against an Arab embassy wou