Master of Military Art and Science Theses - 2007 now available online

The MMAS 2007 theses are now available in the CARL Digital Library in the Master of Military Art and Science Theses collection. This collection is accessible at http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/contentdm/home.htm Below is just a sample of some of this year's theses.

1. Occupation of Germany from 1945 to 1948 versus the occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2005: is America on a road to success?
2. Community-oriented policing and counterinsurgency: a conceptual model
3. Psychological operations supporting counterinsurgency: 4th PSYOP Group in Vietnam.
4. Border interdiction in counterinsurgency: a look at Algeria, Rhodesia, and Iraq.
5. Lessons learned from advising the Republic of South Vietnam’s Armed Forces during the Vietnam War.
6. Analysis of the sources of Islamic extremism
7. Emerging requirements for U.S. counterinsurgency: an examination of the insurgency in the Niger River Delta region.

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Personalize your iGoogle page with handy gadgets and your favorite content from around the web. We’ve created at CARL four iGoogle Gadgets to make it convenient for you to access.

1. CARL RSS Feeds
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5. Author Interview and Book Review Podcasts

Just click on a link above and at the next screen select the Add to Google button and our new CARL iGoogle gadget will automatically appear on your Personalized Google Home Page. Don't have an iGoogle page yet? Learn more about it here.

Official Google Blog: Ga-Ga for Gadgets

Scorpion down : sunk by the Soviets, buried by the Pentagon

Scorpion down : sunk by the Soviets, buried by the Pentagon : the untold story of the USS Scorpion by Edward Offley

"In this work of investigative journalism, Ed Offley reveals that the U.S. Navy knew from the very beginning that the Scorpion had been sunk by the Soviets. Even before the Scorpion failed to show up at port, senior Navy officials had initiated an elaborate cover-up to suppress the real story of the undersea battle. The Navy has concealed the truth from the general public and families of the crewmen for nearly four decades. All ninety-nine American sailors aboard the Scorpion died in combat." "Here, Ed Offley tells the true story of the USS Scorpion for the first time. Offley tells the dramatic story of a secret battle that could have brought about World War III, and he conclusively demonstrates that the Navy's official story about the Scorpion incident - from the frantic open-ocean hunt for the wreckage to a Court of Inquiry's final conclusions - is nothing more than a carefully-constructed series of lies."--BOOK JACKET.

Related podcast: interview of the author describing his book Scorpion Down

Savage Wars of Peace: Case studies of Pacification in the Philippines

The Long War Series, Occasional Paper # 24 : Savage Wars of Peace: Case studies of Pacification in the Philippines, 1900-1902 by Robert Ramsey is available for download at ... Click Here

From the book's foreword: "Combat Studies Institute (CSI) is pleased to publish its 24th Long War Series Occasional Paper, Savage Wars of Peace: Case Studies of Pacification in the Philippines, 1900–1902, by CSI historian Robert Ramsey. In it he analyzes case studies from two key Philippine military districts and highlights several themes that are relevant to today’s ongoing operations in the Long War. Between 1899 and 1902 the US Army was successful in defeating Filipino resistance to American occupation using what military leaders at the time called a combination of attraction and coercion. However, success came only after initial setbacks, disappointments, and significant changes in leadership, military strategy, and political adaptation."

New DVDs and Audio Books

We've just added 18 new audio books on CD and several dozen new DVDs. Browse this list of these latest additions. (And while you're at it consider subscribing to our New Multimedia RSS feed so you stay instantly up-to-date on the libraries latest acquisitions of popular movies and books. New DVDs and Audio books

Islamic Republic of Pakistan Online Information resources

The CARL's classified services division has put together a gateway to open source information on the Islamic Repuplic of Pakistan. (If you access off-post some of the resources will require a CARL login).

Senior Officer Professional Digest (SOPD) August Issue : Australian Army

This month the editors of the Australian Army's Senior Officer Professional Digest recommend ten articles drawn from professional and academic journals on the subjects of capitalist-authoritarian powers, China, India, Pakistan, counterinsurgency, terrorism, regime change, Eastern and Western ideas of conflict and civil-military relations.

From the SOPD: "Reading is an intellectual force multiplier for the military profession. Apart from practical operational experience, which is our chief instructor, no other information source can compare with the material to be found in books and professional journals. As far as issues of contemporary importance are concerned, the many high quality professional journals from around the world can provide a small service, such as ours, with many different and valuable points of view."

SOPD Issue No. 52, August 2007 Full text PDF

Contents:

• The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers
• Securing Borders
• China’s Rise in Historical Perspective
• A Friend Indeed
• A False Choice in Pakistan
• Counterterrorism: A Professional’s Strategy
• The Role of Safe Havens in Islamist Terrorism
• Terrorism, Regime Change and Just War
• Good Anthropology, Bad History

counterinsurgency australia warfare

Embedded with US troops in Iraq: Video report

Freelance Journalist Doug Grindle was recently imbedded with a U.S. Army unit responsible for patrolling a rural area just west of Baghdad. The U.S. military has considered this area an al-Qaeda safe haven, and U.S. soldiers are working with the local Sunni population to identify and eliminate insurgents by sharing intelligence and setting up roadside checkpoints manned by local civilians. This vignette includes video of the patrolling, meeting with local leaders, and interviews with the U.S. military. View video 8/17/2007: WASHINGTON, DC: 27 min.

counterinsurgency iraq warfare

technorati claim

Technorati Profile Prater, Jeffrey Starsman Chabbi, R

Retaking Sa'ad: Successful Counterinsurgency in Tal Afar

Link to fulltext of article published in the JUL/Aug issue of Armor magazine: Retaking Sa'ad: Successful Counterinsurgency in Tal Afar by MAJ Niel Smith

Article summary: "The article discusses the campaign strategy employed by the U.S. Army Team Battle, 37th (2-37) Armor in a counter-insurgency in Tal Afar. The author explains that after taking over the place from Fox Troop, the unit had to ensure the mobility in alternate supply route, develop Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police capabilities, and defeat the insurgents in the area. After elaborating on the five-phase strategy, the author also provides an account of the lessons learned from the operations."

About the author: "Major NIeI Smith is currently the operations officer, Army-Marine Counterinsurgency Center, Fort Leavenworth, KS. He received a B.B.A. from James Madison University. His military education includes Armor Officer Basic Course, Armor Captains Career Course, Airborne School, and Combined Arms and Services Staff School. He has served in various command and staff positions, to include assistant S3,1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Ramadi, Iraq; commander, Team Battle, 2d Battalion, 37th (2-37) Armor, Friedberg, Germany, and TaI Afar, lraq;S4, 2-37 Armor, Friedberg, Germany; AST commander, Camp Vitina, Kosovo; assistant S3 plans, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Friedberg; XO, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 25th Infantry Division (Light), Hawaii; and platoon leader, Apache Troop, 3d Squadron, 4th Cavalry, Hawaii."

counterinsurgency iraq

Radicalization in the West: Homegrown threat

Radicalization in the West: Homegrown threat by Mitchell Silber and Arvin Bhatt

The NYPD Intelligence Division has just released a report that examines the radical terrorist threat posed by domestic sources in the United States.

From the preface: "While the threat from overseas remains, many of the terrorist attacks or thwarted plots against cities in Europe, Canada, Australia and the United States have been conceptualized and planned by local residents/citizens who sought to attack their country of residence. The majority of these individuals began as “unremarkable” - they had “unremarkable” jobs, had lived “unremarkable” lives and had little, if any criminal history. The recently thwarted plot by homegrown jihadists, in May 2007, against Fort Dix in New Jersey, only underscores the seriousness of this emerging threat. Understanding this trend and the radicalization process in the West that drives “unremarkable” people to become terrorists is vital for developing effective counterstrategies. This realization has special importance for the NYPD and the City of New York. As one of the country’s iconic symbols and the target of numerous terrorist plots since the 1990’s, New York City continues to be the one of the top targets of terrorists worldwide. Consequently, the NYPD places a priority on understanding what drives and defines the radicalization process."

New York Times News Release on the NYPD report

Insurgents, terrorists, and militias : the warriors of contemporary combat

Insurgents, terrorists, and militias : the warriors of contemporary combat by Richard Schultz and Andrea J. Dew

Book review exerpt: "The authors, Richard H. Shultz and Andrea J. Dew, lay out the framework and goals of the book at the very beginning. This book is not about tactics or even strategy, but “operational art”, the middle ground between Strategy (big “S”) and Tactics (big “T”). Using case studies of Somali, Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the authors demonstrate their theories through both recent and historical encounters. Some of their analysis is interesting as elements of previous success were clearly not understood and led to later failures." Full Book review: MountainRunner blog

Listen to Andrea Dew's interview on NPR's "The World

Read an interview with Andrea Dew and Richard Shultz.

Read "When Soldiers Fight Warriors," a chapter from Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias.

Read Shultz and Dew's New York Times op-ed piece, "Counterinsurgency, by the Book".

terrorism counterinsurgency robert schultz andrea dew

New York Times Bestseller at CARL : Lone Survivor

Lone survivor : the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell

Texan recounts special forces tragedy in Afghanistan.

Excerpt from book review:

"The Battle of Murphy's Ridge, June 28, 2005, was among the most tragic days in U.S. special operations history, and only Texan Marcus Luttrell lived to talk about it.

His memoir, Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, recounts how he and three other Navy SEALs were dropped on a mountainside in the rural Hindu Kush in eastern Afghanistan to carry out a reconnaissance mission and, if possible, assassinate Taliban warlord Ben Sharmak." Full Book review published in Guide live.com

Book review published in the New York Times

Podcast of Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell talking about his book "Lone Survivor"

Is this book checked out at CARL? How to place a hold on it.

Marcus Luttrell navy seals Afghanistan taliban

War by other means by John Yoo

War by other means : an insider's account of the War on Terror by John Yoo

Book summary from the publisher: "John Yoo, the key legal architect of the Bush administration’s response to 9/11, delivers a fascinating insider account of the War on Terror. While America reeled from the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001, Yoo and a skeletal staff of the Office of Legal Counsel found themselves on the phone with the White House. In a series of memos, Yoo offered his legal opinions on the president’s authority to respond, and in the process had an almost unmatched impact on America's fight against terrorism. His analysis led to many of the Bush administration’s most controversial policies, including detention at Guantanamo Bay, coercive interrogation, military trials for terrorists, preemptive attacks, and the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program. In fascinating detail, Yoo takes us inside the corridors of power and examines specific cases, from John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla to an American al-Qaeda leader assassinated by a CIA pilotless drone in the deserts of Yemen."

Book review: published in the New York Times/International Herald Tribune

Book review : published in the New Republic magazine

Audio: Milt Rosenberg WGN radio interviews John Yoo on his book War by other means. (Real player audio)

John Yoo War on Terror

John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship

John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship by Donald B. Connelly

About the author "Donald B. Connelly is associate professor of joint and multinational operations at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A retired U.S. Army military intelligence officer, he has also served as historian at U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida."

Excerpt from Book jacket: "In the first full biography of Lieutenant General John McAllister Schofield (1831-1906), Donald Connelly examines the career of one of the leading commanders in the western theater during the Civil War and the role of politics in the formulation of military policy during both war and peace in the latter half of the nineteenth century." "Connelly relates how Schofield, as a department commander, had to cope with contending political factions that sought to shape military and civil policies. Following the war, Schofield occupied every senior position in the army - including secretary of war and commanding general of the army - and became a leading champion of army reform and professionalism. He was the first senior officer to recognize that professionalism would come not from the separation of politics and the military but from the army's accommodation of politics and the often contentious American constitutional system."

Book review: Journal of American History

New at CARL - Utility of Force by Rupert Smith

Utility of Force: the art of war in the modern world by Gen. Rupert Smith

Author bio: "General Sir Rupert Smith is one of the most senior international practitioners in the use of force. In his forty year career in the British Army he commanded the UK Armoured Division in the 1990-91 Gulf War, was GOC Northern Ireland, commanded the UN forces in Bosnia in 1995, and served as Deputy Commander of NATO. All of this experience informs his book. He retired in 2002."

Book summary: "War no longer exists," writes General Sir Rupert Smith, powerfully reminding us that the clash of mass national armies - the system of war since Napoleon - will never occur again. Instead, he argues in this timely book, we must be prepared to adapt tactics to each conflict, or lose the ability to protect ourselves and our way of life." "From Iraq to the Balkans, and from Afghanistan to Chechnya, Smith charts a stream of armed interventions that have failed to deliver on promises of resolution. He demonstrates why today's conflicts must be understood as intertwined political and military events. He makes clear why the current one-size-fits-all model of total war, fought out on battlefields, that politicians still cling to must be abandoned in favor of new strategies that take into account the fact that wars are now fought among civilian populations. And he offers a compelling new model for how to fight these battles - and secure our world."--BOOK JACKET.

Book review by LTC (Ret) Bill Latham published in August 2007 Military Review

Related podcast: Interview of General Rupert Smith by Jeffrey McCausland in this Carnegie Council Podcast

Rupert Smith

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Overdrive Audio online ebooks, music and videos

Using your CARL library card you can now have access to over 3000 downloadable digital audio books , music files and more via the Kansas State Library's Overdrive website. We've added the available titles to our online catalog so you can discover these great titles while searching our resources as well.

You can get a quick sense of what's available to you by selecting these links below and browsing thru the lists of available titles. You'll find a range of music from classical to jazz as wellas audio book offerings from history to prominent fiction including works by Pulitzer Prize winners like Cormac McCarthy, Marilyn Robinson and Edward Jones.

Overdrive music titles

Overdrive audio titles

Overdrive video titles

Listen to music excerpt Bach Violin Concerto

How to access Overdrive titles

Air Command and Staff College: 2006 student papers

We just added to our catalog some 20 research papers written by students of the Air Command and Staff College from 2006. Topics covered in these papers include effects-based operations, global war on terrorism, role of the media in wartime, and cultural awareness to name a few.

Browse these titles