Publisher's Synopsis
General Bolger in authors note states his basic premise about the book as below: -- Outwardly bombastic and blunt, this statement has serious basic analytical flaws.Guerrilla wars cannot be won . They cannot also be lost . A guerrilla war is always a state of mind and both sides in a guerrilla war can claim victory or concede defeat.So much for our authors bluntness or trutfulness.May be he was being truthful but his definition of the " truth" was confused or flawed.Bolger defines his role in Afghanistan and Iraq and sum of his experiences as below: -- Bolger defines the specific US failure as below: -- As one who closely observed the US Afghan war, I would respectfully differ.US failure was coming to the wrong place and following the wrong higher strategy framed in Washington DC and not flawed military leadership.Bolgers reasoning is also flawed when he makes te statement below: -- Afghan war as well as Iraq wars firstly were "unjust wars", about which Bolger has nothing to say.Secondly US highest level political leadership was confused and this was the core reason for US so called failure in both Afghanistan and Iraq.There are defects in Bolgers thinking when e makes the statement below: -- The central issue is that the system in USA is based on winning the next elections.As nations degrade, they stop producing statesmen.Instead they produce political con men with short term agendas of winning the next elections.Thus the extension of wars to years and decades to which Bolger refers.Bolgers melodramatical descriptions as on page 14 are interesting but unrealistic: -- He compares US Iraq war of 1990 with Iran Iraq war, while the two wars had simply no comparison.The USA was fighting a mickey mouse foe in Iraq in 1991 which the USA was massively dominating with excessive technological and material superiority, so here Bolgers melodramatics are massive exaggerations.I served in Pakistan Armys tank corps where we had the misfortune to have tanks almost similar to T 72s whose designs were so flawed that a tank which fired a main gun round could not see where his round went, simply because so much dust was kicked by the tank and the tanks height was so low.Russian T series tanks were about 1 metre lower in height than US M series tanks and this made seeing where the Russian tanks main gun round went impossible.Gunnery wise there was simply no comparison between M Series American tanks and T series Iraqi tanks.
