The War Cabinet, All the Presidents’ Wars - A History of America’s War on Terror, From Shock and Awe to “Are We Still Doing This?” #1008131

Twenty-five years ago, America declared a new kind of war.
What began in the aftermath of September 11 became a sprawling history of invasions, occupations, drone strikes, intelligence operations, special forces missions, shifting alliances, presidential speeches, secret programs, and promises that the fighting was finally coming to an end.

It rarely did.

From the opening campaigns in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq to the rise of ISIS, the expansion of drone warfare, the long struggle against the Taliban, and the eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan, this book follows America's post-9/11 wars through the decisions made in the White House, the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and battlefields around the world.

Each administration inherited a war—and then inherited the consequences of the previous one.

The result is a history of American counterterrorism and military intervention told through the decisions, reversals, victories, failures, unintended consequences, and strange political language that defined a quarter-century of conflict.

It is a story of enormous military power meeting complicated realities, of missions that changed names faster than they changed objectives, and of a war that repeatedly announced its ending only to discover another chapter waiting.

Twenty-five years later, the question remains remarkably simple:
How did a war that was supposed to make the world safer become one of the defining—and longest-running—military stories of modern American history?