A Different Kind of War: The United States Army in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) October 2001–September 2005 - Softcover
As the sun rose on the morning of 11 September 2001, the United States (US) was at peace. American Soldiers across the country and in a number of nations across the globe woke up that day planning to conduct routine operations and training. A relatively small number of US Army units were deployed in the Balkans and the Sinai desert on peacekeeping missions. But, for most Soldiers, the day promised to be much like any other. For the Army, as well as the entire American nation, the peaceful nature of that day was shattered when just after 0900 a United Airlines jet filled with passengers plowed into the side of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Thirty minutes later, an American Airlines jet rammed into the South Tower. While the twin towers burned, a third airliner slammed into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a fourth plane, possibly headed toward the US Capitol, dove straight into a field in Pennsylvania. By noon on that day, almost 3,000 people, most of whom were Americans, were dead. Within hours of the attack, George W. Bush, the President of the United States, identified the radical Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda as the likely perpetrator of the attacks and began preparing the US military for retaliation actions. As the sun set on 11 September 2001, many Soldiers realized that their country was now preparing for war and that they would likely be called on to act against their country’s enemies. Many of the world’s governments and international organizations immediately expressed outrage and called for solidarity with the United States. The United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the European Union all began deliberations on how to respond. President Bush identified the attacks as an act of war against the United States rather than using the previous practice of classifying terrorist acts as crimes. The response would thus be a military campaign rather than legal proceedings against individuals. The US Government began diplomatic negotiations and military planning to create a Coalition to support the retaliations against the terrorist network and the nations that hosted it. In less than a month, the United States had forged a Coalition and begun attacking al-Qaeda and its supporters in a variety of ways. The most visible and dramatic means was the military campaign that began in early October 2001 against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and its al-Qaeda allies in that country. That campaign—largely improvised and based on the innovative use of Special Operations Forces (SOF) and air power—became known as Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF). Like the unconventional attack that provoked it, this campaign did not resemble past armed conflicts, a fact that led President Bush to describe it as “a different kind of war.”* This study takes its title from the President’s suggestion that OEF—and the broader war on terrorism—would be conducted differently from other American military campaigns. A Different Kind of War is the third volume in the series of contemporary historical accounts by the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) of the US Army’s operations since 9/11. The first two volumes, On Point and On Point II, offered preliminary histories of the US Army in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF) during initial combat operations against the Saddam regime and the campaign that resulted once that regime was toppled in April 2003. A Different Kind of War is CSI’s first study of OEF. These preliminary studies are a result of an initiative by senior US Army commanders who hoped that historical analysis could help the Army understand its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in a more complete way.
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About the Author:
Donald P. Wright is the chief of the Contemporary Operations Study Team at the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) and a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Tulane University and has served as an Army historian for 6 years. Wright was the co-author of On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign, The US Army in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, May 2003–January 2005 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CSI Press, 2008). He also authored several publications on the Russian Imperial Army including “That Vital Spark: Japanese Patriotism in Russian Military Perspective” in John Steinberg et al., The Russo- Japanese War in Global Perspective (Brill, 2005).
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- PublisherCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
- Publication date2010
- ISBN 10 1469991667
- ISBN 13 9781469991665
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages416
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