Lessons Unlearned

The U.S. Army's Role in Creating the Forever Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (American Military Experience)

By: Pat Proctor

Narrated by: Douglas R Pratt

Colonel Pat Proctor’s long overdue critique of the army’s preparation and outlook in the all-volunteer era focuses on a national security issue that continues to vex in the 21st century: Has the army lost its ability to win strategically by focusing on fighting conventional battles against peer enemies? Or can it adapt to deal with the greater complexity of counterinsurgent and information-age warfare?

In this blunt critique of the senior leadership of the US Army, Proctor contends that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the US Army stubbornly refused to reshape itself in response to the new strategic reality, a decision that saw it struggle through one low-intensity conflict after another—some inconclusive, some tragic—in the 1980s and 1990s, and leaving it largely unprepared when it found itself engaged—seemingly forever—in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The first book-length study to connect the failures of these wars to America’s disastrous performance in the war on terror, Proctor’s work serves as an attempt to convince army leaders to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

The book is published by the Curators of the University of Missouri Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2020 The Curators of the University of Missouri (P)2022 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

“A brutally honest, thought-provoking, and brilliant examination of the American military’s failure to adapt to post-Cold War realities and understand the challenges of the post-9/11 world.” (David Petraeus, general, US Army, ret.)

“Proctor has the courage and intellectual firepower to challenge the status quo and to prescribe deep, real changes.” (Bing West, coauthor with Jim Mattis of Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead)

"A seminal work of military/political analysis." (Midwest Book Review)