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Continuing from the previous chapter, this chapter examines George H.W. Bush’s and George W. Bush’s decisions related to the course and conclusion of the Persian Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom. It begins by focusing on George H.W. Bush’s decision to launch Operation Desert Storm. Discussing the challenges posed by possible Israeli retaliation and Soviet diplomacy, the chapter illustrates George H.W. Bush’s skilful use of diplomacy. Next, the chapter turns to Operation Iraqi Freedom and George W. Bush. Emphasizing the challenges posed by events in Iraq, the chapter demonstrates the “cowboy” liberal approach of George W. Bush. The chapter ends by comparing George H.W. Bush’s decision to stop short of Baghdad with George W. Bush’s decision to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. Throughout, the chapter emphasizes the role of each president’s worldview in contributing to these decisions and policies.

This chapter deals with the last war between Iraq and the Coalition forces in 2003 - Operation “Iraqi Freedom”, called by the Iraqis the "Decisive War. It describes its background, Saddam’s view on the situation, the Coalition forces versus the Iraqi Armed Forces on the eve of the war, and the Iraqi planning for the war and the deployment of their forces. It describes also the Iraqi preparations for the war—in the logistics, in case of a prolonged war, fighting the Coalition forces inside the cities, and the political and military division of the command of Iraq among Saddam’s deputies and loyal supporters. It also deals with the possibility of using chemical weapons against the Coalition forces on their way to Baghdad.

This chapter deals with the last war between Iraq and the Coalition forces in 2003—Operation “Iraqi Freedom”, called by the Iraqis the "Decisive War. It describes the course of the war until the conquest of Baghdad (20 March–13 April, 2003), starting with the aerial attack called “Shock and Awe”. It continues to describe the Coalition’s air attacks all over Iraq and their effect, the ground campaign in southern Iraq (20-24 March) and the different battles waged by the Coalition forces. It describes the conduct of the war by the Iraqis at this stage, the crucial battle in the Najaf-Karbala area (25 March-3 April), their belief in the coming threat from the direction of Jordan, as well as the crucial meeting of the Iraqi senior commanders with Qusay and the fatal decision taken by him.

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the actual experience of imperial rule in seven empires. It suggests that imperial rule always meant denigration and exploitation and that the fundamental reality of empires is that they are unsustainable because their subjects find them intolerable. It also comments on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the design of Operation Iraqi Freedom by advocates of hard power, and the similarity of the Iraqi Freedom with the informal imperial tactics that earlier American administrations had used to replace uncooperative regimes in Central America.

This chapter deals with the last war between Iraq and the Coalition forces in 2003—Operation “Iraqi Freedom”, called by the Iraqis the "Decisive War. It describes the battle for Baghdad and the last days of the Iraqi regime (3-9 April). It describes also the fighting in south Iraq and in the northern part of it and the final collapse of the Iraqi Army. It also deals with Saddam’s role in this war and his responsibility for the Iraqi defeat, the causes of Iraq’s defeat and the defects in preparing for the war and conducting it by the Iraqis.

This chapter examines the Bush administration's planning of Phase IV—noncombat operations—of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Those ultimately responsible for the invasion of Iraq made many errors in judgment, errors which were reflected in the planning process for Phase IV. A focus on humanitarian issues, coupled with optimistic assumptions about political conditions in Iraq and the necessary length of military occupation, left soldiers unable to perform key tasks once the initial combat phase was complete. Instead of maintaining the flow of forces into the theater of operations to enhance coalition and civilian security, principals in the United States stopped troop deployments and undermined a military command whose postwar structure and responsibilities were already unclear.

This chapter examines the history of the militarization of the iPod portable media player during the first six years of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Drawing on interviews and correspondence with American military service members and Iraq War veterans, the chapter documents how iPods and the music they contained were used to smooth and hasten the passage of time, tether service members to their civilian lives back home, memorialize the deaths of fallen comrades, “pump up” troops for combat, maintain their focus on missions, and calm them down at the end of the day. The chapter also illuminates the degree to which the iPod evolved into a thoroughly militarized prosthetic technology—one deployed in the service of media consumption, one-way translation, interrogation, crowd dispersal, intelligence gathering, “winning hearts and minds,” and even precision shooting in the field.

This chapter interrogates the interrelationships between sound and violence, arguing that they can be productively imagined as essentially commingled terms, each manifest within the other as constant potentiality and structural analogue. The chapter focuses on a number of instances in which combatants on both sides deployed or forcibly curtailed sound, and examined the consequences these acts of sounding and silencing produced. A consideration of the sonic dimension of warfare highlights how violence erodes several dimensions of culture, compelling us to re-examine the conventional terminology of violence, and in particular to reconfigure the concept of victim to include not just those who fall in the path of a bullet but rather all who are negatively affected by the pansensorial experience of combat.

This chapter bears witness to the shocking breadth of violent incidents directed toward music and musicians over the course of the war, and the ways in which the threat of violence was used to push music out of the civilian public sphere. In looking at the range of violent and aggressive acts that were directed toward musicians, music listeners, and sounds coded as “music” during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the chapter submits that in a shocking number of cases, musicians and musical practices ended up performing the role not of agent but of victim: they were recipients of acts of violence, aggression, and silencing that were directed specifically toward music qua music. The frequency and intensity of these violent acts severely degraded music’s capacity to serve as a force for reconciliation during the war.

This chapter discusses the spatial impact of belliphonic sounds, and the extent to which open and enclosed spaces can shape and be shaped by the sounds that pass through them. Sounds territorialize space, and belliphonic sounds territorialize space violently. In wartime Iraq, acoustic territories ranged in size from the vast outdoor spaces where the sounds of explosions resonated to the delicate fluid-filled enclosures within the body that vibrated in concert with belliphonic sounds. These territories, particularly the fleshy ones inside the body, proved to be highly vulnerable to the sonic forces that invaded them in Iraq, as sensory excess was amplified in wartime, a fact that makes human resilience in the face of belliphonic violence all the more remarkable.

This chapter assesses the Army National Guard's ability to work alongside the Regular Army to provide strategic landpower capability, capacity, and flexibility. It argues that closely integrating the components can produce a Total Army with more diverse skills for fighting across the range of military operations overseas.For the homeland, a strong National Guard can quickly deliver security and emergency response capabilities for natural or manmade disasters. Integrating the components also makes the overall Army more affordable and provides the all-volunteer organization with the flexibility needed to appeal to today's more fluid society. Finally, more closely integrating the Army's components can help strengthen the social connection between the military and "Main Street" America.

This chapter considers the importance of location and proximity in mapping the sounds of war. In examining the importance of location to the perceived salience and character of weapon sounds, the chapter lays out a schema of four separate zones of audition in wartime Iraq, and offers a description of how these zones are configured by service members’ experiences. Iraqi civilian listening practices involve a slight reconfiguration of these zones, which is described at the end of the chapter. Audition and inaudition (the quasi-conscious failure to register audible sounds) are equally performative. They are also, equally, learned capacities that are constantly being honed. When their object is violence, they are activities of great consequence; both have an impact on the tactical, ethical, political, and aesthetic fields of possibility within which (in)auditors are enmeshed.