Showing results by publisher "Tantor Media" in War & Crisis

During an interrogation in Afghanistan, when asked how long the jihadists intended to fight, a Taliban commander uttered the words, "If it takes a thousand years." This chilling statement illustrates both how terrorists of this level operate and the generational approach they take when it comes to bringing destruction to the world.

Combining social and cognitive neuroscience with real-life accounts from genocide perpetrators, this book sheds light on the process through which obedience influences cognition and behavior. Emilie Caspar, a leading expert in the field, translates this neuroscientific approach into a clear, uncomplicated explanation, even for those with no background in psychology or neuroscience. By better understanding humanity's propensity for direct orders to short-circuit our own independent decision-making, we can edge closer to effective prevention processes.

On November 4, 1979, "student" supporters of the Ayatollah seized the U.S. Embassy with over sixty hostages. Although the Cold War was in full swing, the Iran hostage crisis was a watershed for the United States. Detachment A had been established in Berlin early in the Cold War to harass and delay any Soviet military advance west. This Special unit trained relentlessly for every aspect of unconventional warfare, and was later assigned a second mission of counterterrorism. Veteran and historian James Stejskal details Det A's unique and integral role in Operation Eagle Claw.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took the entire diplomatic staff hostage. While President Jimmy Carter initially pursued a diplomatic solution to the crisis, he authorized the military to begin planning a rescue mission.

As bombs rained down on Gaza in October 2023, images of mass death and destruction gripped the world, and openly genocidal statements from Israeli leaders foretold the magnitude of horrors to come. But the United States media was quick to downplay, obscure, and repackage an emerging campaign of extermination into a slick "war on terror" framework.

November 26, 2008. Ten terrorists, armed with guns, grenades, and improvised explosive devices, slip past coastal security cordons on India's western seacoast in a fishing trawler. Over the next three agonizing days, India's "Maximum City" is brought to its knees as the fidayeen wreak unprecedented havoc at pre-selected landmarks. The response to this attack was the first instance of all three wings of the Indian armed forces coming together to fight terror. Black Tornado, as the operation was called by the NSG, is the story of these men called into action.

An Essay for Ezra is a critique of terror that begins but by no means ends with the presidency of Donald J. Trump. A father addresses his son and a boy shares his observations in a dynamic dialogistic exchange that is a commentary of and for its time, taking the measure of racial terror and of white supremacy both in our moment and as a historical phenomenon.

Though largely forgotten today, one of the most destructive terrorist groups in the United States was the Galleanists, a fiery band of Italian anarchists active during the early 1900s. In America's Forgotten Terrorists, Jeffrey D. Simon shows how alienation and frustration among segments of a community were transformed into a militant extremist movement. The Galleanists introduced terrorist tactics and strategies that are still used today: they were the first group to send package bombs across the country and to exploit the media for their own advantage.

More than a decade ago, counterterrorism expert Rita Katz began browsing white supremacist and neo-Nazi forums. The hateful rhetoric and constant threats of violence immediately reminded her of jihadist militants. Now, years of attacks committed by extremists radicalized online—including at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and mosques in New Zealand, as well as the Capitol siege—have brought home the danger. From ISIS to QAnon, Saints and Soldiers pinpoints the approaches needed for a new era in which arrests and military campaigns alone cannot stop never-before-seen threats.

In Terrorism: What Everyone Needs to Know, Todd Sandler, one of America's leading scholars on the topic, provides a broad and example-rich overview of this perennially important issue. After clearly defining terrorism, he then discusses terrorism's causes, the nature of terrorist groups, how governments seek to counter terrorism, its economic consequences, and the future of terrorism.

We, as a nation, have become desensitized to the shock and pain in the wake of mass shootings. In the bottomless silence between gunshots, as political stalemate ensures inaction, the killing continues; the dying continues. From a Taller Tower attends to the silence that has left us empty in the aftermath of these atrocities. Veteran journalist Seamus McGraw chronicles the rise of the mass shooter to dismantle the myths we have constructed around the murderers and ourselves.

In the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, the American government implemented a wave of overt policies to fight the nation's enemies. Unseen and undetected by the public, however, another set of tools were brought to bear on the domestic front. One of today's leading experts on the US security state shows how these "subtle tools" imperiled the very foundations of democracy, from the separation of powers and transparency in government to adherence to the Constitution. Karen Greenberg describes the subtle tools that were forged under George W. Bush in the name of security.

American wars in Iraq were a defining feature of global politics for almost thirty years. The Gulf War of 1991, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the campaign against the Islamic State beginning in 2014 each had their own logic. Each occurrence was a distinct conflict; however they must not only be considered in isolation. The United States spent the 1990s trying but failing to implement the Gulf War's cease fire agreement. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, American leaders decided to settle the open-ended aftermath of the Gulf War by launching the Iraq War of 2003.

The American way of war is enabled by the concept of massing all available firepower—when done correctly it makes US forces hard to beat. However improvised explosive devices have increasingly enabled a new kind of asymmetric warfare, one that conventional forces continue to struggle to counter. This book offers a "counter-IED playbook," one based upon the author's experiences of over ninety months of combat operations, working the problem sets of Fires, Effects, IEDs, Close Target Reconnaissance, Tracking-Tagging-Locating (TTL), and Information Operations.

Nina E. Cerfolio masterfully explores the deeper spiritual and psychoanalytic understanding of the origins of human aggressive and destructive instincts which underlie mass shootings and terrorism.

Despite over a hundred deadly acts by far-right militants since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and the far right's attempts to obstruct transfer of power to a duly elected president on January 6, the FBI continues to deprioritize investigations into white supremacist violence, instead targeting marginalized groups. Noting that the FBI does not even compile accurate national data on white supremacist violence, German also exposes the continuing tolerance of overt racism in law enforcement, and police membership in white supremacist organizations.

This is the first book to examine how and why the United States refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide until the early 2020s. Although the American government expressed sympathy towards the plight of the Armenians in the 1910s and 1920s, historian Julien Zarifian explores how, from the 1960s, a set of geopolitical and institutional factors soon led the United States to adopt a policy of genocide nonrecognition which it would cling to for over fifty years, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

New evidence in Dynamite Nashville uncovers the origin of an organized group of racist terrorists committing nationwide acts of violence against integration efforts in the late 1950's and early 1960s. Award winning historian Betsy Phillips not only paints a detailed picture of the social dynamic of the times, but details how a violent fringe of racists came to national prominence. In Dynamite Nashville, Phillips unmasks the KKK, reveals a racist terrorist network, names its principle leader, and shines a much needed historical spotlight on unsung civil rights hero Z. Alexander Looby.

Veiled Threats challenges the idea that women in violent terrorist groups lack agency. Too often, these women are assumed to be controlled by men: their fathers, their husbands, or some other male relative. Mia Bloom contests this narrow understanding. Although extremist groups often control different aspects of women's lives, including their religious obligations or dress, jihadi women have asserted themselves in myriad ways. Bloom interrogates the prevailing perceptions about women's involvement in violent extremism exclusively as victims: manipulated, drugged, or coerced.

In 2007, three Muslim university students left the Canadian Prairies, seemingly without a trace. In the ensuing months, their disappearance raised fears that the men had become "radicalized," posing a grave threat to national security. From presidential briefings and targeted drone assassinations to a politically charged trial, the men's story sheds new light not only on the figure of the "radical," but also on the "moderate" Muslim, represented by a community forever changed by the men's departure.