Afghan Noir: review of Michael Hastings’ “The Operators” in The Daily
by Ann Marlowe
Selfishly, I wish “The Operators” were a better book. Though we come from different places in the political spectrum, Michael Hastings shares many of my views on Afghanistan and has the notoriety to bring them to a wide audience.
Was the surge a mistake, increasing levels of violence? Yes. Has the American effort to train the Afghan army and police been an unbelievably expensive boondoggle? Check. Did the American military’s toleration of thugs like Ahmed Wali Karzai and Border Police Gen. Raziq help fuel the insurgency? Yes. Was former commanding Gen. David Petraeus more concerned with managing perceptions than reality? Check. Was his predecessor Stanley McChrystal an amoral mediocrity in way over his head? We agree there too.
Furthermore, Hastings has the guts to let the chips fall where they may — as he did in the June 2010 Rolling Stone profile of then-commanding general McChrystal that quickly led to his firing.
But “The Operators” is a mess.
Comments
Ah. the banality of it all!
In the end the American ego-centric notion that it is the source (fault)of the Vietnam War and that some dark trait in this or that general caused our self-defeat. But in truth, we don't put our best egg-heads in the Pentagon while putting at its disposition incredible amounts of men and dollars. The rest is politicians guided by incredibly limited generals into a quagmire due to their "I AM IN THE MIDDLE AS THE DECIDING FACTOR" attitude. The rest is all made up to save faces at cost of incredibly much blood and treasure. If only we held generals to account as we do physicians we would never exsanguinate as we have over and over and over again. We are not an evil people, just a totally dishonest with itself nation that can't really care for what damage we do to others because we're such a Narcissistic nation. So, we always make a little nothing into a big thing which we soon forget and repeat because we always got our butt out without much damage at home. And so, vane, we like to read books about our dumb adventures because, hey, that's US in the title!