”His thoughts were focused beyond the grave. Sorry buddy, Reece thought. We never should have gone on that mission. I knew it and we went anyway. But,”His thoughts were focused beyond the grave. Sorry buddy, Reece thought. We never should have gone on that mission. I knew it and we went anyway. But, the truth of it is, we were set up before we even deployed. I’m the only one left. They took Lucy, Lauren, and our unborn son, and I don’t have long. The bastards that killed you, killed us all back in this country during our work-up. Don’t worry, though. I still have a bit more time. I know who they are now and I’m hunting them. They don’t know it yet, but they will soon. I’m coming for them and I’m going to put them all in the ground.”
The SEALS are the tip of the spear. They are the Spartan 300. They are the most dangerous weapon on the planet, and James Reece is about to show everyone just how dangerous he can be.
When Lieutenant Commander James Reece’s SEAL team is wiped out in an ambush in Afghanistan, it almost defies belief. How could this happen? How could their intel be this bad? This isn’t about the insurgents getting lucky. They were waiting for them. Reece was uneasy about the mission from the beginning. Usually his team found the missions and implemented them, but this mission came from the top down. As one of two survivors and the commanding officer, he doesn’t need a flow chart with a bunch of red arrows and green circles to know who the failure of this mission is going to be pinned on.
Something isn’t right.
Is it the tumor in his head? Never good news, but it becomes more strange with potentially insidious overtones when he discovers that the other members of his team have the same tumors. So the healthiest young men on the planet all have the same tumor?
Something is definitely not right.
Reece gets stateside and hasn’t even had a chance to see his family before they are murdered by a random act of gang violence. A radicalized Muslim tries to gun him down in the street. It is obvious that his being alive has proven inconvenient for somebody, but they have made one grave mistake.
They’ve left him alive with absolutely nothing to lose.
As he follows the clues, he discovers that his tumor is a walking time bomb not only for himself but for those who want him dead. Unknowingly, he and his team were part of an experimental program to cure PTSD, and when the results produced tumors, suddenly his team was a hitch in a multi-million dollar bonanza. When someone considers their ruthlessness a competitive advantage and their greed to be their North Star, arranging for a few SEALS and their rescue team to be killed, well those are just pawns in a much bigger chess game.
Reece begins to make a list, and as that list grows, he soon learns that the malignancy that created all this death, really the assassination of Reece’s whole life, goes up through the military chain of command and all the way into the White House.
He’s the treatment, and there’s a lot of cancer to kill.
What is most impressive about this book isn’t all the accolades from some of the biggest names in the business, although the list is impressive, but the legitimacy of the writing. Jack Carr has been the tip of the spear. ”Jack Carr led special operations teams as a Team Leader, Platoon Commander, Troop Commander and Task Unit Commander. Over his 20 years in Naval Special Warfare he transitioned from an enlisted SEAL sniper, to a junior officer leading assault and sniper teams in Iraq and Afghanistan, to a platoon commander practicing counterinsurgency in the southern Philippines, to commanding a Special Operations Task Unit in the most Iranian influenced section of southern Iraq throughout the tumultuous drawdown of U.S. Forces.--From the Jack Carr Website”
We love movies and books about revenge. Who hasn’t fantasized about clearing the board of all the people who have insulted them, made fun of them, or even tried to destroy their lives or career? I like to always say that the history of my life is strewn with the corpses of my enemies. It sounds really cool, right, and always gets a laugh, but for complete deniability, I want to make clear that I have no idea why certain people have disappeared. Karma’s a bitch as they say. :-)
Look at the popularity of the John Wick trilogy. I watched two more of them than I needed to. I was pretty satisfied with the revenge of the puppy murder, and everything after that was just unmitigated carnage. Unlike John Wick, James Reece is surgical. He takes out the people who deserve to die. This isn’t about killing a hundred guys to get to the one asshole he needs to take off the board. Reece is smarter than that. He isn’t a chainsaw; he’s a tomahawk.
First Blood came out in 1982 and spawned the Rambo franchise, the ultimate revenge movie. I was fifteen years old when that movie came out, and it changed the way I saw and thought about the Vietnam War. It was the first time I had a reason to question whether the people working in our government were always working for the good of the people. Questioning the true intentions of the people who serve us in government is certainly a theme that travels from Rambo to Reece. We want to trust our government, but when that trust is broken, we have to serve notice to those perpetrators of distrust that we will strip them of their power and entrust it to someone else. There are certainly ties between David Morrell’s books and this book, and Morrell, not surprisingly, is a big fan. On the home page of Jack Carr’s website, there is a quote from Morrell that I completely agree with. ”He’s the real deal. Having lived the life he writes about, he absorbs the best of the thriller tradition and moves it forward. Thoughtful as much as visceral, he’s my idea of what a thriller author should be.”
Yes, there are descriptions of cool gadgets and lots of cool acronyms. No worries, Carr has included a handy glossary of definitions in the back of the book to clue you in if you encounter a term that doesn't readily make sense. The reader certainly feels locked and loaded as he travels along with Reece on his revenge tour, but there are also well-written, poignant scenes. Coffins draped in golden tridents still give me a lump in my throat. There are thoughtful scenes and questioning scenes to the true purpose of his mission. There are the concerns he has for putting the few friends he can count on in danger and the raw disappointment when he discovers the treachery of those he thought he could trust.
Prepared to be thrilled, enlightened, and proud of our men in uniform. Politics should never be about them, but unfortunately, too many times they have been the pawns in the naked ambitions of others.
If you are looking for the perfect gift this Christmas for the favorite men in your life, this series will be a superb choice. They will love it.
I want to thank David Brown and Simon & Schuster press for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
”I was born into a mad world--not because of the alien invasion and government conspiracy, not because of the tigers that roamed the city, nor my conf”I was born into a mad world--not because of the alien invasion and government conspiracy, not because of the tigers that roamed the city, nor my confrontations with the false god in his temple; those things came later. I was born of the desert, birthed into swirling dust and sand that stung my newborn face. Shockwaves overwhelmed my system and loosened the bindings between molecules, nearly rendering me to dust before I had taken my first breath.”
A man named John went to war in the desert. An act of the conflict nearly destroys him. He emerges from the carnage as a new person. John becomes Purple. His view of the world has been altered. He sees truths that were hidden from him by layers of deceit so carefully constructed that even those who have deceived him with lies were unaware that they were doing so. He wants to save people from what they believe to be self-evident.
The brainwashed masses have given themselves over to worshiping a false God, the One-Eyed God. No, not Odin, but a creature much more sinister, the God of capitalism. They are fooled into believing that success is tied to money and individualism. ”The One-Eyed God is vicious. He places special emphasis on Personal Attainment. Everyone in the system is encouraged along these lines. The more successful you are in His name the more godly you are perceived to be. Every individual is a silo unto himself, all in service to the One-Eyed God. The Money God Divides us, culls the herd and vilifies those who can’t maintain or keep up.”
Purple has found his tribe of like minded people who are non-believers. They live as best they can outside the One-Eyed God system, but even his hippie friends dabble with commerce, making the One-Eyed God laugh at their feeble attempts to forsake him.
Believers don’t see Purple; they scurry past him as if he were invisible. This is a weakness when trying to heal people, but an asset in regards to the One-Eyed God. Purple isn’t sure he is strong enough to withstand the onslaught of a merciless God. He has so much work to do, and he is willing to sacrifice himself, but there are so few who understand that he must not allow himself to be destroyed before he has enlightened others.
Religion is just an enforcer of the One-Eyed God’s will. Another weapon he brandishes to make people feel connected with something larger, but is is just another construct of lies. Religious people are impossible to argue with; they believe without question the whispers that the One-Eyed God says in their ears. ”How does one tackle a religion when facts and the truth are unimportant or brushed aside as meaningless?”
The Believers are convinced that if they work hard they will become rich, and if they become rich that they will be happy. The sad truth, of course, is that they will make others rich and will break their backs and their spirits trying harder and harder to achieve some mythical and chimeric next rung on the ladder. They have become convinced by the One-Eyed God that imaginary things actually exist. ”He made dollars and profits to appear as real things, tangible, visceral. Only life qualified for that, but He had forced the delusion for so long it had become an unchallenged fact in the minds of everyone.”
Why do we have to be crazy to see the world for what it really is?
As I was reading this book, I kept thinking about Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, which I read, frankly, another lifetime ago. There is a fairy tale aspect to the way this book is presented that allows Jack McDaniel to talk about serious issues without coming across as moralizing. Purple just wants us all to take a step back and consider that all the things we find to be most important are actually fabricated constructs that should be treated with skepticism instead of veneration.
It is fortuitous that I read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari recently, which asserts many of the same ideas that Purple is trying to say. I was more receptive to the ideas that Purple is extolling because at least some of the barnacles of a lifetime of brainwashing have already been scrubbed off the walls of my mind. I’m in the process of rebuilding my vision of the world, and it is a painful process, but it is so refreshing to peel away the veil of colorfully packaged lies. If I ever get lost, I can revisit Purple. Maybe I can sweep some sidewalks with him and steal some of his magic.
My dad always enjoyed taking one of our old cars out on an open stretch of highway and kicking it down to blow the carbs out. That’s exactly how I felt after reading the Purple Hearted Manlike some carbs had been blown out of my brain and some long abandoned synapses were reinvigorated to fire once again. Don’t worry it didn’t hurt a bit. In fact, I hope reading this book will lighten some of the burden the One-Eyed God has placed on you.
I want to thank Jack W. McDaniel for supplying me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Darfield put his head down, ostensibly because he was ashamed. ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking, I was an”’Why did you kick in the television screen?’
Darfield put his head down, ostensibly because he was ashamed. ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking, I was angry. I saw his face on the news, imagined those policemen pouncing on him, striking him with such...such violence. I was angry. Angry that a good man like Jay could have been...beaten to that degree...for no reason...saw those men just pounding on him...it was like we left the bowels of humanity only to return to the same fucking place.’”
Jay Felson, a veteran of one of our needless wars abroad, is homeless, standing on the street corner not causing any problems except making people uncomfortable with his presence, when he is beaten to death by six police officers. Depending on your political affiliation, you may think this is outrageous, or you may think he had it coming. The vast divide between those two positions tells us a lot about what is going on in this country.
I was in Boston several years ago on business, but I had a few free hours to see some of the historical sites. I was down at the Old North Church when this bearded homeless guy started urinating on the steps of the church. Before he could give his dick a last shake, a police van pulled up, and two cops grabbed him. They threw him up against the side of the van, and when he rebounded off the van back into them, they hurled him against the van again. This time he hit so hard it might have actually knocked him out, or he knew from experience to play dead. They then dragged him around to the back of the van by his arms. He lost his pants in the process. They picked him up and tossed him in the back of the van.
I agree, urinating on the steps of any building is rude, not to mention a national landmark. I was shocked by several things. First, was the quickness with which the cops arrived. Second, I was stunned by the level of violence that was meted out against an unresisting offender. Third, I was appalled that I didn’t have the balls to say something. The words...hey, take it easy, were on my tongue, but they never made it past my lips. I made excuses for myself. This isn’t my town. I don’t know the history of the relationship between this man and the police. The level of agitation the cops were exhibiting had me afraid that some of their anger would be used against me. It all happened so fast. I am a process thinker, and I was still running everything back through my brain as the van squealed its tires as it left.
So what do you do if you come across six cops beating the shit out of a man on the ground? Anybody have visions of Rodney King? People now feel they are doing their civic duty by pulling their iPhones out and shooting video of the carnage. It also makes for a great post on their FB page. In the moment, that doesn’t do much of anything for the man on the ground. I hope I never come across that type of situation, but I’m resolved, this time, to say please stop, please stop.
When the video of the cops beating Jay Felson to death is released, it creates a stir among the general population. Enough pressure is put on the chief of police and the mayor for the six cops to be fired. When three of those cops are shot down with precision and expertise, a statewide manhunt is issued.
”This killer is not only clever, calculating, and precise, but sadistic as well. With just one bullet, he inflicted the maximum amount of pain, a single gunshot wound could inflict, aiming at the edges of bones to cause maximum deflection with minimum loss of kinetic energy. In other words he deliberately shot them in a way that would rip them apart. And he went so far as to modify the bullets to ensure this.”
Who do the cops have in the frame? Who fits their profile better than Jay Felson’s war buddy Donald Darfield? He has the expertise. He has a motive. He is African-American. He has disappeared. It takes some courage from people during his dramatic capture to insure that Darfield is even alive for trial. After all, it is easier to prove a case against a dead man, especially a man who has already been used up by society and tossed aside.
There are a few issues for this trial that are beyond the scope of what most people in the audience at the trial will understand. It is an election year, and the judge’s slogan is…”Vote for Judge Tupelo, ‘cause he just don’t let ‘em go.” In a high profile case like this, which way do you think he will guide the direction of the case? The evidence by the prosecution is weak, but unfortunately in cases like this, a strong case isn’t always necessary for a conviction. It should be, but that is just the facts. This is a jury trial, and Nick Lombardi deftly and realistically guides the reader through the process of how they arrive at a verdict. I once had a judge tell me at a party that, if he is ever the accused in a court case, he will opt for a jury if he is guilty and judgment by a judge only if he is innocent. Roll that around in your brain for a while.
I’ve served on a couple of jury trials so I understand why the judge doesn’t trust a panel of his peers to give him fair judgment. It is difficult for people to leave their inbred prejudices at the door when they enter a courtroom, and believe me, when a jury is deliberating, you learn a lot about people in a very short period of time. The last jury I served on was a real clusterfuck. The accused walked into a bar, got into an altercation with an employee, and as he left the bar, he threatened to come back and kill everyone. Oops. With the new terrorism laws, the guy was screwed. The bartender locked the doors and called the cops, leaving a very compelling tape of a person obviously in fear of her life.
I was annoyed that no one except me took notes, and believe me, when we retired to chambers, it became readily evident that they really, really needed to take notes, because several people barely retained any memory of any evidence they were presented with. Some fell for the dog and pony show put on by the defense, which had nothing to do with the real facts of the case. The jury was split. I laid out my take on the case to everyone, and those opposed to my assessment quickly switched their votes. I was even more irritated that I was able to sway their votes so easily. Their convictions about the case were based on tissues of unsubstantial thought. People serving on juries need to take the job more seriously. A person’s life, in many cases, is on the line.
Fortunately, Darfield has the 62 year old blind lawyer and Vietnam vet Nathaniel Bodine as his lawyer. He has the experience and the charisma to turn a jury inside out. I like the way that Lombardi takes us behind the scenes to witness the discussions between Bodine and his team, and then we see how those concepts play out in the courtroom. Bodine will sometimes change his mind about a direction of questioning because he feels a shift in the dynamics. This is the difference between being a great trial lawyer and just being a good student of the law. I was on pins and needles as I watched the jury deliberate.
Needless to say, this book hit on a lot of issues that are important to me. It brought back some memories of my own experiences and delivered a courtroom thriller that kept me turning the pages.
I want to thank Nick for sending me a copy of this book all the way from Cambodia in exchange for an honest review. That is a dedicated writer wanting to find the right readers for his book.
”America failed to achieve its aims in Afghanistan for many reasons: underinvestment in development and security immediately after the Taliban’s fall;”America failed to achieve its aims in Afghanistan for many reasons: underinvestment in development and security immediately after the Taliban’s fall; the drains on resources and the provocations caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq; corruption fed by N.A.T.O. contracting and C.I.A. deal making with strongmen; and military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon. Yet the failure to solve the riddle of I.S.I. and to stop its covert interference in Afghanistan became, ultimately, the greatest strategic failure of the American war.”
I had read some about our struggles with the Inter-Service Intelligence, the Pakistani version of the C.I.A., during the Afghanistan War. I had no idea the extent of that struggle. They were considered our staunches allies in the region, bought and paid for many times over, but as history confirms, allies who do not benefit from a common cause rarely stay allies. In this book, Steve Coll broke down all the aspects of this war from the good, to the bad, and finally the downright ugly.
When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, tens of thousand of Pakistanis flooded across the border to fight the American coalition. Someone must have forgotten to tell these Pakistani volunteers that America was not the enemy. We were in Afghanistan to bring down an organization called Al-Qaeda and their allies, the Taliban. The difference between the two was hard to distinguish. The priority was Al-Qaeda, which was an organization formed by the planner of the 9/11 attack Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban, who were responsible for most of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan from 1996-2012, were a hardline, militant, religious organization, who believed in a harsh adherence to Islamic Sharia law. They committed brutal, violent outrages against the Afghan population, with women bearing the preponderance of their religious imposed restrictions.
Early on in the war, during the George W. Bush administration, we relied heavily on the I.S.I. for intel, guidance, and help, but as the war dragged on with Bin Laden still at large and few definable goals achieved, skepticism with Pakistan and Afghan President Hamid Karzai were beginning to erode trust. By the time Barack Obama inherited not only the war in Afghanistan but an ill-conceived, and in my opinion, illegal war with Iraq, he was disillusioned with both Pakistan’s loyalty and with Karzai’s ability to make decisions and implement them.
”Most Afghans may not want the Taliban to return, but there is an old adage: if the guerillas do not lose, they ultimately win….” The one hard and fast truth was eventually the Americans would go home. Political pressure would become so heavy that some president would find a way to declare mission accomplished and bring the troops home, probably before a midterm election. How would you win a war against an insurgency that simply melted back into the civilian population or into the hills, or crossed over into Pakistan and thumbed their noses at the stupid Americans? What Karzai knew and what the I.S.I were equal aware of was that, once the Americans left, they were going to be left dealing with the Taliban.
It was logical that progress was not moving at the rate it should because the I.S.I. had an eye to the future. They had several goals that did not necessarily contradict themselves when seen through a lens focused on a rapidly approaching change of objects: make the Americans as happy as you can; take as much money from them as you can possibly extort; tip off the Taliban to key intel that will hopeful insure survival for Pakistan when the next regime change occurs.
”The potency of Al Qaeda’s ideas and tactics further challenged a Pakistani state that was weak, divided, complacent, and complicit about Islamist ideology and violence.” A weak government, and yet they possess nuclear weapons. I’m not even going to get into the animosity between Pakistan and India, which fueled the allure in possessing or at least controlling Afghanistan. What was very scary for me to learn was that, if the attempted Nissan Pathfinder bombing in New York City in 2010 had been successful, there was a very good chance that the US would have declared war on Pakistan. The perpetrator, or should I say the near perpetrator, was Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani born US citizen with ties linking him to I.S.I.
Was Pakistan our allies or future enemies? Were we nearly at war with I.S.I. or with all of Pakistan? On May 2nd, 2011, Team Seal 6 conducted a raid in Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden. He had been living under the noses of the I.S.I. for years. Was this incompetence? Complicity? Trust had completely evaporated between the I.S.I. and the C.I.A./American military at this point in time, and Pakistan was not informed of the raid. They first learned of it when the Seals had to blow up a grounded disabled helicopter. Needless to say, the embarrassment that such a large military operation was allowed to invade Pakistan without resistance was felt with deep humiliation. Scars like this ran deep and wide.
If the US had informed Pakistan of the raid, would Bin Laden have still been there? All the kudos in the world to Obama for making the call to conduct the raid, even though positive identification of Bin Laden’s presence had not been confirmed. He did what Bush failed to do. He found the mastermind of 9/11 and had him terminated.
Coll did go into detail on the secret prisons, in my opinion illegal prisons, to get around US law (shaky legalities here) which would allow them to torture suspects. Unfortunately, we are split in this country regarding the benefits and morality of torture. I still have discussions with people who are convinced that torture is not only viable, but should be used indiscriminately if there is even the possibility of garnering useful intel. There is a cost, too high, not only to those we torture, but also to those we ask to do the torturing. The other day I was watching a film, Rupture starring one of my favorite actresses Noomi Rapace, and when she was strapped down to a table, made helpless, I had to turn the TV off.
I couldn’t abide it.
Legions of mistakes were made in Afghanistan by all parties involved. By the end of this book, I finally felt like I was closer to unraveling the enigma of Afghanistan. The Afghanistanization, which couldn’t be called that because of the connotations with the failed Vietnamization, was hard to get off the ground as Afghan soldiers, trained to replace Americans, started turning their weapons on their “allies” and escaping to join the Taliban. I know this is a tough subject for many of you. It is a tough subject for me, as well, but I felt like I needed to know more so that I would have additional facts at my fingertips whenever I find myself in a heated discussion about the misguided wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Coll’s first book, in what will be a trilogy, called Ghost Wars, was also excellent and a great precursor to this book.
”The last month has been a blur of shittiness.” From the Afghanistan journal of Lieutenant Tim Hopper.
Dostum was ruling Northern Afghanistan when the Taliban captured Masar-i-Sharif in 1998 and blew up the ancient Buddhas that had watched over the town for centuries. ”What man had the right to write the future by blowing up the past?” The Taliban wanted a pure state, a return to a brand of Islam that is true to their interpreted beliefs of the Koran. So Dostum, an advocate of educating women and a more western approach to life, spent the next three years trying to push back the tide of radical Talibanism.
Then 9/11...happened.
I was in Spencer, Iowa in a McDonalds when I happened to glance up at the TV suspended in the corner of the room and saw the burning tower. I was processing that image just as the second plane flew into the twin of the first. Everything stopped for a few seconds as my mind tried to comprehend what I was seeing.
I was a helpless child.
To Dostum and the other General’s propping up the Northern Alliance, outgunned by the Soviet tanks and hardware of the Taliban, it was a blessing. They whispered to each other...the Americans are coming.
[image]
American Special Forces grew beards to better fit with the culture.
We sent twelve special forces soldiers. They landed in Afghanistan in October of 2001. Support people were brought over, pilots and crews that had to assemble helicopters within 48 hours because Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was already on the phone screaming for results. He had the press so far up his ass he was in need of something to tell them, to assure the American people that something was being done. Before leaving the states the special forces guys bought up all the batteries, gloves, and blankets they could find. They, like the rest of the armed forces, was unprepared for war with no time to get prepared. It reminds me of the cold fury I felt when I realized so many of our soldiers were being sent to Afghanistan and Iraq without proper equipment. I remember stories of small communities raising money quickly to add armor to humvees so their children who were riding to war for us would have adequate protection. I remember a president when asked what the American public could do to help suggested that we should just go shopping.
Shopping. That’s all you got.
We needed to be involved. We wanted to be involved. We remembered another president saying Don’t Ask What Your Country Can Do For You, But Ask What You Can Do for Your Country. We were asking and you told us...to go...shopping.
The special forces brought 21st century technology to a war being fought on a 19th century scale. The Northern Alliance attacked tanks, planes, and rocket launchers from horseback. Insanity...and the Americans were suddenly thrust back into the classroom trying to remember what they had studied on the battlefield tactics of Civil War generals J.E.B. Stuart and John “The Gray Ghost” Mosby.
[image]
Colonel John S. Mosby. The Gray Ghost.
They had to learn to ride horses, not tame plodding horses, but stallions that when not busy riding into battle were viciously fighting each other. It boggles the mind to think of our special forces riding horses to a hilltop overlooking a battle involving horses riding against tanks while calling down bombs from the heavens. Smart bombs that were targeted by sophisticated technology that would allow them to drop from 20,000 feet and land on a specific coordinate on the ground or to follow a laser locked on as a beacon after a truck racing along the desert floor. It boggled the minds of the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. It was magic, powerful magic.
I am the kit fox, I live in uncertainty. If there is anything difficult, If there is anything dangerous to do, That is mine. --Sioux warrior’s song
It is so ironic that this group called themselves Taliban, meaning seekers of knowledge, when their mandate was to send Afghanistan back to the stone age. The opposite of learning, evolving, creating a safer more tolerant society.
”Theirs was the perfect world. Since taking control of Kabul in 1996, the Taliban had banned music, kite-flying, photography, movies, and even perfume. Husbands were ordered to paint their house windows black so no one could see the women inside, and the women themselves were forbidden to leave their homes unaccompanied by a male relative. Women were to be as pliant as cattle, silent as stone. As many as 100,000 girls were ordered not to attend school. Literacy rates among the total population dropped as low as 5 percent. Denied proper obstetrical care, one out of three mothers died in childbirth. The life expectancy for men dropped to forty-two years. Suicide rates among women soared as they were driven mad by privation.”
Oh yeah and they...
”broke down doors, smashed TV’s, tore paintings from the walls, and dragged men into the street and shot them. They broke into hospitals and slit the throats of Hazara patients. They raped Hazara women who ate handfuls of rat poison in the aftermath, preferring death to the shame of their violation. They urged residents to convert on the spot from the Shia version of Islam to the Sunni brand, practiced by the Taliban.”
”and they brought back something that should have been left in the gladiatorial coliseums of ancient rome.
”The Taliban executed women in the soccer stadium for sleeping with men who weren’t their husbands. They cut off the hands of robbers. White-coated doctors would anesthetize them on the warm grass on the soccer pitch and do the operation in front of thousands of cheering people”
We can’t forget about Al-Qaeda the militant Islamic organization founded by Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban were even scared of them. Made up of disenfranchised men from neighboring countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Uzbekistan. They hate women. They hate America. They live to die gloriously. They would not be taken alive.
The changing alliances in the book are confusing to the Americans. Captured Taliban troops were given a choice, to either join the Northern Alliance or go home and not fight anymore. Many of them are men who were subjugated into fighting for the Taliban and were happy to join the Northern Alliance, I guess, until they were captured again and then would fight for the Taliban. This all leads up to the first defining moment in the American involvement in Afghanistan.
Hundreds of Taliban soldiers have surrendered to the Horse Soldiers and the Northern Alliance. They are penned up in an old fort called Qala-i-Janghi which in English means the House of War. The Taliban are not searched as is customary among Afghans as it is considered an insult to do so. In their midst is a young American named John Walker Lindh, a man now serving twenty years in an American prison. There are huge containers in the fort filled with captured Taliban weapons. Two CIA operatives are sorting through the prisoners trying to find the ones they think will be useful for intel. The prisoners revolt, pulling grenades and weapons from their clothing. One of the CIA operatives, Mike Spann is killed, becoming the first American casualty of the Afghanistan War.
Doug Stanton goes on to write about the desperate struggle to gain back control of the city that the special forces fought so hard to liberate. The Americans realize that if they lose control it will take months of bloodshed to win back the city. Stanton interviewed hundreds of people to write this book and it shows. He knows every nuance of the battle and explains it to us in vivid detail. He tells us what the wives of these men were thinking and the gut wrenching stress of knowing nothing, but able to imagine the worst. He brings us background from the Afghans who were so excited about the Americans coming to free them from this tyranny. The most amazing part for me was the melding of American technology and Afghan battlefield tactics and the ability of a handful of special forces men to turn the tide of a war is simply astounding.
And let’s not forget about the horses, the brave and crazy horses, and the men who rode them.
”Wars, as the earlier military thinker Carl von Clausewitz pointed out, are not fought to kill people; they are fought to effect political change. They are violent, expensive, and represent one of the universe’s great rifts in the social contract. To study peace, then, is, de facto, to study war. Any political and social movement, of any stripe, that does not grasp the degree to which these opposites are actually twins is fruitless."
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