Review: A snapshot of the War in Afghanistan
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 16, 2011
A cynical journalist (Alex Berenson) spends an uneventful time embedded with US soldiers in Senjaray in Kandahar Province. He talks to the soldiers there about dealing with a baffling local culture, narrowly avoiding IEDs, and surviving an ambush which killed several of their company. Along the way, Berenson explains Army organization (from the fire team up to Gen. Petraeus) and details the costs of the war, finally concluding that the US effort is a quagmire with little or no positive lasting impact. My favorite part of the work was his description of Kandahar Airfield, an oasis of Western civilization and a babel of coalition forces.The author did a good job mixing big picture facts with the granular experience of those on the ground, but the style was too flippant at times and his pronouncements on difficult issues were too facile. Ultimately, it came across as a somewhat glib recasting of potentially compelling source material.