Reading more Afghanistan

The Photographer, a graphic memoir of a Frenchman traveling with Doctors Without Borders, presents a picture of surviving a trek through Afghanistan in 1986, by being sensitive to and accommodating to local customs and leaders.  The Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton provides a similar lesson 15 years later.   The message here, however, is that the same sensitivity and accommodation can also be the key to winning a war.

This incredibly well-researched book tells the story behind the photo we all saw of American military men riding horses across a golden Afghan valley shortly after the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001.    Around the world there was surprise and some laughter:  “What’s this?  The U.S. cavalry rides again?” 

Horse Soldiers follows the day by day actions of the Special Forces (aka Green Berets) and some CIA paramilitary following 9/11 as they leave their families and their U.S. base, fly to Uzbekistan, then proceed into Afghanistan to launch the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.   We see their skills, their adroitness in working with competing local warlords, their determination, the dangers and, ultimately, the success they experienced in those first weeks in Northern Afghanistan.

For those of us who remember the Green Berets from the Vietnam era as wild men running amok in the jungle, as depicted in Apocalypse Now, these Special Forces soldiers are depicted–and I think truthfully so– as intelligent, highly skilled, and self-disciplined.   They are what we would prefer all our military men and women to be.

Now, eight years later I hope that President Obama listens to General McChrystal, whose background includes Special Forces, to lead the U.S. military in Afghanistan today.  And that President Obama learns the right lesson from Iraq: that it was only when the U.S. began to work with the local Iraqi Sunni leaders that the deaths and bombings began to subside.    Horse Soldiers reinforces the wisdom of that course of action.

(This post is part of an experimental memoir.  I teach memoir writing and will edit your memoir to make it better.  Learn more at www.onedaymemoir.com)