A thorough, elegant reassessment of America’s “irresistible illusion.”
A reconsideration of “how the world’s most powerful leaders plotted to build a new kind of nation in Afghanistan that was pure fantasy.”
Bloomberg News Middle East editor and correspondent Fairweather (War of Choice: The British in Iraq 2003-9, 2011) finds American naïveté and confusion of purpose at the crux of what went wrong in the war in Afghanistan. The original defeat of the Taliban in 2001 was almost too swift to be true, and early on, President George W. Bush insisted that the United States was “not into nation-building; we are focused on justice.” Then, the U.S. shifted the focus to Iraq, allowing the Afghan warlords to duke it out, especially the opportunistic, CIA-backed Hamid Karzai. As the Taliban began to creep back in and the provinces fell into anarchy and opium-growing (once quelled under the austere Taliban), the American administration underwent a philosophical shift. With Iraq then in tatters, a humanitarian aim of rebuilding the country took over. Yet corruption skimmed the aid money, and U.S. engineering firms had little knowledge of the local environment, and there was virtually no oversight. The creation of a series of Provincial Reconstruction Teams was an attempt to tie local tribal connections to a central authority, and some of Karzai’s appointed governors were removed—Helmand’s Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, who was overseeing a vast, lucrative opium-growing network. The clamor for more money and more troops became the recurrent cri de coeur, drowning out sounder arguments, including that of British ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles, who called for more tribal engagement and negotiations with the Taliban. While the efforts to commit Afghan children to education were successful, the miserable litany of IEDs, troop surge, counterinsurgency, fraudulent elections, runaway generals, drone strikes and immense waste underscores what Fairweather calls the “futility of force.”
A thorough, elegant reassessment of America’s “irresistible illusion.”Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0465044955
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Two history professors (Shea: Univ. of Arkansas at Monticello; Hess: Lincoln Memorial Univ.) offer an absorbing analysis of an important early conflict in the Civil War. Though often regarded as having only peripheral strategic importance, the battle of Pea Ridge (Arkansas), the authors explain, led to Union control of Missouri and dominance of the entire trans-Mississippi region. In early 1962, a large Confederate army, assisted by a pro-Confederate governor and a secessionist state guard, posed a serious threat to Missouri's membership in the Union. As the pro-Confederate state-guard commander began an apparent retreat to obtain supplies and support from the regular Confederate army, Union forces under Samuel Curtis (who in turn was commanded by Henry W. Halleck) launched an aggressive offensive drive. Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed Earl Van Dorn, a dashing but untalented general, as overall Confederate commander—but though Van Dorn attempted to gain the initiative, what should have been a major Confederate threat to Missouri turned instead into a Federal invasion of Arkansas when Curtis's men- -marching lightly and far from Union supply lines—attacked rather than fall back into Missouri. During the fighting at Pea Ridge (March 6-8, 1862)—which was really more a strategically unified series of separate battles than a single engagement—Curtis kept the Confederate forces separated and ultimately drove them from the field. And by the authors' account, Halleck—who is not often treated kindly by historians—emerges as the unlikely hero who conceived the vigorous Federal strategy. After the battle, Van Dorn transferred his army to the eastern side of the Mississippi, allowing the Union to contain Confederate forces there. Shea and Hess rightly contend that this early Union victory, won ``in the springtime of northern hopes,'' secured Federal domination of the Mississippi region. A thoroughly researched and well-told account of an important but often neglected Civil War encounter. (Eighteen maps.)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-8078-2042-3
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
Two veteran Washington journalists offer a vigorous and resonant portrait of the 30-year decline and polarization of our capital. Jaffe (of Washingtonian magazine) and Sherwood (of WRC-TV, formerly of the Washington Post) tell their story in episodic sketches, covering the city's historic caste system among blacks, the rise of community organizer (and, later, mayor) Marion Barry during the War on Poverty, and the shift of power to blacks after the traumatic 1968 riots. The authors criticize the long-standing federal stranglehold on the district, as well as the Post's ignorance of black Washington, but their major culprit is ``Boss Barry,'' who emerged in his second mayoral term (1982-6) as a betrayer of the biracial coalition that first elected him. Barry's failures were legion: political spoils for a narrow group of adventurers such as profiteer-from-the-homeless Cornelius Pitts; a top aide turned embezzler; a police department in disarray; a downtown that boomed as other neighborhoods crumbled. His defiance of the black bourgeoisie and the white power structure preserved his popularity among blacks, and when he was arrested on drug charges in 1990—an episode recounted in telling detail—his lawyer successfully argued that the government was out to get him. After serving a six-month jail term for one misdemeanor, Barry began a comeback as council member from the city's poorest ward. The authors criticize the current mayor, reformer Sharon Pratt Kelly, as out of touch, and warn that federal receivership for Washington is as likely as full home rule and statehood. Reliance on dialogue-rich scenes sometimes sacrifices depth for drama, but this is a memorable and disturbing reminder of much unfinished urban business.
Pub Date: May 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-76846-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
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