The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged A New Afghanistan (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
What a tragic ending to a great team of men, one that should have been avoided. Just goes to show you that when you do not follow established protocol things go wrong. People took over when it should have been left to the original team - they where pushed out due to Rank and 50+ deaths could have been avoided. Certainty a sad day for the team and the families. The team in very short time, made a huge difference and touched many lives as well as shaped the future of a country. Some reviewers are unduly picky about this book (e.g., too much military description of small stuff) and some are wrong (main setting is Islamabad).I found this book to be thoroughly detailed and well-written. The plot focus is on how a group of highly trained U.S. forces helped install Hamid Karzai as Afghanistan's interim leader prior to its constitutional assembly. The other plot axis is the detailed inner workings of the small group of soldiers who were called to get Karzai from Pakistan to his people in Khandahar (which, at that time, was held by the Taliban). Since the book is so well researched and authenticated, it is the definitive journalistic account of this action.The subplot revolves around several unacceptable military errors: crossed lines of authority from HQ staff to the active group of soldiers; and the mis-targeting of a GPS-guided U.S. bomb onto the special forces soldiers and their Afghan allies.The author captures the relationships between the various groups (Karzai's allies, U.S. special forces, military command structures); the incredible power that the U.S. wields (You want 6,000 AK-47's with ammunition? No problem. Delivery tomorrow); and the workings within the special forces group itself.
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