If you are anything like me, as in born within five or so years of me, you probably do not remember a world where the United States is not at what with… something. For example, I have no memory of a pre-9/11 world. My parents did a decent job of not really shining a light on the subject. I just knew that airport security is very serious.
(Story time: On my most recent plane trip, one the the TSA agents yelled to the entire line, paraphrasing, “Guys, y’all know you can’t have water bottles and get through security. Don’t act like you don’t know. This has been a rule for like 13 years.” I almost died laughing in line. There is always that one person. Alright, story time over.)
Anyway, like lots of people nowadays, I do have an almost morbid curiosity for what you could call true crime content and wanting to understand the thinking behind people doing the things they do. Now, when I came across a book discussing the United States’ role in the Middle East for the last twenty years, I was very interested since there have been conflicting views on the topic since I remember. In this century’s version of the Pentagon Papers, we have The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post.
If you are interested in political history but do not care for much discussion of military strategy, I think you will enjoy this book. Rather than discussing the nitty-gritty of planning operations, we are able to see the big picture overview of how the American government was selling the “war” to its citizens versus what was actually said behind the scenes. One of the most interesting things to me was how Whitlock discusses how he genuinely believes that we would not have been in the Middle East as long as we were, and maybe still are, if there wasn’t what seems to be the intentional disregard for the culture of the area. Given the evidence laid out, I have to agree. From my admittingly lack of information on some of these procedures, there seemed to be a better way.
If you are interested, like I was, to see what we have been doing for the last twenty years as a country, I believe that you will like this book. Even if you do not agree with the takeaways Whitlock makes, I still think it is important to see how the information the general public was told was very different from what was being said behind closed doors. If nothing else, you can see how these continuous wars on nouns, don’t work and leave society wanting.
Drabble Geeks 