Little America
The War within the War for Afghanistan
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- CHF 8.00
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- CHF 8.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
The US Government invested millions in Helmand in the 1950s and '60s to transform the barren desert into a veritable oasis - known locally as 'Little America' - and then the money ran out. Four decades later, Helmand was again the focus of US efforts, as waves of Marines descended on the region. Little America tells the story of the long arc of American involvement, and of the campaign to salvage a victory in southern Afghanistan on Obama's watch. Has the war been worth the money and the bloodshed? Through vivid storytelling and on-the-ground reporting, Samuel Johnson Prize-winner, Rajiv Chandrasekeran sets out to find the answer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chandrasekaran, senior correspondent and associate editor of the Washington Post, follows his award-winning analysis of postinvasion Iraq, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, with a searing indictment of how President Barack Obama's 2009 Afghanistan surge was carried out. Drawing on his reporting from Afghanistan over a period of two and a half years and over 70 interviews conducted for this project, the author examines the Obama administration's efforts to "resuscitate a flatlining war." What he finds in his extensive travels, especially in the strategic southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, is a smorgasbord of incompetence, venality, and infighting. It's only when the Marines pivot away from counterinsurgency on which the surge is predicated to counterterrorism that they begin "to shift the momentum of the war." This success proves temporary when Obama begins to reverse the surge and the Taliban switch to a "long-term game." Chandrasekaran argues that the surge was "a missed opportunity" and that its failure rests largely with "the American bureaucracy": a Pentagon that was "too tribal"; incompetent civilian officials, especially at USAID; and a flawed Obama policy to go "big" instead of going "long." Solid and timely reporting, crackling prose, and more than a little controversy will make this one of the summer's hot reads.
