Reddit mentions: The best afghan war history books

Hello everyone, and happy Thank you Thursday for April 25 2019

I don't have much to offer, but what I do have, I will happily share with you:

Wrote a book, and just made the digital version free for everyone on Amazon if anyone is interest in reading it, it's called The Marine Memoirs: https://www.amazon.com/Marine-Memoirs-Hundred-Eighty-Afghanistan-ebook/dp/B003QHZ496

Oh, and I have $0.01 starter auctions each week for different items that my companies sells in case you're interested in checking those out as well: https://secondamendmentuniversity.com/echo-shopping-link/

Might I also recommend this one by the same author? (An even better book, imho.)

A bit broader still, going over to rotary-wing: this one and this other one both by a British Apache pilot in Afghanistan. Both good stuff, though if I had to pick one of the two here it would be the first.

But this one right here is considered the definitive military rotary-wing book, and I'd agree with that. Huey pilot in 'Nam.

ICG's "A FORCE IN FRAGMENTS: RECONSTITUTING THE AFGHAN NATIONAL ARMY" (2010)

RAND's "The Long March: Building an Afghan National Army" (2009)

CSIS's "Afghan National Security Forces What It Will Take to Implement the ISAF Strategy" (2010)

DOD's "Enduring Voices: Oral Histories of the U.S. Army experience in Afghanistan, 2003-2005"

Musa Khan Jalalzai's "Whose Army? Afghanistan’s Future and the Blueprint for Civil War" (2014)

Ali al-Jalali, author of the Military History of Afghanistan, was the Interior Minister of Afghanistan. He oversaw the creation of a trained force of 50,000 Afghan National Police and 12,000 Border Police. He will give a talk on the Afghan military on Wednesday which you can watch live here. You can also read his 2002 paper on Rebuilding Afghanistan's National Army.

You might crosspost this on /r/AfghanConflict, /r/Military, /r/CredibleDefense, or /r/Geopolitics.

It would be better to defend our country, not go instigate conflicts overseas.

https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Errand-Time-End-Afghanistan/dp/1548650218

Obligatory link to a fantastic book on just how absurd of a failure the war in Afghanistan is, was, and will perpetually be: Fool's Errand As one review accurately says,

> "You might get the impression that his book would be an extended emotional plea. It's not. It's seriously one of the most meticulously documented, carefully laid out works I've ever read. Some of the pages are literally half filled with footnotes. Scott's work will stand up to the most intense academic scrutiny."

Have a read of the books by Ed Macy called Apache and Hellfire if you're interested. He was one of the British pilots involved and apparently got bollocked for the manoeuvre. It was a very desperate last minute move.

https://www.amazon.com/Mayhem-337-Memoir-Advisor-Afghanistan-ebook/dp/B07YZRPQXH/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mayhem+337&qid=1571857302&sr=8-1

Try Jawbreaker too.
https://www.amazon.com/Jawbreaker-Attack-Personal-Account-FieldCommander-ebook/dp/B000FCKLV6

https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Errand-Time-End-Afghanistan/dp/1548650218

Yea

https://www.amazon.com/No-Good-Men-Among-Living/dp/0805091793

https://www.guernicamag.com/anand-gopal-how-the-u-s-created-the-afghan-war-and-then-lost-it/

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-create-afghan-blackwater/

No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes

I read a really good book about the war in Afghanistan called No Good Men Among the Living that addressed this. Basically, shortly after the war started, the Taliban had been completely smashed. Continued American presence in Afghanistan, and the money that could be made off of it, caused it to coalesce again.

Here's the link to my book Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Errand-Time-End-Afghanistan/dp/1548650218/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&linkCode=ll1&tag=scotthortonshow-20&linkId=1630c1a847501052943a4cd611c978e5&language=en_US And here's a page full of blurbs from the guys https://foolserrand.us There's an audiobook version read by me there too.

You could talk about the drone attacks and the fact that that they keep killing civilians. There's this book. Some drone books like this and this.

Koran Kalashnikov and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002-2007 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199326355/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Pw6rzbGW39TW2

War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan, 1978-1992 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0878407588/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_lx6rzb509WDTW

Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 https://www.amazon.com/dp/019983265X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_dz6rzbDMP6KG2

No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GVRVAXM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_VB6rzbJ0EBR87

The Afghan Campaign: A Novel https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767922387/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_WC6rzbEDZ3B3Z

Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691154414/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_jD6rzb6MQ4J2N

Former CIA contractor speaks out

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Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban (book published 2012)

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True, but not directly withdrawn money from banks. What you are talking about is indirect financing.

ISIS gets their money directly from the New York Federal Reserve.

> "The amounts have been soaring. In 2014, annual U.S. dollar cash flow from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to Iraq was $13.66 billion, more than triple the $3.85 billion in 2012, according to data compiled by Iraq’s parliament and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
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> That spike doesn’t mesh with the sluggish Iraqi economy of late, and as a result U.S. officials suspected the dollars were being hoarded rather than circulated." -- Zerohedge


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Edit:

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> Even more amusing is this line: "...just as military officials worry about U.S. weapons getting to enemies." Yes, the US is so worried about that possibility that the Pentagon embarked on a $500 million effort to arm "properly vetted" fighters earlier this year and has now resorted to paradropping hundreds of tons (literally) of ammo and weapons into the middle of the desert and hoping the Kurds pick them up. Meanwhile, the CIA has funneled a completely unknowable amount of money and arms to a mishmash of Syrian Arabs battling the regime. Needless to say, there's absolutely no telling where those weapons will end up and where those fighters' loyalties will lie in the future.

From the same article

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Edit: Down-voting because you disagree does not make it any less true. (see history)



Jundallah is a good example.

>The group has been designated a terrorist organization by Iran, New Zealand[125] and the United States[126][127] and it has been linked to, and taken credit for numerous acts of terror, kidnapping and the smuggling of narcotics. According to many sources, the group is linked to al-Qaeda.[128][129][130]
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>Iran has been critical of the U.S. and U.K. governments for allegedly supporting Jundallah. Several other sources such as the ABC News, The New York Times, Daily Telegraph, and journalist Seymour Hersh have also reported that Jundullah has received support from the United States against Iran.[131][132][133][134][135] -- United States and State Sponsored Terrorism

>Going into Afghanistan was unarguably the right thing to do.


Ooh forgive me, but I'll have to bite back on this one. History did not start on September 11. We were not attacked because "they hate our freedom" or some other such nonsense (not that you said that). The main reason we were attacked by Al-Qaeda was because the U.S. had Army and Air Force bases stationed permanently at Saudi Arabian bases since the preparations of the first Iraq War in 1990 as well as bases in other countries on the Arabian peninsula. Other reasons we were attacked include our unconditional support of Israel and the U.S.'s support for corrupt dictatorships in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Yemen, and Egypt.


Furthermore, on 9/11/01 there were about a few hundred Al-Qaeda members. Three months later after we bombed the hell out of them, there weren't even enough left to fill a 17th century pirate ship. Did this warrant a full scale military invasion into all of Afghanistan? Especially since most of them went into hiding in Pakistan after Tora Bora? I think not.

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We've spent more money in Afghanistan since 2001 than we did to rebuild all of Europe after WWII through the Marshall Plan. And where are we now? As you said, and I agree with you, Afghanistan is still a failed state.


I highly recommend checking out Scott Horton's book on this: Fool's Errand


But realistically you probably won't buy that or have the time to read it so, if you can listen to Scott Horton discuss this topic on a podcast: Time to End the War in Afghanistan