 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | Award-winning combat reporter Sean Naylor reveals how close American forces came to disaster in Afghanistan against Al Qaida—after easily defeating the ragtag Taliban that had sheltered the terrorist organization behind the 9/11 attacks. At dawn on March 2, 2002, over two hundred soldiers of the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions flew into the mouth of a buzz saw in Afghanistan's Shahikot Valley. Believing the war all but over, U.S. military leaders refused to commit the extra infantry, artillery, and attack helicopters required to fight the war's biggest battle— a missed opportunity to crush hundreds of Al Qaida's fighters and some of its most senior leaders. Eyewitness Naylor vividly portrays the heroism of the young, untested soldiers, the fanaticism of their ferocious enemy, the mistakes that led to a hellish mountaintop firefight, and how thirteen American commandos embodied "Patton's three principles of war"—audacity, audacity, and audacity—by creeping unseen over frozen mountains into the heart of an enemy stronghold to prevent a U.S. military catastrophe. |
Average Customer Rating:   True story
Well written and timely. According to my son-in-law who is a Lt. Col. in the Marine Corp it pretty much tells it like it is.
A good read... Having spent sometime in two of the units in this book a "few" years back, I enjoyed reading it. For non-military readers I could see where it would come off slow at first, especially if you were looking to dive right in and start reading about some of the firefights. This book would be an excellent resource if you wanted to understand why the U.S. strategy was what it was in Afghanistan during the time after the fall of the Taliban. So close yet so Far After 9/11, the US attacked Afghanistan to knock out the Taliban - which they did very quickly with US Special Forces and an alliance to Afghani tribes that hated the Taliban. This operation takes place in March 2002, the bad guys are on the run and we are ready to deliver the knock out blow.
What starts off as a promising and conclusive finish ends up in being a laundry list of Murphy's laws - what can go wrong will. Too many different branches of the US were involved - the CIA, SEALs, US Army to name a few and everyone had their own agenda. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, managing the war from the Pentagon put limits on the troops involved (Vietnam vets - that sound familiar?) Compromises were made in the planning that would later come back to haunt the operation and cost US lives.
This is a tough book to read, it unfolds like a horror story. You want to scream - NO, haven't you learned your history? Don't do that, but like a snowball going downhill, no one can stop it once it is in action. And action there was. We walked into a hornets nest, killed a lot of bad guys, but ultimately failed in the main objective. The author puts you there at every step and makes you feel the pain and frustration of the guys who had to execute this operation.
A must read for all military planners, anyone with the responsibility of sending our men and women into harms way - learn from the mistakes of others. An excellent read for all those who are interested in seeing what is going on in this war torn country, the reasons why we are where we are now. very well done the book describes well the story and its internal fights. the description of the battle is vivid and accurate. Excellent case study in multi-command planning, but still irresponsible "Not a Good Day to Die" by Sean Naylor is the story of how American forces planned and executed OPERATION ANACONDA, a major battle to dislodge Taliban and Al Qaida forces from the Shahikot Valley in Afghanistan. Naylor tells the story with the sensationalist flair of a seasoned journalist, which is no surprise since he is a regular contributor to the Army Times.
OPERATION ANACONDA violated one of the Clausewitzian principles of military operations - Unity of Command. Naylor does an excellent forensic analysis of how the planning went wrong, which simply boiled down to identifying who was really in charge. The first few chapters of this book are devoted to this subject, and it is an excellent case study in what went wrong.
The core issue was a military operation that relied on three command structures for it's proper execution. The main effort of the operation was to be executed by Afghan fighters with Special Forces advisors. Supporting this effort was a combined 101st Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division conventional force; and the third piece was a second special operations force providing reconnaisance of the battlefield. Missing from this organization was a cohesive command structure tying them all together. Naylor does an excellent job of forensic analysis as to how the planning failures led to execution failures on the battlefield. While it was an American tactical victory, the Americans had the opportunity for a large strategic win.
Naylor devotes the last third of the book to the actual battle itself. This section could be loosely associated with Mark Bowden's book "Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War". Both books feature the harrowing combat of US Rangers.
Despite his excellent analysis, I have some serious issues with the book. Naylor states in his introduction "When it became clear that I knew more than they wished, officials launched an internal investigation... The investigation's ostensible purpose was to probe the alleged release of classified material, but it's real goal was to punish those who may have helped me compile the facts and to send a message to others tempted to break ranks and tell the truth." Information is classified for a very specific reason - its release could cause the loss of someone's life; or in the case of intelligence collection, its release could cause the adversary to react in such a way that intelligence method would no longer work. A responsible, patriotic journalist would have worked with the military to ensure that information published would not cause either of the above to occur. Since Mr. Naylor choose to move forward with irresponsibly publishing portions of this book, he has ensured his place on the Pentagon's guest list right behind Jane Fonda, and Wolf Blitzer.
My second complaint is Naylor's obvious disdain for the Navy SEALS. It would have been sufficient to report on their activities without adding in the unattributed sophomoric comments that obviously came from only one side of the naturally competitive culture of special operations forces. This failure to represent both sides of an issue, and to rely on unattributed sources is what separates this journalistic work from a credible historic books.
The final shortcoming of the book is the failure to analyze what changes have taken place in Afghanistan since Anaconda. The book ends with the forces leaving the Shahikot valley without any insight into the doctrinal changes that have been effected since the battle.
This is a well-written book, and you should read it. I suggest Mr. Naylor donate proceeds from this book to a veteran's organization; or to the widows and widowers of the men & women who have been killed because of his overzealous reporting of things that would have been better off unwritten. |  |
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