horse soldiers by doug stanton.

[mopinko]

the extraordinary story of a band of us soldiers who rode to victory in afghanistan.

reading this book because a family member is one of the principals. but it is some hard reading. gung ho all the way. talking about guys who saw the towers fall and packed their bags and went to war. no thinking required. lots of 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11.

also hard to read about the conditions that the us military finds itself in. ie- chinook helicopters that were sitting in pieces when the call came, were slapped back together, then were sent flying over 12,000 ft mountains with no oxygen systems working. warthogs that followed them just by watching the glow from their engines. just abominable.

[babylonsister]

1. I read a review of this.

The reviewer said there were a lot of characters to try to follow, but you'd know who was who by the end of it.

He thought it was well done for the most part, but sure didn't mention the rah-rah aspect.

[mopinko]

2. maybe it's just me.

but these guys whose immediate reaction to 9/11 was kill, kill, blech.

[babylonsister]

3. Weren't they special ops? Isn't that their mission?

And this did happen shortly after 9/11, and Afghanistan is where 'the mastermind' was supposed to be, for better or worse. Didn't work out so well, did it.

[mopinko]

4. yes they were s.o.

reading what little they had to fight with is as aggravating as reading the glorification of war. i remember very well at the time thinking that we were doing this all on the cheap. bribing war lords to fight the taliban for us. sometimes it sucks to be right.

[mopinko]

5. update- have slogged through this retched book. ugh.

maybe it is me, i found it painful reading about killings and bombings. but my god is this book stupid. making a big thing out of these guys riding around in the hills of afghanistan, as though they didn't have gps, radio support, supply drops and bombers at their disposal.
and 2 guys got a bronze star for calling in a bomb on their own position and surviving?
the author doesn't even try to trump up something, anything, that qualifies as a "victory".
just plain retched, and pathetic attempt to gussy up a stupid military engagement.

i also, of course, know many personal details in the book were altered. understandable, but why not just leave them out? the little sprinkling of character development in this book is not really worth the trouble.

[EFerrari]

6. That's what I thought it would be when reading the BookTV description.

You're a better person than I am. The blurb was already too much for me.