LITTLE AMERICA: The War Within the War for Afghanistan

 Rajiv Chandrasekaran <rajivchandra2@gmail.com> wrote:

Friends,

Pardon the interruption. Just wanted to pass on some exciting news. My book on the Afghan War, LITTLE AMERICA: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, will be released one week from today.
Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review. "A searing indictment of how President Barack Obama’s 2009 Afghanistan surge was carried out. . . . Solid and timely reporting, crackling prose, and more than a little controversy will make this one of the summer’s hot reads.”

To learn more about the book and to read an excerpt, please visit my new website: rajivc.com  The book is available for pre-order at Amazon and other sites. Book tour info is also on my site. I'll be speaking in Washington, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Devner, Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles this summer. Chicago, Boston, Austin, Princeton and Palo Alto in the fall.

Here's what the book jacket says: The author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City (a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2007) now gives us the startling, behind-the-scenes story of the struggle between President Obama and the military to remake Afghanistan.
When President Barack Obama ordered the surge of troops and aid to Afghanistan, Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran followed. He found the effort sabotaged not only by Afghan and Pakistani malfeasance but by infighting and incompetence within the American government: a war cabinet arrested by vicious bickering among top national security aides; diplomats and aid workers who failed to deliver on their grand promises; generals who dispatched troops to the wrong places; and headstrong military leaders who sought a far more expansive campaign than the White House wanted. Through their bungling and quarreling, they wound up squandering the first year of the surge.

Chandrasekaran explains how the United States has never understood Afghanistan—and probably never will. During the Cold War, American engineers undertook a massive development project across southern Afghanistan in an attempt to woo the country from Soviet influence. They built dams and irrigation canals, and they established a comfortable residential community known as Little America, with a Western-style school, a coed community pool, and a plush clubhouse—all of which embodied American and Afghan hopes for a bright future and a close relationship. But in the late 1970s—after growing Afghan resistance and a Communist coup—the Americans abandoned the region to warlords and poppy farmers.

In one revelatory scene after another, Chandrasekaran follows American efforts to reclaim the very same territory from the Taliban. Along the way, we meet an Army general whose experience as the top military officer in charge of Iraq’s Green Zone couldn’t prepare him for the bureaucratic knots of Afghanistan, a Marine commander whose desire to charge into remote hamlets conflicted with civilian priorities, and a war-seasoned diplomat frustrated in his push for a scaled-down but long-term American commitment. Their struggles show how Obama’s hope of a good war, and the Pentagon’s desire for a resounding victory, shriveled on the arid plains of southern Afghanistan.

Meticulously reported, hugely revealing, Little America is an unprecedented examination of a troubled war—and an eye-opening look at the complex relationship between America and Afghanistan.