Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 86
 Chechens, not "Chechnyans" October 8, 2009
Natalia O. Novikova (nyc)
Iam loving the book but have one issue: the word "Chechnyans" as opposed to the usual and more correct, "Chechens". I wonder why the author used this? Maybe its because Iam Russian and have never seen this strange way of referring to the Chechens, I dont know, but its as if he were writing about natives of Oregon and called them "Oregonans" instead of the usual.
Otherwise a very , very good book. Literature. Stands with Kiplings "Kim".
This is an important book about Afghanistan October 5, 2009
Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author of In Harm's Way wrote this spellbinding history of the early American war efforts in Afghanistan. The book reads like a well-written novel.
When the terrorists struck New York and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the United States was not prepared for a retaliatory war or even adequate preventive measures to protect US citizens. President Bush declared war on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan the next day, on September 12. But the military had no contingency plan for war in Afghanistan, and certainly did not have soldiers who knew how to fight a war riding on horses, the way the Afghans fought, or even men or women that spoke the Afghan language.
One would think that the US could draw a strategy from the Russian experience, but this was not possible because the Russians failed. The Russians had fought in Afghanistan for ten years, from 1979. They introduced a fighting force of a half million men into the country, and lost fifty thousand of them. In fact, historians write that their defeat was one of the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The US was involved in the Russian war. The Americans backed the anti-Soviet forces called the mujahideen. The US turned a blind eye to their extremist religious views and supplied them with sophisticated weapons.
But then the Taliban rose from the ranks of the mujahideen, well armed and well trained, as an enemy of the US and of civilization.
The Taliban, who followed an extreme version of the Sunni religion, were religious zealots determined to turn back civilization to the fourteenth century, to an ancient generally imagined time that they considered the golden age, when people were ruled by the stringent dictates of Islamic law.
The name Taliban is ironically built on the Arabic talib, meaning "student" or "seeker of knowledge." These seekers of knowledge felt a religious obligation to slit the throats of non-believers, castrate them and leave their bodies to rot in the road.
They insisted that husbands paint their windows black so that no one could see the women within. They forbid women from leaving their homes without a male family escort. These seekers of knowledge forbid over 100,000 girls to attend school and the literacy rate in the country slipped precipitously to only five percent. Women, in short, were to be as pliant as cattle and as silent as stone, a thing, barely human.
The initial US reaction was to bomb the Taliban enclaves, but the bombs generally hit nothing, and the Taliban laughed at America. The US only began to have an effect upon the Taliban when they sent a unit of twelve Special Forces soldiers to fight against them in Afghanistan itself. The Taliban's enemy was a group of Afghans called the Northern Alliance. The mission of the twelve was to join with and fight with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
The Special Forces was founded in 1952. Its soldiers were trained in guerrilla warfare. They wore a cap with an insignia of a red arrowhead with an arrow drawn down the middle, the sign of American Apache Indian scouts.
The regular Army generals were opposed to using Special Forces troops aided by some CIA officers as America's lead element in the war. They had never used Special Forces in this way before. However, President Bush approved the plan to use them.
Their mission was to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan and to find Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenants and kill them; specifically, to bring back bin Laden's head to Washington, shipped in a box of dry ice.
People who want to read what happened when the US first came to Afghanistan, the many problems they faced and what occurred to the dozen Special Forces soldiers, that is told as well and as interesting as a very good novel, will want to read this book.
Horse Soldiers October 2, 2009
Michael Rice (Weed, CA)
Hard to put down. Afghanistan is an amazing country. The soldiers are amazing men doing an amazing job!!!
Amazing Men October 2, 2009
Sharon R. Brooks (Myrtle Beach, SC)
What an amazing story of courage that everyone should read..... I am proud to say I am an American and proud of each and every one of our soldiers fighting for our freedom and the safety of our wonderful country...
Don't Look A Gift Horse in the Mouth September 26, 2009
You will adore this as often horrifying as it is hilarious love letter to the Afghan and American soldiers who valiantly fought the barbaric Taliban. I always wonder about the bitter, creepy one star reviewers. Save the snark for your own mirror. The rest of us will enjoy the US soldier whose horse gave the hell-ride gift of a dive off a sheer cliff. When an Afghan onlooker admires the skill of the terrified rider, I howled. Also when the Afghan general's horse cracks the leg of the US rider behind him, it lightens up a tough read on the forgotten sacrifice of American soldiers. I feel honored to have read this gift of a book that should be Congress' 2009 required reading. A+.
Showing reviews 6-10 of 86
|
