Eagle Down

November 2, 2020
Wall Street Journal reporter Donati debuts with a gritty and well-informed look at the current state of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. After abandoning a plan to withdraw American troops by 2017, President Obama “turned the war over to secretive U.S. Special Operations Forces,” Donati writes. She follows several Green Berets units from 2015 to 2020, and reveals how miscommunication and technology issues led one of her profile subjects to authorize the bombing of a hospital, killing dozens of patients and staff members. Throughout, Donati documents Afghan government corruption and the mismanagement of local security forces, and details the high costs borne by U.S. military families. In 2017 and 2018, the Taliban attempted to seize a series of provincial capitals, provoking Afghan and American troop surges. President Trump, like Obama, sought to deliver on his campaign promise to end the war, and, in 2020, reached a deal with the Taliban “to withdraw all U.S. troops and map out a path to reconciliation,” though Donati notes that many impediments still stand in the way. Skillfully interweaving big-picture policy analysis with frontline reporting, Donati shines a stark light on this shadowy conflict. The result is a distressing yet vital update on America’s longest war.

December 1, 2020

The American military effort in Afghanistan, which began in October 2001, has become the longest war in U.S. history. Donati, who served as national security reporter for the Wall Street Journal in Kabul from 2014 to 2017, has crafted an inside look at the military tactics of units with the Army's Special Forces (often referred to as Green Berets) that faced the Taliban in the Helmand area of southern Afghanistan. Similar to the observations in Wesley Morgan's The Hardest Place (2021), which recounted American efforts in the Pech Valley, Donati provides clear-eyed insights into the frustrations and challenges that confront American soldiers in a war that many Americans have either forgotten about--or would just as soon keep out of sight and out of mind. But American servicemen continue to die and experience illness and disability as a result of this war, and Donati's book is unflinching in the stories it tells about servicemen participating in an unforgiving war. The author also details the gridlock in Washington during George W. Bush's and Barack Obama's two terms in office as they sought to manage the war. VERDICT Featuring often-overlooked perspectives, this is an important read on America's military involvement in Afghanistan.--Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2020
Initiated in response to the Global War on Terror, the war in Afghanistan has been raging for 19 years. As the U.S. scaled down its level of direct involvement, the tide of momentum shifted, with the Taliban re-emerging as a revitalized menace and regaining once-lost territories, such as Kabul and Kunduz. National security reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Donati here writes of her time embedded with Afghan forces beginning in 2015. She traces the ongoing efforts of the U.S. Special Forces advising the Afghan alliance in their brutal battles of supremacy against Taliban and their confederates. She covers deadly attacks (sneak attacks on U.S. and Afghan outposts), frustrating attempts at diplomacy (stalemates over parties involved), and questions of the U.S. presence during both the Obama and Trump administrations. The book hits its mark in its sympathetic portrayal of the boots on the ground, in particular the Special Forces and Green Berets of Operational Detachment Alpha. Their frustrations at the human costs, from deaths to homesickness to mission futility, will resonate with readers.

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