{"id":43,"date":"2008-09-15T15:16:22","date_gmt":"2008-09-15T20:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=43"},"modified":"2009-04-07T04:56:05","modified_gmt":"2009-04-07T11:56:05","slug":"descent-into-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=43","title":{"rendered":"Descent into Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trying to find out what’s gone on in Afghanistan since 9\/11, I read Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia<\/a>\"\".\u00a0 Rashid is a journalist from Pakistan.\u00a0 He has previously published well-received books on the Taliban and on Jihad in Central Asia.\u00a0\u00a0 Descent into Chaos<\/span> was a very lengthy, very detailed review of what the U.S. has been up to in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Central Asia since 9\/11.\u00a0 It is a book of bad news.\u00a0 Bad news both about what the U.S. has done (or not done) and about how the other countries have reacted.<\/p>\n

I wish that Rashid was just writing fiction, so that I could just wait for the next book in the series.\u00a0 This book was terrifying.\u00a0 More so than Ghost Wars<\/span><\/a>, since the information in\u00a0 Descent into Chaos<\/span> picks up where Ghost Wars<\/span> left off, and runs right up through early 2008.\u00a0\u00a0 Things have not improved.<\/p>\n

I cannot summarize this book.\u00a0 If you are looking for a single book to catch you up on what happened since 9\/11, this will do the trick. If you’d like to get a preview of the book, here is a link to an interview with Rashid<\/a> about the book.\u00a0 I can say that I appreciated the gravitas <\/em>with which Rashid approached the subject, his great reporting connections inside multiple countries, and his national pride (which had little chance to be exhibited, but was definitely on display in a few great moments).\u00a0\u00a0 Given the above, I will add his works on the Taliban and Jihad to my short list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trying to find out what’s gone on in Afghanistan since 9\/11, I read Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. Rashid is a journalist from Pakistan. He has previously published well-received books on the Taliban and on Jihad in Central Asia. Descent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[11,26,24,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}