{"id":36,"date":"2008-07-15T12:02:29","date_gmt":"2008-07-15T17:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=36"},"modified":"2009-04-07T05:03:28","modified_gmt":"2009-04-07T12:03:28","slug":"ghost-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"Ghost Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

An acquaintance who retired from the military and joined the Foreign Service recommended Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001<\/a>\"\" to me when I asked him what I could read to learn more about Iraq and Afghanistan today (I have almost completed my initial review of Middle East history.\u00a0 I have a few decades to read about from the 1920’s onward, but I wanted to start reading about current events in case they end up directly affecting my next assignment).\u00a0 He said that many of the players in Ghost Wars<\/span> are still around and will show up again at some point.\u00a0 He also thought it was a fairly accurate portrayal of the country.<\/p>\n

I was mesmerized throughout the book.\u00a0 Coll is a reporter and the book is heavily end-noted with references (in contrast to The Assassins’ Gate<\/span>).\u00a0 It is an amazing and terrifying story about the wars in Afghanistan and our involvement with them.<\/p>\n

Much of the “secret” history after a certain point involves Osama Bin Laden.\u00a0 Just the parts about the different administrations’ inability to accurately identify the threat of OBL then their inability to act on the threat is disheartening.\u00a0 Honestly, that part of the book was like reading a thriller, except a thriller with a very bad ending.<\/p>\n

Ghost Wars<\/span> also explains a lot about our relationship with Pakistan, given how we used (and were used by) Pakistan to route guns and money to Afghanistan.\u00a0 The behaviour of the Pakistanis, decade after decade,\u00a0 was stunning.\u00a0 Now I have to find something to read to understand them better too.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed the movie version of Charlie Wilson’s War<\/a>\"\" last winter. Ghost Wars<\/span> makes that movie look like (or more like) a four-panel comic strip.\u00a0\u00a0 Granted, one’s a Hollywood movie and the other is a 600-page history book, but good grief, the scope and gravity of Ghost Wars<\/span> made me wish I had never even laughed during the movie.<\/p>\n

In terms of readability, Coll helps out the reader with a list of principal characters and some maps at the front of the book.\u00a0 All are needed.\u00a0\u00a0 I read this title over several weeks and each time I picked it back up it was very easy to get back into.<\/p>\n

I highly recommend this book to anyone trying to get caught up on the recent history of Afghanistan and our involvement in that history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An acquaintance who retired from the military and joined the Foreign Service recommended Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 to me when I asked him what I could read to learn more about Iraq and Afghanistan today (I have almost completed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[11,24,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}