Latest Reading

I recently finished reading Lone Survivor, an account of a U.S. Special Forces operation in Afghanistan written by the only remaining survivor, Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell. The author was part of a four man team on a mission to take down Ahmad Shah, a high ranking Taliban leader. (Although the book assigns him the name "Ben", Ahmad Shah is his actual name). This operation led to the death of a combination of 19 Navy SEALs and Nightstalkers, the largest loss of life of American Special Forces at any one time. I highly highly recommend this book. I'm a huge fan of reading about the U.S. military, US operations, and the war on terror in Afghanistan, in Iraq and this book provided some great insight to the realities of the war that is taking place thousands of miles from here and even millions of miles farther from our thoughts. It is a well written book that brings to the life the sort of action and bravery that you see in an American war movie. As you read through it, you begin to get a better sense of exactly what kind of enemy we are fighting. That is, you learn about the personalities of the Taliban members, the way they fight, their hatred for Americans, their supplies, how they are supported, their disregard for their own life, their raw nature, and most importantly how they use our rules against us. I think one of the most important battles that come up in this book is the fight between following the "Rules of Engagement" and disregarding them. The way the Taliban operates, they make it difficult to differentiate between villagers and actual terrorists which eventually threatens the lives of our own soldiers. It only makes our men vulnerable because of their fear of being prosecuted here at home by the media and all the liberals who so heavily insist on protecting foreign "innocent" lives even when it means putting our own at greater risk. The book uses this example, an Afghan villager with his turban on may be running directly at you with their AK-47, but until they fire on you, our soldiers cannot open fire on them. I'm leaving holes in this paragraph because I don't want to ruin the suspense that this debate brings to the story. I have my own thoughts on this issue, but if you're reading my blog, you probably know me well enough to have a pretty good idea on which side of the fence I'm sitting on with this debate. Anyhow, wonderful book...