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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
The clusterfuck of Afghanistan that we made and how we really don't care anymore.
What a clusterfuck.
Hastings impressed me with the way he pulled the narrative together in the end. It’s not the story of McChrystal, or his team, or Hastings himself— it’s the assembly line of interchangeable generals in the unwinnable war. One of the most powerful parts is one of its simplest: two pages, back to back, with each side’s blunt opinions of the other. No spin, no politicking.
Just a clusterfuck. And it’s ours. We made it. With no way to get out.
(With regards to the movie, the one Netflix made falls short of the book. Armando Iannucci might be the only one who could do it a profane sort of justice. Truth is stranger than fiction; I’m not sure satire is possible when reality descends into farce.)
Hastings impressed me with the way he pulled the narrative together in the end. It’s not the story of McChrystal, or his team, or Hastings himself— it’s the assembly line of interchangeable generals in the unwinnable war. One of the most powerful parts is one of its simplest: two pages, back to back, with each side’s blunt opinions of the other. No spin, no politicking.
Just a clusterfuck. And it’s ours. We made it. With no way to get out.
(With regards to the movie, the one Netflix made falls short of the book. Armando Iannucci might be the only one who could do it a profane sort of justice. Truth is stranger than fiction; I’m not sure satire is possible when reality descends into farce.)
The genesis of the book was from Hasting's article on General McChrystal, which led to McChrystal's almost immediate firing by Obama. This book goes over the setup and follow through of how that article was written -- how the various players were set up, and how Hastings ended up spending far more time with the McChrystal team than he was supposed to after the Iceland Volcano eruption halted all air travel in Europe.
Hastings uses simple, precise language wherever he can, and keeps his sentences on point and unambiguous. He's clearly comfortable in military situations while still finding ways to escape "the bubble" and he's not fazed by high ranking officials. As such, his reporting is surprisingly levelheaded even in situations where you expect a haliography -- rather than writing about 7 foot tall man gods who stride the world and quote Latin, he talks about war geeks with severe cases of ADD that are carefully managed by their handlers. More impressively, Hastings is not afraid to discuss the sunk costs in the war that has McChrystal asking for more and more troops even while everyone around him says that Afghanistan is unwinnable.
It's a good read, and it neatly humanizes a number of high ranking officials and shows how politics can work at that level.
For another take on the book (with some rather acid comments about lazy journalism), read http://www.annrachelmarlowe.com/2012/01/09/afghan-noir-review-of-michael-hastings-the-operators-in-the-daily/
Hastings uses simple, precise language wherever he can, and keeps his sentences on point and unambiguous. He's clearly comfortable in military situations while still finding ways to escape "the bubble" and he's not fazed by high ranking officials. As such, his reporting is surprisingly levelheaded even in situations where you expect a haliography -- rather than writing about 7 foot tall man gods who stride the world and quote Latin, he talks about war geeks with severe cases of ADD that are carefully managed by their handlers. More impressively, Hastings is not afraid to discuss the sunk costs in the war that has McChrystal asking for more and more troops even while everyone around him says that Afghanistan is unwinnable.
It's a good read, and it neatly humanizes a number of high ranking officials and shows how politics can work at that level.
For another take on the book (with some rather acid comments about lazy journalism), read http://www.annrachelmarlowe.com/2012/01/09/afghan-noir-review-of-michael-hastings-the-operators-in-the-daily/