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A review by kieranhealy
The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by Jake Tapper
4.0
This book is infuriating. What starts as a straightforward narrative of a remote outpost in a war we’re waging unsuccessfully turns into an experiential charnel house. Some men come in and help, but only for a while before they leave. Others come in and die. But at not point while reading does one say “This was a good decision to put soldiers in this position.” Tapper does an excellent job setting up the scenario where one decision leads to another, leading to another... but at no point does someone say “Maybe this was a bad idea.” Or, at least, nobody who will die because of it.
Most maddening is when the decision to vacate the site is obvious, but geopolitical forces determine that then army must stay. The feeling of fatalism, from a reading perspective, runs throughout. But one still hopes, maybe, it’s a story where everyone triumphs over stupid rigidity.
This nearly gets to the level of books like Black Hawk Down/Jarhead territory, but JUST misses. Essentially, Tapper needed to scale back the earlier parts of the book. We get to know too many people, too many soldiers, who then leave. If one wanted to make that a point about the fact the United States cycled soldiers through on short tours, so that locals could never become allegiance to the U.S, fine. But the problem is, that is a lot of reading to get through if you’re not going to finish the book with those same people. It leads to a bit of a rehash feeling once the reader gets farther into the book. In other words, “Now can I care? Or are these guys leaving too?”
But once it gets towards the 2nd half of the book, it is relentlessly engaging. Read it for that.
Most maddening is when the decision to vacate the site is obvious, but geopolitical forces determine that then army must stay. The feeling of fatalism, from a reading perspective, runs throughout. But one still hopes, maybe, it’s a story where everyone triumphs over stupid rigidity.
This nearly gets to the level of books like Black Hawk Down/Jarhead territory, but JUST misses. Essentially, Tapper needed to scale back the earlier parts of the book. We get to know too many people, too many soldiers, who then leave. If one wanted to make that a point about the fact the United States cycled soldiers through on short tours, so that locals could never become allegiance to the U.S, fine. But the problem is, that is a lot of reading to get through if you’re not going to finish the book with those same people. It leads to a bit of a rehash feeling once the reader gets farther into the book. In other words, “Now can I care? Or are these guys leaving too?”
But once it gets towards the 2nd half of the book, it is relentlessly engaging. Read it for that.