How old were you when the war in Afghanistan started in October 2001?
I was one month from turning 12 years old. Almost all Americans currently in their teens have not lived in a world where the United States does not have troops in Afghanistan. The Obama administration removed all troops except for Special Forces in an “advisory and training” role, but we know by now that such wording is only politics. As of four days ago, according to the Department of Defense, the United States has 2,500 service members in Afghanistan. That is the lowest number of troops there since 2001. The road has been long, but a full withdrawal has always been just out of reach.
The Special Forces still in Afghanistan provide a topic with the tension necessary to fuel Jessica Donati’s new book, Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War. Even living through it, I did not know the details of the status of the American intervention in Afghanistan, only that troops were still present and there have been increasingly fewer headlines about it. Donati brings details from her years of reporting as an embed with both American and Afghan troops. She frames the narrative with personal stories of those in the line of fire, some of which have incredibly touching, frustrating, or extraordinary experience.
The personal narratives provide Eagle Down with its heft. But in the background is a powerful question: What are they doing there? In other words, what is being gained by our presence in Afghanistan, and how much longer will we have to stay? Are we there to save face and avoid all of this looking like a loss, or is it actually doing Afghanistan, America, and the world long-term good? The more servicemen die, the more imperative it is to make sure they didn’t die in vain. But that requires knowing if our presence there is doing any good in the first place. Questions abound. But Donati focuses on the role that accountability and transparency play in this conversation. She writes:
It’s not just Afghanistan. Historically, US SOF (Special Operations Forces) have been deployed all over the world, from Iraq and Syria to Libya and Yemen. A little-talked-about SOF mission still operates in the African countries of Niger and Mali against extremist groups linked to Islamic State, al Qaeda, and others. In all these battlefields, the complexity of local dynamics undercuts the simple good-versus-evil narrative. The conflicts are often fueled by scarcity of resources, tribal disputes, and long-standing ethnic rivalries left over from colonial eras. We in the media never question the counterterrorism argument, and so the wars continue in shadows with no end in sight.
Donati makes perfect points in this excerpt, including the vague differences between our current situation in Afghanistan and the many Special Forces we have stationed all over the world. Also, as the Department of Defense link above explains, US troops are currently scheduled to be fully withdrawn by May 2021, but “any such future drawdowns remain conditions-based”. In other words, anything could happen. To understand the dynamics of this forever war, to see the effects this has on the Special Forces on the ground, and to read their stories both heroic and harrowing, I highly recommend Eagle Down. Its subject matter and powerful narratives may make it one of the top books of the year.
I received a review copy of Eagle Down courtesy of PublicAffairs and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

Talk about explosive and emotional! The author does not pull any punches and this is obviously not a book that everyone is going to agree with or understand! Having been a Military wife for 23 years and my husband was involved in the first Desert Storm and my own son did a tour in Iraq and Afghanistan! Luckily, he came home physically safe, but definitely not emotionally! Those tours are brutal as the author Jessica clearly points out. My son was a Captain in the Army and making decisions for others is agonizing because there is so much that can go wrong!

The author does a phenomenal job with her resources and research and the development of the book is emotionally magnificent! I was hesitant about this book and I almost wasn’t going to read it, but I took the book and committed and it was time for me to face some of my own fears of what they actually had to endure!

This is so definitely a book I would recommend to everyone and anyone to read because it is beyond just a shootem up book, it’s about the Policies of our soldiers being there and what they have to deal with! It’s first hand information on the ground from those who are wanting to talk!

I received an advanced copy from NetGalley and these are my willingly given thoughts and opinions.