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Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Rajiv Chandrasekaran
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)

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Book Description

June 26, 2012
From the award-winning author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a riveting, intimate account of America’s troubled war in Afghanistan.

When President Barack Obama ordered the surge of troops and aid to Afghanistan, Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran followed. He found the effort sabotaged not only by Afghan and Pakistani malfeasance but by infighting and incompetence within the American government: a war cabinet arrested by vicious bickering among top national security aides; diplomats and aid workers who failed to deliver on their grand promises; generals who dispatched troops to the wrong places; and headstrong military leaders who sought a far more expansive campaign than the White House wanted. Through their bungling and quarreling, they wound up squandering the first year of the surge.

Chandrasekaran explains how the United States has never understood Afghanistan—and probably never will. During the Cold War, American engineers undertook a massive development project across southern Afghanistan in an attempt to woo the country from Soviet influence. They built dams and irrigation canals, and they established a comfortable residential community known as Little America, with a Western-style school, a coed community pool, and a plush clubhouse—all of which embodied American and Afghan hopes for a bright future and a close relationship. But in the late 1970s—after growing Afghan resistance and a Communist coup—the Americans abandoned the region to warlords and poppy farmers.

In one revelatory scene after another, Chandrasekaran follows American efforts to reclaim the very same territory from the Taliban. Along the way, we meet an Army general whose experience as the top military officer in charge of Iraq’s Green Zone couldn’t prepare him for the bureaucratic knots of Afghanistan, a Marine commander whose desire to charge into remote hamlets conflicted with civilian priorities, and a war-seasoned diplomat frustrated in his push for a scaled-down but long-term American commitment. Their struggles show how Obama’s hope of a good war, and the Pentagon’s desire for a resounding victory, shriveled on the arid plains of southern Afghanistan.

Meticulously reported, hugely revealing, Little America is an unprecedented examination of a failing war—and an eye-opening look at the complex relationship between America and Afghanistan.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Rajiv Chandrasekaran has done it again. Like Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Little America is a beautifully written and deeply reported account of how a divided United States government and its dysfunctional bureaucracy have foiled American efforts abroad . . . A brilliant and courageous work of reportage.”
            -Linda Robinson, The New York Times Book Review
 
“Fascinating and fresh . . . Chandrasekaran is a superb reporter and graceful writer whose individual vignettes, focused on military and civilian misfires, are on-target and often mortifying.”
            -Max Boot, The Wall Street Journal
 
“Brilliant . . . Only a journalist with Chandrasekaran’s experience and skill could tell this extraordinarily complicated story with such clarity.”
            -June Thomas, Newsday
 
“Sharp and subtle . . . Enormously informative . . .  Little America does not disappoint.”
            -Bill O’Leary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 
“A thoughtful guide to President Obama’s ‘good war’ [and] a devastating indictment of a dysfunctional war machine . . . Chandrasekaran’s expose is a stark warning to rethink how America uses its power.”
            -Robert D. Crews, San Francisco Chronicle
 
“What makes Little America so compelling is the breadth and carefulness of Chandrasekaran’s reporting . . . A scalding and in-depth critique of U.S. policy and performance in Afghanistan.”
            -Tony Perry, Newark Star-Ledger
 
“Chandrasekaran’s apt portrayal of the Afghan perspective and on-the-ground tensions makes the book a must for policy shapers and voters alike.”
            -Hamed Aleaziz, Mother Jones
 
“Chandrasekaran draws vivid sketches of how Karzai and his family and their allies operate as a gang of looters, frustrating every attempt to create an honest government that could confront their Taliban enemy . . . The reader gets a keen sense of the chaos that reigns among the Americans and their allies.”
            -Neil Sheehan, Washington Post
 
“A must-read account . . . Little America is the best work yet in addressing our military-diplomatic campaign in Afghanistan and the dysfunction that stymies it.”
            -Peter J. Munson, Small Wars Journal
 
“Searing . . . Solid and timely reporting, crackling prose, and more than a little controversy will make this one of the summer’s hot reads.”
            -Starred review, Publishers Weekly
 
“Clearheaded . . . Well-researched and compelling . . . Chandrasekaran captures the absurdity of a bumbling bureaucracy attempting to reengineer in its own image a society that is half a world away . . . A timely, convincing portrait of an occupation in crisis.”
            -Kirkus
 
“Drawing on interviews with key participants and three years of first-hand reportage, Chandrasekaran delivers a bracing diagnosis of the problem.”
            -Booklist

About the Author

Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior correspondent and associate editor at The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1994. He has reported from more than three dozen countries and has served as the newspaper’s bureau chief in Baghdad, Cairo, and Southeast Asia. He is the author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2007. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (June 26, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0307957144
  • ISBN-13: 978-0307957146
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.4 x 9.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #210,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
101 of 106 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Mostly accurate...unfortunately July 21, 2012
Format:Hardcover
I am a Navy reservist and served as one of the primary economic development officers at NATO's Regional Command - South headquarters in Kandahar from September 2009 to September 2010. Thus it was with more than passing interest that I read Rajiv Chandrasekaran's recent journalistic expose, "Little America: The War within the War for Afghanistan," which chronicles the events and missteps of President Obama's civilian and military surge into southern Afghanistan beginning in mid-2009. Obviously, I'm not a neutral party; but I'd like to think that I'm fairly objective. Here are my thoughts on the book, along with my personals observations from serving "inside the surge," often alongside many of the people - American, Afghan and Allied - featured in this book.

The author achieved commercial and critical success with his first book, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone," a searing indictment of the Bush administration's Coalition Provisional Authority in the early days after the invasion of Iraq. "Little America" is very similar, yet quite different from that National Book Award winning effort. The similarities are the anecdote-rich, character-driven narrative and the portrayal of a bumbling, embarrassingly incompetent United States government, usually, but not always, focused on bureaucratic civilian agencies and a wide range of feckless senior politically appointed leaders.

The difference is the author's personal sympathies, both to the war and the primary players in the story, which clearly shine through despite his best efforts to maintain the appearance of journalistic neutrality and integrity. The main characters in "Emerald City" are portrayed as venal, irredeemable creatures, George W. Bush's small minded janissaries in his illegal and ill-advised war of conquest. The reader is expected to recoil in horror (as I'm sure the author did) from the thought that these people actually represent our flag and nation - and in positions with such consequence in the Arab world and greater Middle East.

The key players in the "Little America" narrative, on the other hand, are noble and principled (and liberal!). Main characters, especially Kael Weston and Marine Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, are portrayed as twenty-first century Galahads: thoughtful, sober, well-educated men with the very best of intentions and single-mindedly pursuing a better life for the benighted people of an unforgiving land, but adrift in a desert of bureaucratic incompetence and political ineptitude. If Iraq in 2003 was the wrong war with the wrong people, both in the national command authority and on the ground, Afghanistan in 2009 was the right war with (mostly) the right people in positions in Washington and in Helmand province, if not Kandahar and Kabul.

In many ways "Little America" reminded me of another relatively recent book on Afghanistan: "Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times." The veteran reporter George Crile produced a ripping good yarn about the CIA's covert operation to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, as told virtually exclusively from the perspective of Democratic Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson and his CIA partner, Gust Avrakotos. In that bestselling book - and eventual Tom Hanks / Julia Roberts major motion picture - there were only good guys (Wilson, Avrakotos and those who supported them) and villains (everyone else). In "Little America," Weston and Nicholson assume the role of Wilson and Avragatos, while the second tier characters in the narrative are placed in their respective camps - good guy or bad guy - depending on how they aligned, directly or indirectly, with the author's heroes. It makes for a tight narrative. But is it true? Only partially, I'm afraid.

Chandrasekaran may be sympathetic with the main characters he chose to develop for his storyline, but he doesn't shrink from pointing out the many errors and inconsistencies that have plagued the US and NATO in Afghanistan. Indeed, his laundry list of complaints is tough to synthesize. Here are a mere dozen of his scattershot critiques: 1) Helmand was made a focus of the surge instead of Kandahar not for strategic reasons but because the US Marine Corps wanted a clearly defined area of operations that they could control soup-to-nuts (aka: Marinestan), a heritage born from the second world war's Pacific theater; 2) cotton should have been the focus of agricultural development strategy in Helmand, but USAID was dead set against that crop for reasons described as short sighted and specious; 3) the heavy focus on developing district level governance was doomed from the start for cultural reasons and led to practically zero progress in improving the image and effectiveness of the central government in the insurgent strongholds of the south; 4) well intentioned USAID support programs, such as AVIPA, had minimal lasting development impact but led to enormous short-term distortions in the local economy where it was introduced; 5) the military implemented a full throttle, classic COIN campaign despite the White House's clear intent to engage in a more limited counter terrorism and training effort; 6) the human capital of the civilian surge was at best weak and more likely dilutive to the overall war effort; 7) the sole US Army unit available for Kandahar - the Stryker Brigade - happened to be led by a rogue commander who fostered a "Seek and Destroy" mentality rather than a "hearts and minds" approach, which ultimately alienated the local population wherever they served; 8) a criminally incompetent strategic partner in Afghan president Hamid Karzai; 9) various harebrained, big ticket development schemes, such as the rehabilitation of Kajaki hydroelectric dam, that had little chance for success and plenty of opportunity for graft and corruption; 10) sophomoric bureaucratic catfights between some of the most senior members of Obama's Afghanistan war council (Holbrooke versus Doug Lute and Karl Eikenberry); 11) dubious Afghan allies with ties to the opium trade and a penchant for arbitrary violence, corruption or pedophilia; and 12) a counter narcotics policy that sought to destroy poppy crops in the South despite evidence that the bulk of Taliban financial funding came from wealthy Gulf donors and such actions unambiguously alienated the local farmers from the coalition and their central government.

So what really doomed the Obama Afghanistan surge? Is "fixing" Afghanistan simply an impossible task that never had a chance for success? Was the fundamental strategy behind the surge fatally flawed? Did a lack of civil-military coordination and cooperation undermine the best laid plans? Is the absence of a responsible partner in Afghan leadership the primary cause of our frustration? Could we have succeeded if we had only planted cotton?!

In the end, Chandrasekaran judges Obama's surge an abject failure; but it was not a failure simply because it was poorly executed (although he claims it was). Rather, it failed, according to the author, because it was a muddled idea from the start and never had a chance for success. "[T]he surge was a big bluff," Chandrasekaran quotes Weston as saying, but clearing reflecting his own view, "a long odds gamble that the Afghan government, the Taliban, and the Pakistanis would have all behave differently with more American [forces on the ground]."

So how do my experiences align with the author's critical assessment? Unfortunately, fairly closely. Here are a few relevant anecdotes.

To begin with, Chandrasekaran faults the US forces for not spending enough time in the field, working directly with the Afghans and speaking to them in their own language. That's a fair critique. However, I can't stress how difficult it was to move around southern Afghanistan in 2010. As a junior officer in the US military, I constantly struggled to secure transport to the places we needed to go to do our jobs. Rajiv likely never experienced this challenge first hand; he was usually able to zip around the theater in dedicated Blackhawk helicopters (I actually traveled with him around the theater prior to the Marja offensive and remember marveling at the first class treatment, kind of like being a sophomore in high school and befriending a junior with his own car). It took me weeks of effort to conduct simple reconnaissance trips to the industrial park just outside of the Kandahar Airfield (KAF). Things were a bit easier in Kabul, because it was safer, although not nearly as secure as the author suggests in "Little America," which makes the Afghan capital sound more like Palo Alto on a sunny afternoon.

The author also claims that progress in the South was undermined by a lack of cooperation and mistrust between the US civilians (State, USAID, etc.) and the military, especially during the 2011 time period when the 10th Mountain Division was in charge. Personally, I had a wonderfully productive working relationship with my civilian colleagues in Kandahar, especially my partner from USAID focused on economic growth. The situation at the senior level, however, was definitely a different story. The person in charge of reconstruction and stability during my tour suffered from several "deficiencies" from the American leadership perspective: he was young (late 30s), he was British, and he was a civilian. Moreover, his position carried a broad, ambitious mandate but precious little in the way of tangible power: he held no positional authority (i.e. no one needed his signature or approval to do anything), he had no money to distribute to anyone, and he had few professional resources to contribute (just a dozen or so brains-on-a-stick like me). Read more ›
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78 of 85 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Mud Marine June 26, 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
The standard view of Mr. Chandrasekaran is that he is a shrewd, plugged-in journalist, part of the Washington circle and policy elite, focused on policy and strategy.

Actually, he loves being out in the field, and his heart is with the troops. When he criticizes the higher-ups, it's because he knows they should have done a better job. He begins his reporting at the grunt level. I first met Rajiv at a muddy canal crossing in Marja on the first night of the Marine push in late February or early March of 2009. The filthy water was chest deep and fast flowing. He was on the far bank and his humvee, unable to ford the canal, was turning around to return to battalion headquarters. A group of us watched under one thin flashlight beam as Raj hopped into the freezing water and wallowed across to where the assault company was gathering. Raj is not a big guy, and the Marines were cheering him on because none of them wanted to hop in to help him before he went under. He impressed the grunts that night.(I heard he damn near froze to death later; he was covered with mud and had no dry clothes.)

It was against that background that I read Little America. Do I believe he is telling the truth as he saw it? Yes. The men he admires - Nicholson, Weston, Malkasian - are admired by the first sergeants and company commanders who served with them.

I don't where he got his information about the top levels. But given what I saw him risk at the grunt level, he's the real deal.
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40 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
must be wasted before we as a country learn the basic lessons about war and nation building.

Little America is a must read for those interested in the Afghanistan War or have been affected by it.

Mr. Chandrasekaran spends the first part of the book on history and the setup. The next part is about the War and the inner working of what went on behind closed doors and the personalities involved. He devotes pages in blistering criticism of the embassy staff, contractors and USAID. In fairness he uses too broad a brush, as noted by the one star reviews but I don't think anyone looking at the facts would disagree the US's efforts were grossly ineffectual. The final part exploring how different approaches to the war/reconstruction might have been better and/or more successful but I felt the book lost some momentum towards the end.

The strength of the book lies in the access Mr. Chandrasekaran had to high level internal meetings, then transitioning to the the lowly lance corporals tasked with carrying out the directives. The book focuses so much on what went wrong, I'd like to see more of what went right but that doesn't make for good headlines. There are moving moments of personal sacrifice and heroism. While some personalities were called out specifically, I'd be interested in reading more personal stories, from both sides (US and Afgani). I'm sure there are a ton of examples people trying to do the right thing and this book doesn't give them a lot of coverage.

In the end this is a solid book, very much worth reading. Some criticisms made by other reviews are valid but should not keep one from reading the book.

PS - I am confident there were good people in the embassy/USAID but I find it ironic that those who gave the book 1* seem to have missed the forest for the trees. This book, and the issues covered are bigger than the problems discussed in the embassy/USAID section. By focusing their reviews on one small element and dismissing the rest of the work proves the author's point about the Washington politicos and their tendency to be petty, arrogant and self-centered.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Forlorn
An excellent look at the involvement of the U.S. in Afghanistan in the last few years - particularly since the Obama administration took over in 2009.

Mr. Read more
Published 8 days ago by Mike B
5.0 out of 5 stars Another excellent book by Chandrasekaren
This is an excellent book to help Americans or others to understand the war in Afghanistan. I live near an army post, and realize how much more I know about the experiences and... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Robert D Croslow
5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful
Well-written, researched study of the scrwups and missteps that have made the War in Afghanistan such a bloody, unsuccessful debacle.
Published 1 month ago by rswinea@aol.com
3.0 out of 5 stars Insightful yet flawed to fit a narrative
Having seen some of this first hand, this book paints a compelling portrait of how the war was viewed on the ground and in the halls of power in Washington. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Andrew Hyde
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
The most astute analysis of the war in Afghanistan. An instant classic that holds up a mirror for the U.S.
Published 2 months ago by An Indian reader braj@law.harvard.edu
5.0 out of 5 stars I was there and this is true.
The Marine's probably will not like how they are pictured in the end but this book will surely explain the background noise in the Afghan campaign. Read more
Published 2 months ago by william gardner
5.0 out of 5 stars Well written and spot on
I am an active Marine officer who formerly served on an advisor team in Kajaki, Afghanistan. I usually do not write these sort of reviews; thus, I will keep this short. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Former Marine Advisor
5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting bit of history
It seems most Americans (self included) had no knowledge of the US involvement in SW Afghanistan in the 1950/60s. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Steven B. Wasilausky
4.0 out of 5 stars I learned alot!
The author gives a very thorough look at the history and behind the basic issues of the conflict in Afganistan. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Jennifer Rapatz-Harr
5.0 out of 5 stars great
the bok arrived earlier than expected, in very great condtion very much like new no markings at all. very happy with my purchase.
Published 4 months ago by Morgan England
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