Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda [Hardcover]

Sean Naylor (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 1, 2005

Command refused to commit the forces required to achieve total victory in Afghanistan. Instead, they delegated responsibility for fighting the war's biggest battle-one that could have broken Al Qaeda and captured Osama bin Laden-to a hodge-podge of units thrown together at the last moment.

At dawn on March 2, 2002, America's first major battle of the 21st century began. Over 200 soldiers of the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions flew into Afghanistan's Shahikot valley-and into the mouth of a buzz saw. They were about to pay a bloody price for strategic, higher-level miscalculations that underestimated the enemy's strength and willingness to fight.

Now, award-winning journalist Sean Naylor, an eyewitness to the battle, details the failures of military intelligence and planning, and vividly portrays the astonishing heroism of these young, untested U.S. soldiers. Denied the extra infantry, artillery, and attack helicopters with which they trained to go to war, these troops nevertheless proved their worth in brutal combat and-along with the exceptional daring of a small team of U.S. commandos-prevented an American military disaster.

Editorial Reviews

From Bookmarks Magazine

Reviewers lauded Naylor’s "meticulously reported" account (Oregonian). It includes in-person observations during the operation (Naylor was imbedded with the 101st Airborne Division troops who fought in the battle), and scores of after-the-fact interviews, many with sources who wouldn’t allow themselves to be identified. His two-year undertaking to bring those 17 days to life yields an extraordinarily detailed account of the fateful mission. While a few critics felt that some aspects of the book were unbalanced, all agreed that Naylor did a good job in portraying the drama, heroism, and blunders that defined Anaconda while raising broader issues of warfare and its ultimate purpose.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist

In March 2002, U.S. forces moved into the Shahikot Mountains, hoping to trap and eliminate a substantial number of Al Qaeda fighters. They were handicapped almost fatally by their own lack of numbers, substandard logistics support, the highest altitudes at which Americans had ever fought, and the frigid weather of the mountains. Victory eluded them, although considerable damage was done to the enemy; and disaster may have been averted by the actions of special operations teams drawn from Delta Force and Seal Team 6. These operatives put on a very convincing demonstration of how much of the future of warfare may lie in the hands of small bands of experts engaging the enemy by stealth, with heavy firepower on call, firepower that wasn't always available in Operation Anaconda. Prizewinning Army Times reporter Naylor has written the best full-scale history of Operation Anaconda to date. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Books; 1st edition (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425196097
• ISBN-13: 978-0425196090
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (163 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #604,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sean Naylor is a senior writer for the Army Times. He has covered the Afghan mujahideen's war against the Soviets, and American military operations in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Named one of the 22 "unsung" influential print reporters in Washington by American Journalism Review in May 2002, he earned the White House Correspondents' Association's prestigious Edgar A. Poe Award for his coverage of Operation Anaconda.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 92 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Insight into the current American wars January 21, 2006

By QR6

Format:Hardcover

Not a Good Day to Die is a must read for anyone who wants to understand what we should really be focusing on to change in our current military if we want to stay relevant in a future that will almost certainly be marked by uncertainty. I am a Reserve Officer who just returned from Iraq and I couldn't believe how many of the lessons I had highlighted in Naylor's book, were still relevant on the ground in Iraq. My son sent me a blog from an unknown author who I would love to thank because he sums up what I believe to be the seminal lesson from Not a Good Day to Die, and the key point we should focus on to improve our military in the future.

A brief discussion about the decisionmaking structure of U.S. land forces. The most remarkable examination of this topic is Sean Naylor's recent book on Operation Anaconda, an American effort in 2002 to trap and destroy a force of hundreds of al Qaeda warriors in a valley in Afghanistan. Naylor's book, Not a Good Day to Die, is far too detailed to come close to summarizing here. But two themes reappear throughout Naylor's narrative.

First, the American military has grown higher headquarters like weeds in rich soil. Meetings over Operation Anaconda, a single operation planned for three days and thought to be aimed against 200 enemy, involved absurd numbers of competing organizations -- and, therefore, competing operational styles and agendas. Here's a typical laundry list for a single meeting: "Representatives from K-Bar, the CIA, Task Force 11, CFLCC, the Coalition and Joint Civil-Military Operations Task Force, and Task Force Rakkasan had been invited." And this list is hardly a complete reflection of all the different headquarters involved in Anaconda.... As Naylor summarizes: "For a battle that would involve perhaps 2,000 allied troops -- less than a brigade's worth -- in combat, CENTCOM had cobbled together a force that drew elements from eight countries, two U.S. Army divisions, two Special Forces groups, a hodgepodge of aviation units, and a variety of clandestine organizations." Each piece of that stew had its own leadership, with its own agenda and intent. A critical American military effort had become wildly and pointlessly complicated. Four-star generals reviewed plans down to the platoon level.

Second, the coordination of those many different elements and agendas meant that painfully negotiated plans became locked into place simply because they were painfully negotiated. After members of a Delta Force team pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of walking up the side of a mountain in the Afghan winter to get a firsthand look at the valley, operation leaders received reports that there were somewhere around 1000 enemy, not the 200 the American plans had called for -- and then they learned further that the enemy was not in the valley, where the plans put them, but were instead on the high ground around it. Leaders of the battle decided to go ahead with the plan as written, reluctant to throw out weeks of hard-fought staff work on the word of Lt. Col. Peter Blaber's Delta operators. The plans trumped reality, because the plans had come with political and institutional costs.

Finally, one of the ways that Army officers managed the problem of ignoring the Delta Force intelligence showing 1000 enemy on the high ground was to regard the special operators who delivered that intelligence as out-of-control and untrustworthy. Leaders ridiculed the Delta team reports, and "mocked the independent role that Blaber had carved out by calling him 'Peter the Great' and 'Colonel Kurtz.'" The enforcement of institutional orthodoxy allowed leaders to ignore realistic bad news. Today's U.S. Army in a nutshell, right there.

There's much more to Naylor's book, which is so far one of the very few critical pieces of insight into the current American wars. (The battle, by the way, went poorly.)

To summarize, then -- sorry about that -- a too-hierarchical, too-orthodox U.S. Army, and U.S. military in general, leans heavily on lumbering equipment, high technology, and major ground offensives against an enemy that relies on tactics that are often not even conventionally military in nature; we mass artillery against threatening letters and infrastructure sabotage. In equipment, doctrine, tactics, and leadership structure, we're organized for the wrong enemy, in ways that can't be easily or quickly changed. Read more ›

124 of 132 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb March 1, 2005

By A reader

Format:Hardcover

Mr. Naylor is a reporter with Army Times who has covered the military for many years. He displays an insider's understanding as to how military organizations plan and fight. This book is unique in the degree to which the author was able to get the participants to be interviewed; there are a great many details here you won't find anywhere else. He does a great job on the account of Anaconda, a large raid into a mountain stronghold in southeast Afghanistan, conducted in early 2002.

The author covers the planning for Anaconda, the infighting among different organizations, and the significant impact the Secretary of Defense's office had as the numbers of conventional forces were limited due to political considerations. Special operators, generals, infantrymen, apache gunship pilots, all have their voices heard. What happens when plans fall apart and soldiers have to pick up the pieces? It's all in here.

This is the best account of the Army post 9/11 that has been written, and it is highly unlikely you'll find one better anytime soon. A must read. If you have any interest in the military or national security, pick this up.

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Started off slow but finished strong March 26, 2006

By Gordon Ewasiuk

Format:Paperback

The book is broken into four sections: the leadup to the operation, the first contact, the ranger battle, then conclusion. The first section is about 180 pages and is a bit of snoozer. The author explains, what appears to be, every single aspect behind every decision made prior to Anaconda. He goes into excruciating detail about the "office politics" between the various military groups. At one point, it starts sounded like a soap opera as various loyalities and internal factions are explained. It was bad enough for me to skim a few pages. It feels like the author had to fill some pages and pad the book.

One thing that stuck out was how LONG the prep work for the operation took. The book starts off "in the first weeks of January." The operation kicked off on 2 March. That seems like a long time to this untrained observer.

I did like hearing about the local Delta operator and how he planned and ran the three recce teams. He was bold and daring.

Things start picking up during the second section, "Reaction to Contact." As the first troopers hit the ground, the author reeled me in with vivid details of landscape, battles, and the troopers. The insider report of the friendly-fire incidents boiled my blood. When the author talks about the Afghan trucks driving across the mountainside in the dark and WITHOUT lights, I was shocked. Descriptions of the landscape are detailed. At one point, I lost track of all the different units moving around.

The third section is the climax. It deals with the battle on Takur Ghar. That was the payoff. Once I reached that section, I couldn't put the book down. When the SEAL commander sent the first helo to an LZ on TOP of the mountain, I was stunned.... The author communicates the troopers frustration with the poor communication clearly -- I actually got mad when the General Trebon took command of the battle on Takur Ghar. There are some details about that battle that didn't make it into the newspaper accounts I read. For that alone, it is worth the read. Gritty, gripping, and packed with suspense.

The author does great work explaining how the battle on the mountain unfolded and the actions of all the troopers. Reading how the SEALs dragged their wounded comrades down a mountain or how the second QRF had to scale a mountain with a 70 degree slope while wearing 100lbs of gear...wow. The Ranger commander should have gotten a couple of medals for his bravery.

The pictures in the book were brilliant. There are a couple from Takur Ghar that, when viewed after reading the corresponding section, are just stunning.

All in all, it was a good read, despite the first section. Read more ›

85 of 101 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Adhocacy Hell March 17, 2005

By F. Butler

Format:Hardcover

Not a Good Day to Die is clearly the equal to the likes of Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers...Once and Young, and Thunder Run. The book is simply one of the finest accounts of modern combat that has ever been written. With that being said however, it is difficult, in a short narrative, to describe all of the troubling aspects about Operation Anaconda. The book illustrates, only too clearly, the fallacy of the term "unity of command" that the services bandy about and the consequences that result when there was, in fact, no "unity of command" in Afghanistan at least where Anaconda was concerned. Not a Good Day... depicts the failure to understand, despite the marvels of modern technology, that even a subset of ground battle cannot be run from thousands of miles away by an Air Force general officer who doesn't understand what is transpiring on the battlefield, even the nature of ground combat, and who will not listen to the people on the ground who do understand what is taking place. Equally as troubling was the apparent prohibition by Rumsfeld and Franks prohibiting, in an attempt to reduce the size of the American footprint, the Army from employing the fire support needed by the infantry - a constraint not placed on Al Qaida. Troubling also was the ad-hoc nature with which the Army slapped together disparate units while attempting to achieve a certain level of manning and the desire to put an Afghan face on the battle. Also shown is that while there is clearly a role for precision guided munitions such as the JDAM they are not a replacement for integral fire support nor will close air support always be available when needed - as was the case of the AC-130 gunships which were not permitted, according to Air Force directives during Anaconda, to fly support missions in daylight.... Troubling also is the apparent belief, by some, that "boat guys" (SEALS) can be given a "shake and bake" course and turned into infantrymen. A couple of SEAL units performed outstandingly-overall however, as a Team, the SEALS were found to be wanting. While the military declares Anaconda a success, it, like the earlier operation at Tora Bora, appears to have allowed most of the Al Qaida fighters in the Shahikot area to slip away to fight another day. Read more ›