Twenty Years of America’s War in an Afghan Valley
Benjamin Van Horrick | 03.23.21
Murph. Restrepo. Korengal. Each of these words evokes the essential character of the war in Afghanistan, America’s longest and least-understood conflict. Each of them is also shorthand for events that took place in the Pech Valley but that largely define the American public’s understanding of the war. Wesley Morgan’s The Hardest Place provides needed context to the events and the single valley where they occurred, a site of remarkable heroism and hardship. From the disconnect between the ever-shifting strategic aims in Afghanistan and the grim, often insurmountable, tactical reality to the uneasy alliance between American forces and their Afghan partners, Morgan’s exhaustive reporting provides a definitive examination of a small corner of Afghanistan, revealing unsettling truths about America’s entanglement in a conflict without a coda.
Morgan’s experience as a research assistant for the book Endgame by Michael Gordon and retired General Bernard Trainor, the definitive account of the Iraq war, shines throughout The Hardest Place, with its cogent structure and superb pacing. Covering 2001 until the present, Morgan details each successive unit deployment, both special operations and conventional forces, showing how each deployment builds upon the last as the operational environment changes. Too often, Morgan shows, units suffer institutional amnesia, ignore past lessons, and remain ignorant. The narrative is layered, coherent, and accented by detailed, original reporting, and it strikes the right balance between breezy combat memoir and academic text. Morgan utilizes interviews with local linguists, a Special Forces veteran who advised several units as a contractor, and Pech Valley residents. These interviews provide an appraisal of each unit’s performance and actions. The clear writing makes the book accessible to those most in need of its lessons: policymakers shaping the Afghanistan strategy and the military leaders charged with its implementation.
https://mwi.usma.edu/twenty-years-of-americas-war-in-an-afghan-valley/
