Hopeless but optimistic: journeying through America's endless war in Afghanistan

Abstract

Douglas Wissing has produced a work of disarming starkness. His contention is not just that the United States' strategy in Afghanistan has been delusional but that it has also been corrupt. He concludes that ‘the same toxic system that connected ambitious American careerists, greedy US military and development corporations, Afghan kleptocrats and their jihadi collaborators was alive and well in Afghanistan’ (p. 165). The format of the book is deceptive. The average chapter is a five-page vignette, built around a visit or a conversation, told in a chatty, amusing style with an engaging tendency to conjure new words out of thin air. There are moments of pure comedy, such as the anti-farting rule in the US Marine Corps (p. 59), but these instances are rare. Indeed, most chapters are disturbing and sardonic, especially when Wissing reports from ‘inside the wire’ of American military camps. Once he leaves the military's embrace and is free to roam in Kabul, the mood noticeably lifts as he encounters people and projects that he admires. Notable in this category is Nancy Hatch Dupree (the veteran academic) who condemns ‘the pernicious impact … of too much money, too many outsiders taking decisions’, which has undermined Afghan self-sufficiency (p. 128).