Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan

Abstract

One way to sense the emergence of a standard interpretation is when the literature unfolds with a wide range of observers drawing similar conclusions. This has become the case with the Afghan war, with an increasingly tall stack of weighty volumes decrying the failure of U.S. strategy. Putting aside the memoirs of generals and interested officials, the bulk of commentators until now have been journalists, members of nongovernment organizations, or historians. Our Latest Longest War, a collection edited by Aaron B. O'Connell, is distinctive because it draws together a selection of insiders—midlevel career officers from several armed services but also a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and an officer in the Afghan National Police—who join the consensus but base themselves on inside knowledge of the events and the sources. In a brilliant introduction O'Connell puts this study on the spectrum of critical appraisals, not only of war but also of institutions and culture, plus America's role in the world. A long-standing debate over the proper role for cultural anthropologists and other social scientists in support of military operations is also reengaged here. Culture is important, O'Connell notes, both because American leaders built on—and departed from—a “historical pattern of remaking the world in America's image,” and because Afghanistan's particular culture befuddled many U.S. officials and officers facing the war (p. 11). Cultural friction compounded all of Carl von Clausewitz's classical friction sources.