Carter Malkasian's "The American War in Afghanistan" has gotten some good reviews and a lot of attention, since its publication coincides with the end of the war as far as the US is concerned.
I'm most of the way through it. It's good, though it gets criticized on Amazon for the writing. I'm not as critical as the reviewer--Malkasian likes simple subject-verb-object sentences which usually are clear and give at least the aura of objectivity. He overuses them. I'm more bothered by some of his tics: like using "assessed" as a synonym for "judged,..." and by converting nouns to verbs (which these days seems to be considered as good writing by some).
One thing which is striking about the content: the complexity of Afghan society, about which I may write more later. When you imagine our military in 2002 trying to understand what they're dealing with, you get a sense of the difficulty of their job.
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