Funk Rating: 10 out of 10
Holy moly! I love spy novels and thrillers - the stuff of entertaining fiction that lets you live a life vicariously that couldn't possibly ever happen. This book does that (and more) but tells a true story!
This is a fascinating story about how the US support for the Afghan mujahideen was orchestrated entirely behind the scenes by two very improbable characters. It's masterfully told, in a page-turning fashion (how often have you been so ensnared by a non-fiction book that you can't put it down even when you know the ending?). I learned an absolute ton, laughed out loud, was astonished, delighted, and mortified -- all at the same time in a few places :)
This is a book gifted to me by my good friends the Livingstons, and it's one of the best I've read in a long, long time. You probably need to have some stomach/heart for warfare and for the Cold War. You also should be able to take Washington politics lightly, and you probably should enjoy a little rule-breaking now and then if you're going to try this book. You may find it will enrage you, or it may delight and please you to hear how sometimes noble ends are not thwarted by pettiness, turf warfare, or simple timidity. In fact, sometimes someone with enough imagination and enough chutzpah, gives the noble ends a fighting chance...
History isn't done yet, and it may yet turn out that arming the muj to the teeth and training them well will come back to haunt us even more than 9/11. But on balance, I'll take an acceleration of the end of the Cold War (which I buy was a result of Afghanistan) over some messiness in the radical Islam matter near-term.
I think...
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