Our Own Worst Enemy: How America Defeated Itself in Afghanistan

Into this breach steps a unique author, one who takes the reader through repeated tours both in Afghanistan as a mobilized reserve Special Forces officer, and into the halls of government in Washington, D.C. as a policy official charged with shaping the very Afghan policies he would have to implement. Michael G. Waltz’s searing new memoir, Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret’s Battles from Washington to Afghanistan, is a unique insider account of the internal deliberations of the Bush administration, both at the Pentagon and the White House, as well as the experiences of a U.S. Army officer with two combat tours in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The seamless blending of these twin narratives repeatedly confronts the reader with the profound disconnect between the staid bullet points of policy memos full of good intentions and the visceral reality of ambushes and state-building as the policies are implemented and found wanting.