In retrospect, Gen. McChrystal might have done better to just let Annie Leibovitz photograph him with his shirt off and limit his comments to the Taylor Swift-Kanye West affair while steering clear of more political controversies. The article, "Runaway General," will be in the issue of RS for July 8-22, which hits newsstands this Friday. You can read it online here.
The growing consensus seems to be that McChrystal's comments may very well lose him his job as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
A segment on today's Morning Edition from NPR featured Tom Ricks, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author and Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security. Ricks expressed his opinion that the president, having attributed poor judgment to McChrystal, is now obliged to relieve him of command. You can hear the NPR segment here.
Ricks is author of two titles dealing with U.S. military policy abroad -- Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (2006) and The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (2009). Both are produced by Penguin Audiobooks and are available on Playaway.
In 2000, Ricks received the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting as part of a team of writers at the Wall Street Journal responsible for a series on ways in which the U.S. military might have to change to meet 21st-century demands. He was also part of a Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer in 2002 for reporting on the start of the ongoing war on terror. Fiasco was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2007.
As Americans look for answers to our ongoing dilemmas in the Middle East and Central Asia, books by Ricks and others offer important context and thoughtful analysis. Other recent titles of similar significance are Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008, Brilliance Audio) and, most recently, Sebastian Junger's much-anticipated War, a first-person account of being intermittently embedded over the course of 14 months with the Army's 173rd Airborne brigade in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley.
War is not a policy book per se, but it presents an unflinching look at what American forces are up against on a daily basis in Afghanistan. The audio edition (from Hachette Audio) is narrated by the author and also features a bonus interview with Junger.
An interesting companion to Junger's book is Greg Mortenson's Stones into Schools from Blackstone Audio. Mortenson picks up where his first book, the mega-best-selling Three Cups of Tea (also available on Playaway from Tantor Audio), left off -- with his foray into Waziristan, the remote mountainous region of northwest Pakistan. Bordering on some of the most troubled areas of Afghanistan, the truth is that this area is not closely associated with either country and is probably best understood on its own terms. Mortenson knows the region and the people well.
Whether Gen. McChrystal keeps his job or not, these areas of the world are likely to be trouble spots for a long time to come. Audiobook listeners looking for a deeper understanding of these parts of the world and their issues would do well to explore these titles.
Post Script: In the time it took to write this post, Gen. McChrystal lost his job and has been replaced by Gen. David Petraeus -- all the more reason to study up with some of these books.
I'll be at ALA Annual in Washington, D.C. with the rest of the Playaway team this weekend. If you'll be attending, come visit us at Booth #1337.
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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Senior Content Strategist
Twitter: david_perrotta
