Kandahar, Afghanistan, February, 2011–Spy novelist and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson arrives to embed with the 101st Airborne Division, as American forces find their mission of liberating small towns and villages from the Taliban threat increasingly difficult. At Kandahar Air Field, he spends three days, wandering its enormity, meeting collegial soldiers, browsing through shops selling goods emblazoned with the “Enduring Freedom” logo. “At KAF the war feels like nothing so much as a giant and profitable machine,” Berenson writes, “paid for by the Chinese and greased with just enough American, British, and Canadian blood to keep it running.” But don’t mistake this author for glib. The suite of stories he goes on to tell–of combat, of corruption, of “hearts and minds”–depict a lost war, feeding on itself in a land with a history of swallowing invaders whole. But it’s the immediacy of Berenson’s writing that insists, right now, that “it is worth asking what all this blood and treasure is buying.” –Jason Kirk
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