The Good War: Why We Couldn?t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan

In its earliest days, the American-led war in Afghanistan appeared to be a triumph—a “good war? in comparison to the debacle in Iraq. Thirteen years later, it has turned into the longest conflict in US history, one even more unpopular than the Vietnam War. Now, as we slouch toward withdrawal from Afghanistan, the time is right for a full accounting of what went wrong.

In The Good War, acclaimed war correspondent Jack Fairweather provides the first full narrative history of the war in Afghanistan. Drawing on interviews with key leaders and extensive on-the-ground reporting, Fairweather debunks the long-held notion that Afghanistan could have been won with troop surges and nation-building programs, and shows that only by accepting the limitations in Afghanistan—from the presence of the Taliban to the ubiquity of poppy production to the country?s inherent unsuitability for a Western model of government—can America help to restore peace in this shattered land.