Gentlemen Bastards: On the Ground in Afghanistan with America's Elite Special Forces

I thought this was going to be about the Special Forces in Afghanistan, and while it certainly was that, it was way too much about the author. He couldn’t get out of the way of the story and use “I” and “my” way too much.

It wasn’t until the epilogue that he mentions, after being in the country for 10 weeks “I realized I had failed to get to know any of the Afghans.” (7:30 in the audiobook) “Their worldview was too foreign to me and I truly didn’t understand the roots of the tribal and ethnic problems that plagued Afghanistan” is another line just after that. I very much wish he had put this in the beginning of the book so I could have known the author wasn’t qualified to write about activities in a country he knew nothing about.

He talks too much about how he feels, especially near the end of the book in a chapter titled “Contact”. He’s getting upset at some Afghans because the group he is with is. He’s lost any semblance of objectiveness (and admits it late in the book). And he continues to talk about how events effect him.

I also find out his brother is the long snapper for some college football team. Why would I even care about that? What bearing does it have on the Special Forces in Afghanistan? None. In the next section where he mentions this fact, he is looking at another screen showing, from the view of a drone, the Special Forces on a night mission. He then has the gal to say he didn’t continue watching their mission because he had to get up early. There’s this build up to the mission and him having to watch it and then goes to bed.

I read the book to learn about the Special Forces. While I did learn something about how boring their job can be and how convoluted the war is, I learned way more about the author.