After fighting for access to thousands of documents, including Donald Rumsfeld's memos, notes from interviews with more than a thousand people who played direct roles in the Afghanistan war, as well as Defense and State department cables, memos, and reports, Whitlock has created a narrative of one of the biggest boondoggles in our country's history.

Through three administrations, the Afghanistan war was an unqualified mess. A complete non-understanding and failure to learn about the Afghan people and their culture, plus massive disagreements and non-communication between the agencies and departments involved, meant the U.S. was never going to win this war. Many of the billions of dollars we poured into Afghanistan ended up in the hands of corrupt contractors and Afghan government officials, and the heroin trade flourished during our time there.

Despite the criticism Biden received for withdrawing our troops, leaving a war that you've lost is always messy, and we're lucky we got out as well as we did. Too bad it was 17 or 18 years too late. This is a fascinating, if disturbing, factual account of a piece of history that we should all be ashamed of.