A melancholy look back at SF teams in the first phase of our war in Afghanistan
Over the weekend I watched Legion of Brothers, a CNN-sponsored documentary about some of the first American troops to go into Afghanistan late in 2001.
Over the weekend I watched Legion of Brothers, a CNN-sponsored documentary about some of the first American troops to go into Afghanistan late in 2001. It was co-produced by my New America colleague Peter Bergen.
Over the weekend I watched Legion of Brothers, a CNN-sponsored documentary about some of the first American troops to go into Afghanistan late in 2001. It was co-produced by my New America colleague Peter Bergen.
Anyone who reads this blog will enjoy the film, which premiered the other day at the Sundance festival. It focuses on two Special Forces teams — one in the north near Mazar-i-Sharif, one in the south near Kandahar — and what they did.
But, to my surprise, it is equally about what the war did to them. The southern team, 574, took a terrible hit when it was bombed by the U.S. Air Force, killing two members of the team and wounding all the others.
It is a surprisingly sad film. These do not seem happy men nowadays. Pretty much to a man, they seem lost, puzzled by the world they live in, and missing active duty terribly. After repeated grinding deployments, reports one, “A lot of people say we don’t have emotions anymore.” Yes, another agrees: “zero emotions across the board.” One talks about “putting his wife in the hospital” but not remembering what he did that made that happen.
Also, I certainly did not expect a discussion of “the promiscuous use of military power,” as one officer bitterly terms it.
Longtime readers will know that I think we missed a major opportunity in Afghanistan when we shifted in 2002 from a small, unorthodox, SF mission to a larger, more conventional approach, in which we have been more or less bogged down for more than a decade. This film also makes that argument, I think.
Photo credit: Master Sgt. Chris Spence/U.S. Army/Wikimedia Commons
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