Book Review: The Only Thing Worth Dying For

Associated Press

"The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan" (Harper, 375 pages, $25.99), by Eric Blehm: On Nov. 14, 2001, anti-Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan occupied Kabul, ending the five-year rule of the extremist Muslim government that protected Osama bin Laden. The Taliban stood little chance against American air power.

With a revived Taliban guerrilla campaign now increasing American casualties, some critics are certain to question the assertive title of Eric Blehm's "The Only Thing Worth Dying For." The subtitle, "How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan," will certainly provoke doubt.

In 2001, the Taliban still controlled Kandahar, the country's second city, 250 miles to the south. Hamid Karzai, now president of Afghanistan, had been touring the area clandestinely to promote support for a change.

The night Kabul fell, two Black Hawk helicopters flew into southern Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan. They carried some of the first Americans to operate there: part of an 11-man Green Beret unit - Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA 574). Also there: a CIA group and seven Afghan tribal chiefs who backed Karzai. Their mission was to start a revolt against the Taliban.

Military buffs will be fascinated by the precise descriptions of equipment and tactics in a three-week campaign to take Kandahar, which Taliban leader Mullah Omar used as his capital. Karzai accompanied the campaign and rallied more Afghans, who were encouraged by arms and supplies dropped from American planes.

Omar surrendered Kandahar. But the climax of the book is different. The morning the delegation from Omar came to the camp, an American lieutenant colonel who had been sent to give Karzai military advice spotted a suspicious-looking cave on the bank of a river. He ordered an air strike.

A subordinate transmitting the order, working with unfamiliar equipment, transferred mistaken geographical data to the B-52 bomber and a 2,000-pound bomb was brought down on the Americans and their Afghan allies. It was estimated that more than 50 were killed, including three Americans.

Blehm devotes more than 50 brilliantly written pages describing the damage and chaos that followed. His descriptions favor the direct quotations from participants that he uses throughout book, including expletives from the military vocabulary and vivid details of wounds that are not for the squeamish.

"All events reported in this book were described to me by eyewitnesses in exclusive personal interviews conducted over the course of two years," the author says in a concluding note.

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