Iraq Lessons For Afghanistan

New Lessons From a War Zone -- Max Boot/The Wall Street Journal

Next summer, the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan is due to shift from fighting the Taliban to advising the Afghans on how to defend themselves. American commanders are already preparing to deploy advisory teams to mentor the Afghan forces. If the experience of Iraq is anything to go by, most of those teams are likely to be made of reservists and active-duty cast-offs—"odds and sods," as the British say—with scant preparation for their critical mission.

Every deploying adviser, and every American interested in how we are fighting our wars, should read Owen West's gripping and important book, "The Snake Eaters." Mr. West was himself a reservist—a former Marine infantryman turned Goldman Sachs commodity trader—when in 2006 he received a call-up that would take him to Anbar Province to lead an advisory team known by the appropriate radio sign "Outcast." It was teamed with

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My Comment: This book looks like a must read for this summer.