The Operators

Rating 4 of 5

The Operators is basically an extended version of Michael Hastings Rolling Stone Article “The Runaway General”

The book contains an extended version of the Runaway General plus extra detail on the back story and fallout of the Article being published.

The short version is that Michael Hastings writes an article profiling General Stanley McChrystal who was then in charge of coalition war in Afghanistan. The profile is not flattering:

• McChrystal is quoted as bad mouthing the President and Vice President.
• McChrystal and his staff behave badly in Europe drinking and criticizing the French and German Civilian and Military leadership.
• The article also reports that the frontline troops are strongly critical of McCrystals Rules of Engagement and appear to be losing faith in his leadership.

After reading the article McChrystal is fired by President Obama.

A good part of the book describes how insane the war in Afghanistan had become. A dystopian quagmire where US soldiers are fighting for no purpose beside the fact we needed to “win” or “finish what we started” despite the fact we had long forgotten what that was.

Some of the book is about how other journalists aggrandized McChrystal as a sort of intellectual super warrior. A giant amoung men. Hastings seemed to find McChrystal fairly human. With his own unique set of strengths and weaknesses.

After reading The Operators I watched Netflix’s War Machine. War Machine is not nearly as good as the Operators, but it was still a nice complementary watch.

After reading the operator’s I learned that Micheal Hastings died in a tragic car accident in 2013. I was greatly saddened to learn this because I felt like his reporting on this story was excellent. We lost a great journalist when he died.

I think a lot about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that followed September 11th. I was opposed to both and felt they were a huge waste. Trillions of dollars wasted on killing people who had nothing to do with September 11th. If we hadn’t fought these stupid wars maybe my daughters could have gone to new schools rather then the shitty old buildings we have. What a waste. Finally 20 years after the invasion of Afghanistan the US finally surrendered and the Taliban took back control of the country. The whole war ended up being for nothing.

The Operators is a great snapshot of how America can fall into the trap of waging a pointless forever war. Its worth reading to know that even or best can be mislead by themselves. I hope its lesson is not forgotten soon.