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The Operators

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
General Stanley McChrystal, commander of international and US forces in Afghanistan, was living large, with staff calling him a 'rock star.' Journalist Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone looked on as McChrystal and his staff let off steam, partying and openly bashing the Obama administration. When Hastings' piece appeared a few months later, it set off a political firestorm: McChrystal was ordered to Washington, where he was unceremoniously fired. Hastings gives us a shocking behind-the-scenes portrait of Allied military commanders, their high-stakes manoeuvres and often bitter bureaucratic in-fighting.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from February 6, 2012
      Hastings (I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story) recounts the events behind and beyond his award-winning 2010 Rolling Stone article "The Runaway General," which led to the resignation of General Stanley McChrystal and his replacement with General David Petraeus. Trailing McChrystal and his staff as they travel to Paris, Berlin, and Kabul, Hastings discovers how the nation's foremost "operators"âthe special forces and other personnel on "the Xâ¦the spot on the satellite map where the action down"âregard the war as secondary to their loyalty to each other. Cavalier remarks about key figures and incidents ranging from the infamous cover-up of the cause of Pat Tillman's death to scenes with President Obama reveal the essential divide between military and civilian perspectives. Hastings brilliantly intertwines narratives, whether writing about the halls of Washington, war-torn Baghdad, or rudimentary lessons in counterinsurgency math, a system wherein killing two of ten results not in eight, but twenty insurgents. Hasting's first-class, engrossing reportage reveals unsettling yet human flaws behind one of recent history's most lionized military figures, and a war which purportedly began as a response to terrorism, but whose aimsâin the author's estimationâremain ambiguous.

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  • English

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