Bill
Welcome. I just finished your book two weeks ago. I wrote a review on Amazon.com. I posted it below. A great book, I really enjoyed it. I am a DoD intel type who was down in Central America last October doing some cultural field work.
Quantico, VA
my Amazon profile
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile...472585-5623156
Tales of a Cold War Grunt, January 14, 2007
FOUR STARS
Reviewer: Art (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
Contra Cross is unique among personal memoirs of former soldiers, government officials, diplomats, and intelligence officers. The author is humble. He had a front row seat at the numerous Central American proxy wars the United States engaged in during the 1980s. Despite this experience, the author never believed he was as important as the events around him, a trait that so many memoirs lack. He was a Cold War grunt and he knew it.
The numerous insurgencies and counter-insurgencies fought in Central America are slowly being forgotten. Located between the large and divisive Vietnam War and the even larger Global War on Terror, the proxy wars in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador are now seen as the last gaps of the Cold War. Despite this hindsight, during the 1980s it was where the action was.
Since the author was involved at the ground level, he is able to give the people of the area a real human feel, which is lost in the Cold War rhetoric of policy makers from Washington.
The author makes several outstanding points about the need for cultural and language skills when dealing with local conflicts. While our current conflict is called the Global War on Terror it is the really combination of thousands of local conflicts tied together. Having the deep local cultural knowledge is the real key to winning our current war. While the book is far from being the seminal book on U.S. involvement in Central America, it never tries or claims to be. Its true strength is how it depicts dedicated Americans, whether military or Department of State, attempt to implement strategic policy made thousands of miles away in Washington into actual action on the ground amongst real people.
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