It will be interesting to see how his books reads. I was in Rig District, just south of Garmsir, during my '10 deploy. I've seen Carter in action during a security summit that brought in district governors and the NDS and police chiefs from their locales.

Carter gets COIN, and he put it in practice in a backwater district far from Camp Leatherneck or FOB Dwyer. He'd been in country for who knows how long before I got to see him speaking Pashto among the men gathered at the district center. He wasn't burned out yet, and I admire the work he put into being a stability advisor. Our STABAD paled in comparison.

He was a brilliant point of light in an otherwise very dim constellation of failed initiatives, corruption, and security half-measures. People like Carter should have been running the PRT, rather than serving downstream and working against the inertia of that worthless organization.

I don't even have to read the book to recommend it, based solely on what i know first-hand of the guy.

His story is very much the same story of my district and district governor, Ahmed Jan Massood, who was another young turk of sorts and good friend on the Garmsir DG.