Omar is right. Ms. Gall's is a must read book.

Some of her viewpoints dovetail into things I've read in other books. Her point about the displacement of local strong men leaving a vacuum to be filled by Taliban & Co. matches things I've read in War Comes to Garmser and Little America. She is very emphatic about how badly the errant air strikes and shootings have hurt the fight and hurt Afghans. (The account of the translator Omar mentions is an account of straight up premeditated mass murder in my view. But they were spec ops so it's ok. That's my sarcasm not Ms. Gall's.)

One of the things that she writes I hadn't read before. I had always read that Mullah Omar was a self made man. He saw lawlessness and started the fight against it on his own and things went from there. Ms. Gall writes that what actually happened is that a group of former mujahideen commanders, local strong men, got tired of the chaos down around Kandahar and created an organization to fight it. MO was the equivalent of a squad leader in the employ of one of those strong men, a good reliable fighter and a good man but not too bright . Within a very few months what the commanders created had turned into the Taliban with MO at its head eclipsing everybody else. Ms. Gall didn't actually say it but I think she very strongly suggested MO's rise was the result of ISI machination and he is their creature completely.

The other thing that surprised me is she ends the book on an optimistic note. She seems to say that Afghans dislike Taliban & Co intensely and if given support they will reject them, as in kill them reject them. But they need support to counter the support Taliban & Co receive from Pakistan.

So it is a great book. But like Omar says, even Ms. Gall doesn't have an idea about how we got so thoroughly fooled by the Pak Army/ISI.