Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret's Battles from Washington to Afghanistan

by Michael G. Waltz

Overview

Grappling with centuries-old feuds, defeating a shrewd insurgency, and navigating the sometimes paralyzing bureaucracy of the U.S. military are issues that prompt sleepless nights for both policy makers in Washington and soldiers at war, albeit for different reasons. Few, however, have dealt with these issues in the White House situation room and on the front line. Michael G. Waltz has done just that, working as a policy advisor to Vice President Richard B. Cheney and also serving in the mountains of Afghanistan as a Green Beret, directly implementing strategy in the field that he helped devise in Washington.

In Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret’s Battles from Washington to Afghanistan Waltz shares his unique firsthand experiences, revealing the sights, sounds, emotions, and complexities involved in the war in Afghanistan. Waltz also highlights the policy issues that have plagued the war effort throughout the past decade, from the drug trade, to civilian casualties, to a lack of resources in comparison to Iraq, to the overall coalition strategy. At the same time, he points out that stabilizing Afghanistan and the region remains crucial to national security and that a long-term commitment along the lines of South Korea or Germany is imperative if America is to remain secure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612346328
Publisher:	Potomac Books Inc.
Publication date:	11/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Mike brings 20 years of military and senior government official expertise as a Green Beret Commander and a policy advisor in the Bush White House and Pentagon. This is coupled with his corporate expertise as a Chief Executive Officer, a best-selling author, and a media commentator.

He is currently the CEO of Metis Solutions and Co-Founder & Partner of Askari Associates, where he provides corporate leadership for two growing enterprises that provide strategy, intelligence, and operational support to US government customers worldwide. METIS has been recognized the past three years by INC Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America.

Mike previously served as a Senior Advisor and Policy Director for South Asia and Counterterrorism in the Bush White House and Pentagon. Mike has served as a Special Forces officer in various capacities on active and reserve duty the U.S. Army with multiple tours in Afghanistan and other locals across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

He is the author of "Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret's Battles from Washington to Afghanistan" and was a contributor to "Drone Wars: Transforming Conflict, Law, and Policy."

As a FOX News Contributor, "Michael Waltz brings a unique blend of expertise as a special forces operator and policy-maker" according to Bret Baier, Anchor of Special Report. Mike has previously provided commentary on national security issues to CNN, BBC, and PBS. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Mike serves on the Strategic Advisory Board of Parsons Federal, a $3B international government services firm. He also founded the Sumar Ghul Foundation, which cares for the families of fallen Afghan National Army Soldiers.

Mike is a Distinguished Military Graduate of the Virginia Military Institute.

Peter Bergen is the author of four books about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, including, most recently, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

List of Maps x

Foreword Peter Bergen xi

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xix

List of Abbreviations xxi

Introduction: A Little Girl in Ghazni 1

1 State of the War: Office of the Secretary of Defense 27

2 Arabs, Afghans, and Americans: The War of Ideas 49

3 The Tagab Valley: Patrolling to Ambush 64

4 The Clinic in Achin: Development Dilemmas 92

5 The Road to Musa Qala: The Taliban Are Back 118

6 The French in Maruf: A Pawn in a Diplomatic Game 141

7 Operation Perth: War by Consensus 162

8 Back to Washington: The Pentagon and the White House 194

9 The Mangal Tribe: Protecting People We Can't Access 229

10 The Elder in Khost: Risk Aversion and the Cost of Inaction 241

11 Night Raid: The Catch-and-Release Detention System 257

12 Blackbeard Rising: The Afghan National Army Commandos 280

13 On the Border with Pakistan: The Rocket's Red Glare 306

14 The Tribes of Chamkani: The Community Defense Initiative 327

15 Washington Again: Wishing the Problem Away 348

Notes 359

Bibliography 363

Index 367

Editorial Reviews

"Waltz, a lieutenant colonel in the Army reserves, commanded a Special Forces company in Afghanistan and held high counterterrorism positions at the Pentagon and White House. Combining what he saw on the ground with what he gleaned in Washington, Waltz offers his thoughts on the U.S. military and government’s management of the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. . . . Waltz succeeds in his goal of explaining how the war in Afghanistan has been executed, making a case that the continuing chaos that nation endures is "directly connected" to the U.S. national interest."—Publishers Weekly


"Warrior Diplomat [is] a memoir of unique insight into the hope and tragedy of America’s war in Afghanistan. . . . There is an almost surreal quality in the memoir of a man who briefed and wrote policy proposals for the powerful Vice-President one month, and in the next, shared meals with Afghan farmers or scrambled over walls in the dark of night to grab a Taliban commander, visiting relatives. . . . A must read book to understand how America’s war in Afghanistan was fought so hard, for so long to so few measurable results."—Mark Safranski, Pragati

From the Publisher

"Warrior Diplomat [is] a memoir of unique insight into the hope and tragedy of America’s war in Afghanistan. . . . There is an almost surreal quality in the memoir of a man who briefed and wrote policy proposals for the powerful Vice-President one month, and in the next, shared meals with Afghan farmers or scrambled over walls in the dark of night to grab a Taliban commander, visiting relatives. . . . A must read book to understand how America’s war in Afghanistan was fought so hard, for so long to so few measurable results."—Mark Safranski, Pragati

Pragati - Mark Safranski

"Few people in Washington must execute the policies they help craft. Warrior Diplomat is a must-read, firsthand examination of the Afghan war through the experiences of a practitioner at both ends of the spear."—Robert M. Gates, former U.S. secretary of defense

Robert M. Gates

"Mike Waltz's important new book deftly charts 'what might have been' over the course of a long, largely indecisive war. NATO's largely unseen failures in Afghanistan are perhaps better charted here than in any other recent account—and it is a story that needs to be told as we think about future coalition operations. Mike stitches together the long thirteen-year arc of this story as few others could, from front line to the conference tables of policy makers in Washington and Europe. This is a book that needs to be read to understand what really happened over the last decade-plus in Afghanistan—and why."—Lieutenant General (Ret.) Dave Barno, former commander, Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan

Lieutenant General (Ret.) Dave Barno

"Using his singular set of experiences as a U.S. Army Special Forces operator and Washington policy insider, Mike Waltz captures the policy ambivalences, implementation challenges, and individual heroics that have made the U.S. effort in Afghanistan such a conundrum for presidents, generals, and the American people. But Waltz never loses sight of the human side of the equation and never gives in to defeatism or fatalism. His wise advice for the future should be heeded by U.S. leaders, now and in the future."—David Sedney, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia

David Sedney

"Warrior Diplomat is an important book that provides an unparalleled, firsthand account of America's role in Afghanistan. Michael Waltz brings us into the inner sanctums of the White House and the Pentagon, where the war was being planned and debated, and then leads us onto the battlefields of Afghanistan."—Seth G. Jones, author of In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

Seth G. Jones

"Michael Waltz distills the hard-earned wisdom of more than a decade of deep involvement in America’s Afghan campaign. Unlike most other participants, however, Waltz served as a Special Forces officer on the ground and as a senior policy maker in Washington. One can only wish that more of our decision-makers possessed his breadth of vision and experience."—Nathaniel C. Fick, author of One Bullet Away

Nathaniel C. Fick