AFG 00: Preface

I’m a computational social scientist, and for whatever reason I got invited by US Army Special Forces to go to Afghanistan, America’s longest war, around the 10^th anniversary of the conflict in the fall of 2011. Upon my return I’ve told a few stories to let people know of the awesome individuals I met over there, and one colleague said to me, “You should really write up your experiences.” I was a little reluctant to do for several reasons. First of all, it seemed like a bit of an ego-trip, in which I didn’t want to indulge. Second, I’ve read a bunch of books either from operators who live and breathe the stuff or from journalists who get embedded for a few weeks and then write up what they see. My experience is a bit different in that I worked for the Special Operations command for six months, so I became more of a colleague from the outside rather than an observer. But as I worked in Afghanistan, a curious thing happened. Multiple Special Forces and SEALs started giving me long explanations about what they saw, their experiences, and their opinions about the war. It happened so frequently that I finally asked one guy why he was telling me so much. He said that I was “on the outside” so his complaints to me about the way the war was run could possibly result in some good. That is, complaints up the Army chain of command would go nowhere, but telling me, a recovering academic, could plausibly result in actual action and change. So that is why I am writing these pseudo-chapters that could someday be reworked into a book: to tell the stories of America’s Special Operations warriors about their experience. But I don’t want this to be an academic treatise. Instead I want these stories and accompanying academic arguments to be told and developed through a literary, “new journalism” style. That way, the reader can get a glimpse into the world of warfare and Special Operations that few civilians ever get to see.