Exposes the realities of unconventional warfare and nation-building in Afghanistan in a chronicle of the military mission ODA 574 where a Special Forces team infiltrated the mountains of southern Afghanistan, fomented a tribal revolt and forced the Taliban to surrender.

Irrepressible individualist and iconoclast Pat Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract in May 2002 to enlist in the United States Army. Deeply troubled by 9/11, he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in Afghanistan. Though obvious to most on the scene that a ranger in Tillman's own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered...

In the earliest years of the war in Afghanistan, after the Taliban fell to an American-led coalition, the fight there appeared to be a triumph-a “good war" in comparison to the debacle in Iraq. Now, thirteen years after it began, it has turned into the longest war in U.S. history, as well as the most profligate; at an estimated 4 to 6 trillion, the final price tag for America's part in the war in Afghanistan will be higher than that of World War...