After reviewing Eric Blehm’s “The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan, (published in Daily News Egypt, Feb. 4, 2010), we caught up with Blehm via a phone interview.
“The Only Thing Worth Dying For, published last year by Harper, documents the mission of Special Forces team ODA 574, who entered Afghanistan with Hamid Karzai on Nov. 14, 2001, to help him lead a rebellion against the Taliban in their stronghold of southern Afghanistan.
In our review, Blehm’s one-sided depiction of the conflict was questioned for providing extensive details from the American side but nothing from the Afghans’ point of view. Additionally, Blehm seemed to have taken extensive artistic license, particularly in the dialogue among members of ODA 574.
Blehm explained, “I wanted to show it from the guys’ perspective. The parents of the guys who didn’t come home wanted me to tell the story like it happened. So every description, every quote, came directly from interviews with the men. The dialogue, obviously, came from their memories, and so may reflect that, but these are their words. If there is one bias, it would be relying on the team members of ODA 574. I wanted to show people the good and the bad of unconventional warfare.
The review had critiqued Blehm’s apparent dramatization of a historical occurrence, down to using daggers to indicate page breaks. Blehm clarified however, that the two daggers are the insignia of the Special Forces, and that their motto is “To Free the Oppressed.
He acknowledged that this typically translates to intervening in situations with which the United States is not satisfied. But he emphasized that he was not trying to glamorize the mission of ODA 574.
“This is not a pro-war story or an anti-war story; it’s a war story. War is hell. And this takes us into a little piece of it.
The review objected to the book’s implication that the mission – ultimately botched by friendly fire that killed two members of ODA 574 and maimed others – represented “the only thing worth dying for. Blehm pointed out that the title refers not to the mission in Afghanistan but to personal ideals. Yet the fact that the soldiers’ deaths are caused by what Blehm referred to as a “chain reaction of military bureaucratic breakdown, renders the title essentially meaningless.
Blehm spoke about his interaction with the parents of the two soldiers killed by American bumbling. He had contacted them after ODA 574’s commanding officer Captain Amerine said he would contribute to the book only if Blehm had their support.
Once Blehm contacted the men’s parents, they welcomed him. “Dan’s father told me, ‘I want you to tell it like it happened, don’t candy-coat it. They’re professionals, they believe in accountability. So even if he messed up, I want to know what happened. The way to honor their mission is to just set it straight.
Blehm explained that this gave him “the latitude you need as a journalist, as he had been concerned about publishing material that perhaps indicated that ODA 574 had brought about their own tragic fate.
He also describes an interaction with Dan’s mother: “[She] took me to their front porch where there hung an American flag. She told me, ‘When Danny was deployed for this mission I didn’t know where he was. But I used to go out every morning and straighten out the flag, just like when I would fix his collar to send him off to school.
Blehm’s connection to the lives of Americans he depicts was obvious in both his writing and interview, but makes the absence of a bond with those on the other side of the conflict – the ordinary Afghans into whose lives ODA 574 literally parachuted – all the more noticeable.
Blehm acknowledges that he would have liked to visit Afghanistan, but that for the purpose of telling the story of ODA 574, returning to the site of their mission nearly a decade later would have rendered the story no longer theirs.
“If I’d gone, it would have been literally impossible to stick to their perspective, Blehm pointed out. He almost traveled to Kabul, however, to interview President Karzai, who at the last minute asked instead for Blehm to meet him in New York City. In their interview, Blehm was able to confirm many of the details he had obtained from Captain Amerine and other members of ODA 574 with Karzai.
In the book Karzai comes across as a visionary leader, yet the day before Daily News Egypt’s interview, he announced his intention to remove UN oversight for the Electoral Complaints Commission, (ECC), the body charged with monitoring democratic elections. The move elicited concerns over potential fraud in September’s parliamentary elections and future presidential elections from watchdog agencies and UN representatives who consider Karzai’s re-election last year illegitimate.
Blehm defended Karzai, describing him as having “become a scapegoat since things have gone downhill.
“They called him Bush’s baby when Bush would have daily teleconference calls with him, but Bush didn’t give him what he needed, which was security in order to form infrastructure, Blehm said.
Blehm explained that he agrees with the view held by ODA 574, that the US abandoned Afghanistan in favor of Iraq, and must now pay the consequences. He considers this negligence the underlying cause of Afghanistan’s enduring conflict, not Karzai’s governance.
“Like [former congressmen] Charlie Wilson said, ‘We effed up the endgame’ when we left Afghanistan in the 80s. We did it again when we abandoned the country for Iraq, Blehm sighed.
“Call me a naïve American, but I do think we have the best intentions [in Afghanistan], that Karzai has the best intentions as well.
Like the American soldiers portrayed in his book, Blehm revealed himself as, perhaps naively, maintaining the ideals that he considers the only thing worth dying for. Both his and America’s willingness to die and kill for what they call an ideal fails to consider whether those on the other side are also willing to die.
“The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan By Eric BlehmHarper
Available now in bookstores across the US and Europe.
