Oppose Any Foe: The Rise of America’s Special Operations Forces

Seeking to “confer historical understanding” of America’s much-lauded yet poorly understood Special Operations Forces, Moyar (Aid for Elites), director of the Center for Military and Diplomatic History, chronicles 75 years of pyrotechnics while acknowledging the merits of some SOF criticism. Moyar opens by addressing certain persistent problems, including how SOF units suck talent from regular units, receive more training and expensive equipment, and often sit idle between missions (many of which could be accomplished by regular units). He proceeds by outlining the establishment of the various SOF units, beginning with the Army Rangers in 1942. Despite a few accomplishments, SOF units played an insignificant role in defeating the Axis, and hardly improved their standing during the Korean War, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War. Matters shifted significantly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks; units dropped into Afghanistan performed brilliantly in routing the Taliban and participated in the 2003 Iraq invasion. As those wars ground on, SOF prospered, seeming to offer a low-cost, low-casualty means of defeating insurgencies. Moyar maintains that this approach hasn’t worked and delivers the startling conclusion that expanding conventional forces is a better solution. Moyar admires these elite units, and his enthusiastic, warts-and-all approach to discussing Special Forces fireworks will surely raise some eyebrows. Agent: Glen Hartley, Writers’ Representatives. (May)