Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor (Clinton Romesha)

From 2017, written before we were defeated in Afghanistan, my then-current thoughts on Afghanistan, through the lens of a dubiously-reliable war memoir.

The written, original version of this article can be found at:
https://theworthyhouse.com/2017/12/07/book-review-red-platoon-a-true-story-of-american-valor-clinton-romesha/

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This and all Worthy House narrations are offered with accurate closed captions (not auto-generated).

"Americans have always liked fighting stories: autobiographical and third person, fictional and non-fictional. From dime novels about outlaws and Indians to, more recently, war movies, Americans have vicariously enjoyed American combat, and American successes in combat. There are even meta fighting stories: an organizing frame of Clint Eastwood’s movie Unforgiven is a biographer trailing Eastwood’s character to write a dime novel. As far as the recent Afghanistan and Iraq wars, early movies (i.e., under Bush) were mostly high-profile flops attacking America (Rendition; Lions for Lambs). Later movies (i.e., under Obama, where it was no longer regarded as necessary by those controlling the film industry to attack Bush rather than make profits) included some such, but moved toward depicting American heroism (Lone Survivor; American Sniper). Not incidentally, those two latter movies were based on autobiographical books, rather than the fever dreams of Hollywood leftists, and this book, Clinton Romesha’s Red Platoon, falls squarely into that genre." . . .