Wil Selby

The questions below are meant to be used in a guided discussion on the book Koran Kalashnikov and Laptop by Antonio Giustozzi. A brief synopsis of the book is reprinted below from Amazon.

“Since the Allied invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, the Bush administration has celebrated the imminent demise of the Taliban, with claims of a “moral and psychological defeat” playing a prominent role in the presidential elections of 2004. Some commentators suggested that “reconstruction and development” had won over the Afghan population, despite widespread criticism of the meager distribution of aid and failed attempts at “nation building,” not to mention the infamous corruption of Kabul’s power-hoarding elites.

The questions below are meant to be used in a guided discussion on the book Islands of the Damned by R.V. Burgin. This book is in the Career Level Officer section of the 2013 United States Marine Corps Commandant’s Reading List. A brief synopsis of the book is reprinted below from Amazon.

“R.V. Burgin reveals his experiences as a Marine at war in the Pacific Theater, where Company K confronted snipers, ambushes along narrow jungle trails, abandoned corpses of hara-kiri victims, and howling banzai attacks as they island-hopped from one bloody battle to the next. During his two years of service, Burgin rose from a green private to a seasoned sergeant, and earned a Bronze Star for his valor at Okinawa.

With unforgettable drama and an understated elegance, Burgin’s gripping narrative chronicles the waning days of World War II, bringing to life the hell that was the Pacific War.”

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The questions below are meant to be used in a guided discussion on the book Black Hearts by Jim Frederick. This book is on the Career Level Officer group of the 2013 United States Marine Corps Commandant’s Reading List. A brief synopsis of the book is reprinted below from Amazon.

“This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division’s fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as “the Black Heart Brigade.” Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south of Baghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably the country’s most dangerous location at its most dangerous time.

Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks, suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heart platoon—1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion—descended, over their year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality.

Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the Iraq War—the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-blooded execution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldiers would be overrun at a remote outpost—one killed immediately and two taken from the scene, their mutilated corpses found days later booby-trapped with explosives.

Black Hearts is an unflinching account of the epic, tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and first-hand reporting from the Triangle of Death, Black Hearts is a timeless story about men in combat and the fragility of character in the savage crucible of warfare. But it is also a timely warning of new dangers emerging in the way American soldiers are led on the battlefields of the twenty-first century.”

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