Crossing Zero: The Afghanistan-Pakistan War at the Turning Point of American Empire

Publishers Weekly doesn't agree with Gould and Fitzgerald and claims their book is "predictable and unconvincing polemic."

The authors claim that the real reason for the long duration of the Afghanistan war by the U.S. is to protect the plans for the oil and gas lines needed by so many countries. I agree with the authors. ---BBB

Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire
by Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald

From Publishers Weekly

Broadcast journalists and documentary filmmakers Fitzgerald and Gould (Invisible History) distill three decades of covering Afghanistan into a searing indictment of U.S. foreign policy in this predictable and unconvincing polemic. Dismissing the U.S. war in Afghanistan as "a thinly disguised effort to dominate South Central Asia," the authors conclude that the Durand (or Zero) line—the porous international border that separates Afghanistan and Pakistan—also marks "the vanishing point for the American empire, the point beyond which its power and influence disappears or simply ceases to exist." Pointing to the chaos in Afghanistan and an Iraq descending into violence, the authors evoke "a punch-drunk American leadership on the verge of collapse." While their contention that U.S. policy in Afghanistan is seriously, if not fatally, flawed is legitimate, it has been made less dogmatically and more convincingly by other recent critics, including war correspondent and former defense official Bing West in The Wrong War.

From Library Journal

Gould and Fitzgerald have covered Afghanistan and the surrounding region for 30 years, as both documentary filmmakers (Afghanistan Between Three Worlds) and authors (Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story). This long involvement with the issues has made them sharply critical of America for its lack of understanding of the ethnic diversity and social relations of the people, its application of Cold War thinking and strategy to a new and different kind of conflict, its military’s current counterinsurgency strategy, and its failure to define Pakistan as the real challenge.

The authors portray policies of previous years (e.g., U.S. support of insurgents fighting the Soviet invasion) as now coming back to hurt us, part of a repetition of errors previously made by European powers in the region over the past 400 years. They have marshaled an impressive array of sources, both journalistic and academic, to demonstrate that their ideas have long been available, if only policymakers had chosen to heed them.

VERDICT Bob Woodward’s recent Obama’s War focuses on the administration’s AfPak deliberations, but this book provides a wider perspective. Readers with a serious interest in U.S. foreign policy or military strategy will find it helpful in thinking about a long-lived issue.—Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., NY