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The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan by Elliot Ackerman
Politics & Rights

The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan by Elliot Ackerman

By Timothy Sandefur

Sep 06, 2022
∙ Paid

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The Objective Standard
The Objective Standard
The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan by Elliot Ackerman
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New York: Penguin, 2022

276 pages, $27

Elliot Ackerman’s The Fifth Act may be the first great book about the Afghanistan war. Part memoir, part policy analysis, it uses the nauseating surrender of the United States to the Taliban in 2021 as a point of departure for a series of reflections on the irrationality with which the war was waged and the consequen…

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