Twilight Warriors: Inside the World's Special Forces Book

Penned in the mid-90s, this book is an in-depth look at the elite special forces who operate in shadows and behind the scenes, but it is not an even-handed survey. Since the writer is British, the emphasis is on the UK's Special Air Service (SAS), with an occasional foray into other members of the Commonwealth and France. The vaunted Russian Spetznatz is mentioned only in passing, and the special forces of Germany, Israel and other European countries not at all. The only other country to receive almost as attention as the UK is the USA, with its Army Ranger, SEAL, Delta Force, and USAF Special Operations Force units. The accounts of the training of all these units is very detailed, but, more than that, it is very personal. The author not only gives the warriors faces, voices and attitudes, but in many cases also participated or observed the training first hand. I was especially intrigued by his reports of the psychological evaluation of these men before they were chosen to participate. Throughout the second half of the book, the writer weaves the stories of these special forces units into the history in which they participated, the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the anti-terrorist events of which we were never told the full story. We learn, for example, that the failure to rescue the hostages in Iran stemmed as much from a deterioration of character in the US military (the fearless pilots of Vietnam were replaced by doubt-filled officers worried about their own careers) as the breakdown of command (they were controlled by a general sitting in an office in Cairo and President Carter had no interest in anything military). Because of the publishing date, the book covers the period up through the Iraqi ceasefire, but it is impossible to read this book without a sense of the events that followed...the author did not realize how unfinished the war with Iraq was (due in part to a military effort controlled by the politics of division) or how our failures in Iran would set the stage for a nuclear showdown, but I do. This is one of those history books which, while great as it is, is overdue for either an update or a sequel.