The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Fought for a New Afghanistan

The Only Thing Worth Dying For recounts the operations of ODA 574, a U.S. Army Special Forces team of Green Berets, in the weeks following September 11, 2001. The team, led by Captain Jason Amerine and consisting of eleven men, infiltrated the mountains of southern Afghanistan with orders to incite a tribal uprising and force the Taliban to surrender. Operating with minimal equipment, limited intelligence, and guerrilla warfare expertise, the team relied on their sole ally: Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun statesman recently returned from exile who was organizing a militia while evading Taliban forces. Author Eric Blehm draws on interviews with surviving ODA 574 members, military planners, and Karzai himself to document this early mission in the Global War on Terror. The narrative explores how personnel in the field and commanders in Washington possessed limited understanding of their adversary, while detailing the unconventional warfare and nation-building efforts that would continue to influence Afghanistan.