At Foreign Affairs, British author and foreign correspondent Christina Lamb reviews a new history of the Afghanistan war and what went wrong with it: “The American War in Afghanistan” by Carter Malkasian, who recounts the distraction of Iraq and depicts a confused mission that alienated Afghans.

“Malkasian’s book raises a disturbing question,” writes Lamb in her review: “In the end, did the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan do more harm than good? ‘The United States exposed Afghans to prolonged harm in order to defend America from another terrorist attack,’ he writes. ‘Villages were destroyed. Families disappeared. … The intervention did noble work for women, education, and free speech. But that good has to be weighed against tens of thousands of men, women, and children who died.’”