Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces

Special Forces, the seventh and final entry in Tom Clancy's nonfiction Guided Tour series about America's armed forces, sets its sights on the shadowy -- and often misunderstood -- roles and missions of the men the author calls "the quiet professionals" of the Army's Special Forces command.Although the public image of the Special Forces stems from such movies as John Wayne's 1968 cornball classic The Green Berets and the Rambo trilogy (Stallone's John Rambo is a former SF veteran who served in Vietnam) and Sgt. Barry Sadler's once-popular "Ballad of the Green Berets," Clancy and his co-author John D. Gresham point out that far from being hell-for-leather, shoot-first-ask-questions-later killing machines, SF soldiers are actually among the best troops in the U.S. Army. They have to be, because their missions -- ranging from blowing up a bridge or weapons factory far behind enemy lines to organizing, training, advising, and assisting foreign armies and police forces of "host" countries "to protect their societies or free them from subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, and terrorism." This means that in addition to their combat roles in Afghanistan and Iraq, SF teams are among the busiest of America's soldiers.One of the more interesting insights I got from reading Special Forces is related to the role played by SF deployments in El Salvador during the darkest days of that Central American nation's long-running civil war. The Reagan Administration, knowing that any major American military intervention would be very unpopular at home and abroad (a Vietnam II in our own back yard, to put it bluntly), was caught in a decision-making dilemma. Clearly they did not wish El Salvador to "go Red" as Cuba and Nicaragua had in the past, yet they knew the ruling class -- derived from the wealthy class of landowners and other top honchos -- was also very indifferent about the conditions of the Salvadoran poor, particularly those in the countryside. Using the army and national guard -- themselves derived from El Salvador's small middle class -- in repressive and counterproductive ways, El Salvador's government just made matters worse, using indiscriminate tactics and the infamous death squads. Surely, Washington couldn't be too closely linked to a small group of wealthy "patrones" whose only interest was to maintain their lock on power and to ignore the people's legitimate demands for justice and social reform.The solution? To use Special Forces to gradually change the mindset of the Salvadoran army. It took time, and quite a few of the SF advisers lost their lives in the crossfire between leftist forces and the army. Nevertheless, the Salvadoran officers and soldiers were "re-educated" and, as Clancy writes, "the Salvadoran Army tried acting in other than brutal and repressive ways toward their fellow countrymen, they began to halt activities of their death squads and to actually show respect for basic human rights.As a result, the rebels lost a lot of sup

Right now, as the air campaign in Afghanistan nears completion, there is little doubt that these are the folks who will be hitting the ground,(they may in fact already be there). This book gives a good overview of how these forces are organized and how they operate. I found it very enlightening as we enter this new era of warfare.

I have read the other reviews and I find them quiet correct. I am VERY intersted in Special Forces so I was happy to hear that Tom Clancy came out with a book about it. I bought it and was not disappointed but I have not been through any of the training so it was a good basic informational book for me.

This book is a good short civilianized view of Special Forces. The author goes through his steps of traveling from Middle East to South America. If your just becoming interested in SF units, operatives, etc this is the book for you. However do not plan to see tactics and techniques. The book is basicly a generalization of SF and what they do from dealing with Bio Weapons, to plain old humanitain intereaction. For all the wanna be's out there that already know there stuff this is not a book for you. I having been around a whole load of operatives have had the pleasure of knowing all this. However pound for pound a good book on basic SF.

An in-depth, accurate and immensely readable work. Possibly the best in the series. Particularly insightful and valuable reading for anyone interested in the special ops community, although it focuses almost entirely on Army Special Forces. My only problem with the book is that it repeats a great deal of information (especially regarding the roles and missions) and the "mini-novel" wasn't very good. Otherwise outstanding. If you interested, also check out "The Company They Keep" and "In Search of the Warrior Spirit"