/lit/ - Literature

>>20558217
I'm not on 4chan, I'm on /lit/, and we did commit war crimes.

What book would you recommend to my friend who killed 3-5 people in Afghanistan in his early twenties, who now a little less than a decade later would like to understand the tectonic forces of government that initiated the military conflict in the middle-east?
My friend doesn't even know who he was killing. He doesn't know anything about the Taliban or Al-Qaeda or Isis. He never really paid attention during the pre-mission intel briefs. He doesn't know why he did anything or what it accomplished, besides allowing him to go to college and experience the visceral reality of combat.
What could he read to contextualize Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Freedom Sentinel on a geopolitical scale? As well as anything else that would help him better understand what the fuck he was doing over there in the mountains?