It was a few years ago now that a friend of mine asked me to watch The Hornets’ Nest. Not just me; he told all his friends to watch The Hornet’s Nest. This film, a documentary about the war in Afghanistan, has as a focus the Battle of Barawala Kalay Valley and the 2nd Battalion of the 327th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne who fought there. My friend had served in this unit during this time period and knew, personally, many of those who died during that fight.
As far as I know, he was not in The Hornet’s Nest nor the film No Greater Love, another documentary about the same deployment. I cannot tell you whether he was physically present, but off camera, or not. I’m not going to ask him.
About three-and-a-half years have passed since I assured him I would watch it. It has also been more than eight years since the film came out. Part of the reason for my delay is that I thought watching would better fit in along with some additional context – whatever that might mean. I anticipated an emotionally-heavy film and it never quite seemed the time to take that on.
The end credits to The Hornet’s Nest explained that a withdrawal from Afghanistan was expected by the end of 2014. It was May 29th of that year, after the film release, that President Obama announced the terms under which this nation’s support for Afghanistan would continue into 2015 and beyond, with a much curtailed scope. Although he declared the Afghan War to be at “a conclusion” in December of 2014, we might now find such assurances laughable. The war continued to plague us into two more presidencies before finally, in the fall of 2021, the U.S. completed a bumbling exit from that conflict. Circa 2022, this 2011 battle is starting to feel like ancient history. I figured I had better watch it before this actually comes to pass.
Likewise, I have been sitting on the game that I had picked up a while back, Afghanistan ’11. This is a sequel to the title Vietnam ’65 from the same development team . As with my delays in watching the film, opening up this game felt like something that needed a broader context, given that the war was still ongoing.
I have certainly forgotten, in the couple of years since I played Vietnam ’65 just how addictive that play can be. Afghanistan ’11 has the same just-one-more-turn urgency, as it very closely resembles its predecessor. Yes, there have been improvements to the game play in addition to the updates that align it better with the realities of the twenty-teens. For all that may have changed, it is still a “single player” experience where the “enemy AI” is derived from the natural imbalance of asymmetrical warfare.
If I haven’t been clear so far, my opinion of both of these works is favorable. In neither case, though, do I intend to write a “review” here. Rather, I’ll just toss out some uncollated comments, mostly about what surprised me.
For The Hornet’s Nest, what I didn’t realize (especially given the way it was recommended to me) is that the documentary is really about the experience of the embedded journalist who made the film. It is an autobiographical work, if you will, about what it means to be a war correspondent. I didn’t know it (because I don’t watch much TV) but Mike Boettcher is a highly-regarded and well-recognized journalist. Now, it should go without saying that a story about going to war with soldiers has to be (assuming one isn’t a pathological narcissist) also largely about those soldiers themselves. And so it is.
Given the construction of the film, consisting almost entirely of video gathered by Boettcher and his son during the military operations, The Hornet’s Nest can not possibly have the kind of continuity or story-telling that a dramatization or even a full blown documentary can offer. Thus the allure, these days, of the fictional retelling of news events shortly after they happen. It does what it does with what it has and, by that measure, is well put together. In fact, given these constraints (that is, footage from the journalists’ body cams), the immersion in combat for the audience is actually pretty amazing.
Reviewers have opined that this is a must-see film for all Americans. Likely that was in the context of 2014-15 and the political fight over the withdrawal that never actually happened. I’ll stick with the gut feeling that got me here. If you haven’t already seen this movie, it is worth watching now, before the American experience in Afghanistan fades away into memory.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/lashkargah1.jpg?w=1024)
Let’s switch gears to the game. Afghanistan ’11, likewise, offers up a bit of a surprise for anyone who took its title on face value. In this it is quite unlike Vietnam ’65, which seems to (even if not explicitly so) be anchored in the particular time and place of Operation Silver Bayonet and related highlands operations that followed the assault on the Plei Me Special Forces camp at the end of 1965. One might assume, then, that Afghanistan ’11 is an abstracted version of a certain set of operations from 2011 in Afghanistan. It is not. Rather, the “’11” designation seems to provide a bookend to the scope of the game; the endpoint where history was frozen and committed to the bits and bytes on your computer screen.
Again in contrast to Vietnam ’65, the core of is a campaign game with “missions” based upon historical engagements. It begins with a four-level tutorial section starting you out in the opening months of America’s conflict in the country. The first “real” level is, as captured above, a March 2006 battle.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/lashkargah2.jpg?w=1024)
In addition to forgetting how addictive the game is, I have also forgotten how much of a challenge this engine provides – at least on any but the lowest level of difficulty or when I approach it with any kind of casual attitude. The player must continually balance supply, intelligence, and unit position presenting short-term goals that often work counter to one another. For example, in the screenshot above, I believed I had a secure resupply line to my forward operating base (FOB) but I’m about to find out the hard way that I am mistaken. That mistake will cost me all my advantage and then some. Once the delicate balance is upset, it very quickly cascades into the abyss.
I’ll note, once again, how remarkable this has been put together as a single player experience. The “AI” is procedural and it is explained simply to the player. Given an enemy unit’s location on the map, you can anticipate exactly what they are going to do. The individual Taliban unit or the insurgent militia group are simply not that menacing, especially if you have U.S. forces to deal with them. The problem is that, most of the time, you don’t know where they are. That lack of knowledge and your ensuing inability to plan accordingly turns this mix of easily surmountable odds into a task that is impossible to win.
Much like the position we found ourselves in that led to the debacle of last summer.