Dylan Steider

Title of Book: 12 Strong
Genre of Literature: biography/personal narrative
Author: Doug Stanton
Publisher: Scribner Book Company

Copyright Date: May 5, 2009
Number of pages: 576
Setting(s): Afghanistan
Main Characters – Mitch Nelson, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mazar-I-Sharif, and other U.S. soldiers.

Mitch Nelson~ The leader of the U.S. Military team that has been assigned to the dangerous mission, a father of a little girl at home and married to his wife Jean Nelson.

Abdul Rashid Dostum~ The Afghan warlord paid to help Nelson’s group of soldiers take out the taliban forces.

Mazar-I-Sharif~ The leader of the taliban, is controlling the taliban at the time and was coordinating them but was killed after the U.S. soldiers destroyed every outpost.

 

Summery

    In my book 12 Strong, the book starts off with the characters living out their everyday lives. Then the planes hit the World Trade Center Towers. The U.S. soldiers in the book were the first team that all requested to be sent into action as a retaliation strategy. The team was sent to Afghanistan and awaited selection. There were three teams to choose from for their mission and they were selected. Their mission was to work together with a Afghan War lord to take out all the taliban outposts they could with calling in a lethal air strike. They needed the Afghan warlords help to guide them through the mountains and provide them with transportation. The U.S. soldiers had 4 weeks to do this assignment. They did it in 2, the soldiers worked hard and they moved fast as to destroy the Taliban before they started to realize they were being destroyed. The soldiers completed their mission and the ended up ending the Taliban regime. The Afghanistan people were left to prosper without being slaves to the Taliban. Even more interesting the Afghan warlord who helped the soldiers, Abdul Rashid Dostum, was elected president of the city. The U.S. soldiers went home with a completed mission and no casualties.

 

Application Questions

1-What is the most important event in the book? Why is it the most important? When does this event take place in the book (page numbers)?
– The most important Event in the book is when the soldiers finally complete their mission and destroy all of their Taliban targets, eliminating them and getting to return home. This is important because this means the Afghan people can be free from oppression from those people. (398-411)

 

2-Choose one character – Give a more detailed description of their role in the book, and then compare them to someone you know personally today. Use two quotes from the book to help illustrate your description – cite page numbers where the quotes are found.
– Mitch Nelson, was a very achieved young man who as a spiller was very well trained and had a great mindset for the battlefield he knew great strategy and had a fantastic perk for military insights. He was smart and brave, but the one thing he didn’t have was previous combat history. He had never been in real combat, which is why he was almost not selected at first to lead his team but he was sure that he could do it. He’s a father and a husband, he is married to his wife Jean and they have a little girl. I think Mitch Nelson relates compares to Mr. Schoettlin. I think he relates to him because they were both in the military but not just that. They are both extremely smart and educated, they’re both brave, and they’re both willing to lay down their lives for this great country. “Nineteen men attacked our country, the twelve of you will be the first ones to fight back.”(57) This shows Mitch’s bravery and determination to get into the fight. “This was Special Forces’ rule number one: let men experience failure so they never fail again. And by failing, they will learn how to be successful soldiers.” (217) This quote shows Mitch’s sense of being a good leader, by letting his troops fail once they learn that they need to do something different and work together in order to be better.

 

3-Use two quotes from the book to show new things you have learned about this time period in history. Explain what each quote helped you to better know or understand – cite page numbers.
-“Later, Dean would see Atta’s fighters show up carrying AK-47s, and there with them would be their sons, carrying spare magazines. Behind the sons walked even younger sons, carrying nothing. Dean understood that in this kind of fighting, the sons who carried nothing would pick up either a gun or a magazine if the fathers or brothers were killed. The look on the faces of the kids seemed to indicate to Dean that they expected to die.” This led me to learn just how bad the environment was there. They made kids Cary weapons and fight when they were so young that they shouldn’t have even known what a gun was. They were in such poverty that they were forced to fight and most likely be killed.

-“At Al Farooq, soldiers-in-training were taught to shoot a rifle, throw a grenade, use a compass, and poison water, food, and people.” This quote shows the ruthlessness that the Taliban soldiers and leaders had. I learned that they were killers and had no trouble at all with it.

 

4-How might our world be different today if the historical events in your book had turned out differently? Use two different examples to explain your answer.
– The World we live in today would be very different if the events wouldn’t have turned out the way they did. The Taliban might still be around right now and causing more terrorists issues for our country. Also the war in Afghanistan might be worse than the war were fighting over there is today. Things could be very different and way worse for us. We are proud and glad the men that sacrificed their lives for us completed their mission the way they did to keep us safe from the Taliban regime.

 

5-What are three life lessons that can be learned from this book – how does each apply to your life?
– Leaders keep things simple, I can apply this to my life by not always trying to make this difficult for people around me, making this easier on the people around me can even make things easier for myself.

– Leaders put their men before themselves, I need to put others needs before mine in my life, others needs are more important than everything always being about me.

– Bravery is always a vital factor, being brave is something that everyone should be able to carry around and have with them. It’s a very good quality to have and it keeps you a strong person not just for yourself but can help in situations that involve others.

 

6-If you were to give this book an alternate title, what would it be? Explain why.
– The Horseback Crusaders, because in the book the only means of transportation in the Afghan mountains was horseback. So they attacked and road on horseback with everything they did. The horses were a key role in the book.

 

7-Explain in about 50 words why you would or would not recommend this book to your classmates.
– I would recommend this book to my classmates because it’s a great learning opportunity not just about the fighting and destruction of the Taliban but a little bit more about what life’s like in Afghanistan and also how 9/11 looked from the U.S. soldiers perspective. These things made it a very enjoyable read and why I recommend you read it as well.

 

8-Cite any sources beyond the book that you used to complete this project.

-None