At dawn on March 2, 2002, over 200 soldiers of the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions flew into Afghanistan's Shahikot mountains to fight Operation Anaconda, America's first major battle of the 21st century and a critical turning point in the global war on terror.

In a recently published book about Operation Anaconda and U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Not a Good Day to Die (Berkley Hardcover, 2005), award-winning Army Times journalist Sean Naylor details how the bloodiest battle of the Afghan war unfolded, why intelligence and planning failures nearly led to the defeat of American forces, and how Delta Force and SEAL commandos penetrated enemy lines and saved the mission. Naylor was embedded with U.S. troops in the Shahikot mountains in 2002 and was an eyewitness to the combat against Al Qaeda and the Taliban there.

Naylor's remarks will be followed by a discussion with Frederick W. Kagan, associate professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and Kalev Sepp, coauthor of the official U.S. Army study on special operations in the Afghan war and assistant professor at the Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare at the Naval Postgraduate School. AEI resident fellow Thomas Donnelly will serve as moderator.