Natonski briefed first. He walked the families through the details of the battle. He noted the good intentions of everyone involved but pronounced his detailed, damning judgments of Preysler, Ostlund, and Myer. It was as though the U.S. Army, through this retired Marine lieutenant general, was humbling itself before the families, admitting that its leadership errors had contributed to their losses—in a sense, apologizing. It went on for more than two hours, and the family members found it cathartic. Dave Brostrom felt as though he and the others had finally achieved some “closure.”

Then, after a short break, General Campbell appeared. He told the audience that this was going to be yet another “difficult day,” and then stunned them with his verdict. The audience sat in silence as he explained the authority he had been given by the secretary of the army to pronounce judgment, walked them through the procedure he followed, and explained his decision.

“The officers listed in the report had exercised due care in the performance of their duties,” he said. “These officers did not kill your sons. The Taliban did.”

The silence lasted for a few moments more. Then Brostrom erupted. He made an effort to control his anger, but his voice rose to a shout: “Nine soldiers dead and 27 wounded!” He repeated the findings of the Natonski report that had just been officially presented—lack of resources, manpower, equipment, supervision. “No risk mitigation!,” Brostrom shouted. “You tell me what the battalion commander did to mitigate those risks! … If he was too busy taking care of 13 other outposts, then why in the hell did they go there in the first place?”

He was interrupted by applause from other family members.

“It’s because nobody had the balls to say, Don’t do it!” said Brostrom. “There is no excuse. Things were going wrong. Nobody took any action … they left those kids out there to be slaughtered!”

“I can absolutely understand your emotion,” said Campbell.

“You can’t,” answered Brostrom. “You didn’t lose a son.”

Campbell held his ground, and the session devolved further. Brostrom remarked to one of the other shocked family members, “This is a nightmare.” He went on to accuse Campbell, who had bucked the findings of the entire chain of command in arriving at his opinion, of acting as a toady for the army.

“You were told to soften this to the United States Army, and that’s exactly what happened here,” he said. “You went out and did your own investigation and came up with totally 180-degree-out findings I didn’t send my son to Afghanistan to be executed!”

His wrath toward Ostlund boiled over. Ostlund had not only led their sons “to slaughter” but had set back the American effort in that part of Afghanistan by “two or three years.” Ostlund was a narcissist, a war-lover, and a coward, who stayed safely behind the defenses of his command post while pushing his men to take unnecessary risks in order to win his unit medals and glory. Campbell countered that the record showed just the opposite, that Task Force Rock had been superbly led.

“I know this guy, and he is going to do it again,” Brostrom said.

In fact, the two men have never met. They spoke on the phone several times soon after his son’s death, when Ostlund offered to answer any questions about the episode, and during that same period they had exchanged several e-mails. But Brostrom’s contacts had ended when he began his campaign.

The Battle of Wanat has become the most exhaustively examined episode of the Afghan war. Whatever lessons can be learned from it have been extracted. Ostlund has been fully reinstated, and recently returned from a second tour in Afghanistan as commander of the Joint Special Operations unit responsible for covert raids on Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership. It was a central post at a very high level in the Afghan campaign. He served directly with David Petraeus, so the Wanat episode had not yet hobbled his standing in the army. In the long run, it probably will. Any ambitions Ostlund may have had for general officer are gone. There are scores of eligible colonels for every general-officer slot, and the cloud raised by Brostrom’s charges will linger despite Ostlund’s official vindication. Ostlund is currently completing a fellowship at Tufts University and has hopes of rejoining the special-operations command. “I will continue to serve until the army tells me to go home,” he said, “as it very nearly did two years ago.”