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A review by gregbrown
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
5.0
Already, the Iraq War is fading from our memory. 2003 already seems in the distant past, and the withdrawal in 2011 is getting there. Still wrought with civil war, our attention has already shifted to other wars, both present and potential: Iran, Libya, Syria.
This amnesia should be surprising. the Vietnam War—a similar quagmire—traumatized the nation, and led to a suspicion of the military that only started to thaw by the time of Desert Storm. Yet there's one important difference: the draft is gone, and an all-volunteer army increasingly draws from rural and poor youth, all categories nearly invisible in the media. Rather than a shared sacrifice, war is increasingly waged using the unprivileged few.
This forgetting and ignorance, which had already started during the occupation itself, means the public isn't so easily soured by war—making books like The Forever War all the more crucial as reminders of just how crazy the times were. Crazy is almost a cruel way to describe the events, as that doesn't capture the very real suffering inflicted on all parties involved, but especially Iraqi civilians. For them there was no withdrawal coming, no salve to the daily reality of trying to balance the hope of collaboration with the sobering knowledge that it would make them a target for violence.
It's apt that the writing style reflects this craziness, a pointillist vision through dozens of discrete events, all adding together to chronicle the deeply dysfunctional occupation. At first, the institutional corruption and the violence are two separate problems. Before long, though, they merge: sectarian militias made official instruments of the state, carrying out civil war under police uniforms.
Filkins' book works because it captures the street-level degeneration, shows how the civilians are pulled between the will of the state and the much more dangerous will of the insurgency—or really, how that dichotomy is false, concealing a much more complex tug-of-war between powers, some clothed in official authority and others not. It's hard to go into much more detail, because in some sense this book is all detail; it resists summary, and therein is its power. Sorry if this sounds like a mess as a result.
This amnesia should be surprising. the Vietnam War—a similar quagmire—traumatized the nation, and led to a suspicion of the military that only started to thaw by the time of Desert Storm. Yet there's one important difference: the draft is gone, and an all-volunteer army increasingly draws from rural and poor youth, all categories nearly invisible in the media. Rather than a shared sacrifice, war is increasingly waged using the unprivileged few.
This forgetting and ignorance, which had already started during the occupation itself, means the public isn't so easily soured by war—making books like The Forever War all the more crucial as reminders of just how crazy the times were. Crazy is almost a cruel way to describe the events, as that doesn't capture the very real suffering inflicted on all parties involved, but especially Iraqi civilians. For them there was no withdrawal coming, no salve to the daily reality of trying to balance the hope of collaboration with the sobering knowledge that it would make them a target for violence.
It's apt that the writing style reflects this craziness, a pointillist vision through dozens of discrete events, all adding together to chronicle the deeply dysfunctional occupation. At first, the institutional corruption and the violence are two separate problems. Before long, though, they merge: sectarian militias made official instruments of the state, carrying out civil war under police uniforms.
Filkins' book works because it captures the street-level degeneration, shows how the civilians are pulled between the will of the state and the much more dangerous will of the insurgency—or really, how that dichotomy is false, concealing a much more complex tug-of-war between powers, some clothed in official authority and others not. It's hard to go into much more detail, because in some sense this book is all detail; it resists summary, and therein is its power. Sorry if this sounds like a mess as a result.