thedrifter
09-28-08, 08:05 AM
NONFICTION: From the front lines of the war on terror
Sunday, Sep 28, 2008 - 12:01 AM
By DOUG CHILDERS
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
In a bumper-crop season of books examining the American war on terror, Dexter Filkins' "The Forever War" may be the most shocking and breathtaking yet. It's also markedly different from many of the books about the war.
"The Forever War" doesn't explore why the Bush administration shifted its focus from Afghanistan, the suspected hiding place of Osama bin Laden, to Iraq less than two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And it isn't an account of how the Bush administration's plans for occupying Iraq went wrong on a strategic level.
Instead, Filkins, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, writes about his experiences on the ground in two radically different war zones that often didn't make sense at first glance.
In Afghanistan, for example, the loyalty of the soldiers fighting for rival warlords was difficult to decipher.
"On Tuesday, you might be a part of a fearsome Taliban regiment, running into a minefield," Filkins writes. "And on Wednesday you might be manning a checkpoint for some gang of the Northern Alliance. By Thursday you could be back with the Talibs again, holding up your Kalashnikov and promising to wage jihad forever. War was serious in Afghanistan, but not that serious. It was part of everyday life. It was a job. Only the civilians seemed to lose."
In the early stages of the Afghan war, Filkins (and presumably Afghans) had to decipher the American plans by watching the sky, where B-52s made high-altitude bombing runs.
"The exhaust plumes hung in the air long after the planes had moved on, so on some afternoons the whole sky would be looped and crisscrossed, white against the blue, like a work of abstract art," Filkins writes.
At night, the American military was harder to track. "[T]he faint wup-wup-wup" of a helicopter would draw Filkins out of his mud-brick hut, he writes, "and if I was lucky I'd see a blackened silhouette against the star-flecked night. A helicopter without lights, here then gone. The Americans were here, the Afghans said, but I didn't see any of them until much later."
The years Filkins spent in Iraq with American soldiers weren't as quiet. He bluffed his way into the country as the invasion began, driving a rented GMC Yukon across the Kuwaiti border. And he won the grudging respect of American soldiers by following them into combat and writing about their struggle to quell a growing insurgency.
"It wasn't just that the insurgents lurked in the shadows; they actually were the shadows, flitting and changing with the light," Filkins writes.
Filkins witnessed American military enigmas as well. As Iraqi insurgents pressured Filkins and a company of marines with mortar and sniper fire during a raid into Fallujah, for example, four mysterious figures stepped out of the darkness.
"They wore flight suits that shimmered in the night and tennis shoes and hoods that made them look like executioners," Filkins writes. "The four men wore goggles that shrouded their eyes and gave off lime-green penumbras that lightened their faces."
The four men conferred with the company commander and then stepped back into the darkness. "Moments passed and the shelling stopped," Filkins writes. "And then the sniper fire stopped. We never saw the men again."
Filkins has constructed "The Forever War" around unforgettable scenes like that one. His eye for detail and his ability to capture a scene with understated, impressionistic eloquence are impeccable.
"My truck crept down a narrow lane marked by little flags, a path through a minefield," he writes of a trip to the outskirts of Baghdad. "Shards of metal and bullet cases cracked under the wheels. On the left, the bottom half of a corpse lay in the dirt; a few feet away, a human head. It was twilight."
Filkins understands how the fog of war inflates the pessimistic impressions close fighting can engender. In one scene, he observes that flying over Baghdad in a Black Hawk helicopter diminishes the "anarchy of the streets" below.
"It was useful to fly in helicopters for this reason, I thought to myself, useful to think this way, to take a wider view of the world. Too much detail, too much death, clouded the mind."
But as Filkins demonstrates, it's equally dangerous to see the world only from those quiet, safe war-planning rooms, where wars lose their human scale.
Doug Childers is a Richmond writer and edits WAG, a literary Web site at www.thewag.net.
Ellie
Sunday, Sep 28, 2008 - 12:01 AM
By DOUG CHILDERS
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
In a bumper-crop season of books examining the American war on terror, Dexter Filkins' "The Forever War" may be the most shocking and breathtaking yet. It's also markedly different from many of the books about the war.
"The Forever War" doesn't explore why the Bush administration shifted its focus from Afghanistan, the suspected hiding place of Osama bin Laden, to Iraq less than two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And it isn't an account of how the Bush administration's plans for occupying Iraq went wrong on a strategic level.
Instead, Filkins, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, writes about his experiences on the ground in two radically different war zones that often didn't make sense at first glance.
In Afghanistan, for example, the loyalty of the soldiers fighting for rival warlords was difficult to decipher.
"On Tuesday, you might be a part of a fearsome Taliban regiment, running into a minefield," Filkins writes. "And on Wednesday you might be manning a checkpoint for some gang of the Northern Alliance. By Thursday you could be back with the Talibs again, holding up your Kalashnikov and promising to wage jihad forever. War was serious in Afghanistan, but not that serious. It was part of everyday life. It was a job. Only the civilians seemed to lose."
In the early stages of the Afghan war, Filkins (and presumably Afghans) had to decipher the American plans by watching the sky, where B-52s made high-altitude bombing runs.
"The exhaust plumes hung in the air long after the planes had moved on, so on some afternoons the whole sky would be looped and crisscrossed, white against the blue, like a work of abstract art," Filkins writes.
At night, the American military was harder to track. "[T]he faint wup-wup-wup" of a helicopter would draw Filkins out of his mud-brick hut, he writes, "and if I was lucky I'd see a blackened silhouette against the star-flecked night. A helicopter without lights, here then gone. The Americans were here, the Afghans said, but I didn't see any of them until much later."
The years Filkins spent in Iraq with American soldiers weren't as quiet. He bluffed his way into the country as the invasion began, driving a rented GMC Yukon across the Kuwaiti border. And he won the grudging respect of American soldiers by following them into combat and writing about their struggle to quell a growing insurgency.
"It wasn't just that the insurgents lurked in the shadows; they actually were the shadows, flitting and changing with the light," Filkins writes.
Filkins witnessed American military enigmas as well. As Iraqi insurgents pressured Filkins and a company of marines with mortar and sniper fire during a raid into Fallujah, for example, four mysterious figures stepped out of the darkness.
"They wore flight suits that shimmered in the night and tennis shoes and hoods that made them look like executioners," Filkins writes. "The four men wore goggles that shrouded their eyes and gave off lime-green penumbras that lightened their faces."
The four men conferred with the company commander and then stepped back into the darkness. "Moments passed and the shelling stopped," Filkins writes. "And then the sniper fire stopped. We never saw the men again."
Filkins has constructed "The Forever War" around unforgettable scenes like that one. His eye for detail and his ability to capture a scene with understated, impressionistic eloquence are impeccable.
"My truck crept down a narrow lane marked by little flags, a path through a minefield," he writes of a trip to the outskirts of Baghdad. "Shards of metal and bullet cases cracked under the wheels. On the left, the bottom half of a corpse lay in the dirt; a few feet away, a human head. It was twilight."
Filkins understands how the fog of war inflates the pessimistic impressions close fighting can engender. In one scene, he observes that flying over Baghdad in a Black Hawk helicopter diminishes the "anarchy of the streets" below.
"It was useful to fly in helicopters for this reason, I thought to myself, useful to think this way, to take a wider view of the world. Too much detail, too much death, clouded the mind."
But as Filkins demonstrates, it's equally dangerous to see the world only from those quiet, safe war-planning rooms, where wars lose their human scale.
Doug Childers is a Richmond writer and edits WAG, a literary Web site at www.thewag.net.
Ellie