thedrifter
11-20-08, 05:40 AM
Brady On Media
Dexter Filkins, War Correspondent
James Brady 11.20.08, 6:00 AM ET
There have always been two varieties of war correspondent. One hangs out at the bar of the best hotel in town near the fighting (but not too near) and, over gin, interviews other correspondents on their war stories and gets to wire splendid tales about the fighting. That's the clever methodology.
Then there are the open, simple fellows who actually go to the front and send back dispatches. Reporters like Floyd Gibbons, who lost an eye with the Marines at Belleau Wood in 1918. Maggie Higgins of the Herald Trib, Keyes Beech of the Chicago Daily News and David Douglas Duncan of Life, who covered Korea. David Halberstam of the Times and a flock of others in Vietnam. Ernie Pyle, who got himself killed by the Japanese in 1945.
And from the Los Angeles Times, and more recently The New York Times, a war correspondent with the unlikely name of Dexter Filkins. Never heard of him? Hang on, you will.
Filkins is already one of the great ones, though he has yet to make "the list." That should change: In September, Knopf published a book of his reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan called The Forever War, which is getting rave reviews (it made the cover of the Times' Book Review). His book tour has included sessions at military bases and, now, appearances on talk shows, such as Morning Joe on MSNBC.
Filkins, just off a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard, is in his mid-40s, owes nothing to the flamboyant correspondents of the past (such as Churchill and Hemingway) and prides himself on not drawing political or "big picture" judgments about the war that, in one way or another, he's been covering since 1998. Instead of think-tanking, he gives us portraits of the men on the ground and the war they fight.
Confessing to mystification about Afghanistan, Dexter Filkins admits to having told his editors in Los Angeles eight years ago about the craziness there. "What the hell is this? Where is it going? Something really bad is going at happen here." Less than a year later they hit the Twin Towers.
His book opens with a stunning prologue from 2004 in Falluja, Iraq--where he was embedded with a Marine rifle company fighting its way street by street through a big town full of insurgents--accompanied by 82 millimeter mortar shells, a backdrop of heavy metal music by AC/DC from the Marine side, and the blood-thirsty "God is great!" cries of the mullahs in their minaret. At one point a Marine throws Filkins into a mulberry bush, tugging frantically at the reporter's backpack. A white phosphorous flare has set his pack and sleeping bag afire and is about to burn Dexter "all the way to your bones."
In a bizarre way, there is something almost consoling in the fact that in 2004, half a century after Korea, they were still firing 82 millimeter mortars and using "willie peter" white phosphorous shells and still doing what Marines do, humping forward under fire, just as they do in every war. Later in the firefight, Filkins writes, "I felt the bullets whiz past and bounce off the pavements and I knew I was going to die." You read his stuff and think, all wars are the same, only the soldiers' names change.
I've commanded Marine riflemen in combat, but that was my job--what I was commissioned by the Corps to do. There isn't enough money or glory or journalism awards out there to get me to do what Dexter Filkins did as a civilian, as a reporter, in this book of his. He is a great reporter and also a very brave man.
You can't forget his dispatch from an Afghan football stadium where the Taliban is chopping off the hands of prisoners and other Talibs, as he calls them, "weird; like as if they were from another century," lashing out with whips at children pressing closer to see the spectacle. And he reports about a local Afghan, a youngster, in love with a girl one of the warlords wants, and what happens to the boy. His arms and legs are tied to four horses, which are then sent galloping off in four directions, tearing the young lover into four parts.
In Iraq, he writes about bombings, about going into mosques, meeting with decent, brave American diplomats, being menaced by Blackwater "gunmen," whom some prefer to call "thugs," interviewing Dick Cheney's buddy Chalabi, and going on combat patrol with the troops, getting their names and back-stories, reporting on the fighting, reporting on the deaths and woundings of young Americans. And of how one young Marine was killed leading Filkins and his cameraman into a mosque.
In September of this year the Times sent him back to report from Baghdad how things have changed--for the better.
But the paper also sent him back to report that the war goes on, a war he calls "forever," knowing his title is an exaggeration, "more metaphor than literal truth, at least I hope so."
Nothing else is Mr. Filkins' extraordinary book is an exaggeration.
Ellie
Dexter Filkins, War Correspondent
James Brady 11.20.08, 6:00 AM ET
There have always been two varieties of war correspondent. One hangs out at the bar of the best hotel in town near the fighting (but not too near) and, over gin, interviews other correspondents on their war stories and gets to wire splendid tales about the fighting. That's the clever methodology.
Then there are the open, simple fellows who actually go to the front and send back dispatches. Reporters like Floyd Gibbons, who lost an eye with the Marines at Belleau Wood in 1918. Maggie Higgins of the Herald Trib, Keyes Beech of the Chicago Daily News and David Douglas Duncan of Life, who covered Korea. David Halberstam of the Times and a flock of others in Vietnam. Ernie Pyle, who got himself killed by the Japanese in 1945.
And from the Los Angeles Times, and more recently The New York Times, a war correspondent with the unlikely name of Dexter Filkins. Never heard of him? Hang on, you will.
Filkins is already one of the great ones, though he has yet to make "the list." That should change: In September, Knopf published a book of his reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan called The Forever War, which is getting rave reviews (it made the cover of the Times' Book Review). His book tour has included sessions at military bases and, now, appearances on talk shows, such as Morning Joe on MSNBC.
Filkins, just off a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard, is in his mid-40s, owes nothing to the flamboyant correspondents of the past (such as Churchill and Hemingway) and prides himself on not drawing political or "big picture" judgments about the war that, in one way or another, he's been covering since 1998. Instead of think-tanking, he gives us portraits of the men on the ground and the war they fight.
Confessing to mystification about Afghanistan, Dexter Filkins admits to having told his editors in Los Angeles eight years ago about the craziness there. "What the hell is this? Where is it going? Something really bad is going at happen here." Less than a year later they hit the Twin Towers.
His book opens with a stunning prologue from 2004 in Falluja, Iraq--where he was embedded with a Marine rifle company fighting its way street by street through a big town full of insurgents--accompanied by 82 millimeter mortar shells, a backdrop of heavy metal music by AC/DC from the Marine side, and the blood-thirsty "God is great!" cries of the mullahs in their minaret. At one point a Marine throws Filkins into a mulberry bush, tugging frantically at the reporter's backpack. A white phosphorous flare has set his pack and sleeping bag afire and is about to burn Dexter "all the way to your bones."
In a bizarre way, there is something almost consoling in the fact that in 2004, half a century after Korea, they were still firing 82 millimeter mortars and using "willie peter" white phosphorous shells and still doing what Marines do, humping forward under fire, just as they do in every war. Later in the firefight, Filkins writes, "I felt the bullets whiz past and bounce off the pavements and I knew I was going to die." You read his stuff and think, all wars are the same, only the soldiers' names change.
I've commanded Marine riflemen in combat, but that was my job--what I was commissioned by the Corps to do. There isn't enough money or glory or journalism awards out there to get me to do what Dexter Filkins did as a civilian, as a reporter, in this book of his. He is a great reporter and also a very brave man.
You can't forget his dispatch from an Afghan football stadium where the Taliban is chopping off the hands of prisoners and other Talibs, as he calls them, "weird; like as if they were from another century," lashing out with whips at children pressing closer to see the spectacle. And he reports about a local Afghan, a youngster, in love with a girl one of the warlords wants, and what happens to the boy. His arms and legs are tied to four horses, which are then sent galloping off in four directions, tearing the young lover into four parts.
In Iraq, he writes about bombings, about going into mosques, meeting with decent, brave American diplomats, being menaced by Blackwater "gunmen," whom some prefer to call "thugs," interviewing Dick Cheney's buddy Chalabi, and going on combat patrol with the troops, getting their names and back-stories, reporting on the fighting, reporting on the deaths and woundings of young Americans. And of how one young Marine was killed leading Filkins and his cameraman into a mosque.
In September of this year the Times sent him back to report from Baghdad how things have changed--for the better.
But the paper also sent him back to report that the war goes on, a war he calls "forever," knowing his title is an exaggeration, "more metaphor than literal truth, at least I hope so."
Nothing else is Mr. Filkins' extraordinary book is an exaggeration.
Ellie