The Forever War

9/11, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iraq...if you were younger, you probably don't even know what was happening on the news from 1998-2008, maybe just that TSA makes you take your shoes off and gives everyone headaches at the airport. Filkins is cuttingly, eloquently blunt when he needs to be. Yes he writes for the New York Times but he's not quite as dry. If you don't know a whole lot about the major players or events of the time, he gives enough context and background in each chapter and section to enjoyably read and understand. As a millennial Arab-American, this book accurately shows the war as a humiliating, infuriating, futile, bloody exercise. Above all it humanizes the war. I have given this book to multiple friends, and they all highly recommend it too.

Of the dozens of books written about the war in Iraq, along comes Dexter Filkins with a commentary on Iraq that blows the others away. Non-political and highly personal, Filkins goes after the day-to-day story that, through accumulation, delivers a report about the Iraqi citizenry over the years after the invasion. He captures it with style, wisdom and grace. Americans have largely known the Iraqi war through political slants with a small degree of knowledge of the street. The author adds so much to the discourse. Who knew the depth that kidnapping played or how even going to the bathroom played with both American troops and the Iraqi people, disrupted as it was. This is a book of color and passion. I was particularly moved by a paragraph in which he relates how one would know if an Iraqi was killed by a Sunni or a Shia. The exceptional side of "The Forever War" is not only the presentation of the story but the narrative in which it is told. Filkins has his own boots on the ground, grinding through Baghdad, Falluja and other hot spots. His book is one of remarkable courage under fire and serves to remind us of what our government simply didn't know about Iraq, or about which it didn't care. I highly recommend it.

I happened to be in New York when Mr. Filkins was giving a reading from this book at the Strand so I stopped by to listen to him read as well as answer questions about his years in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is probably one of the few written about the wars which does not get involved in making judgments about whether these wars are anything but "forever." Starting with his witnessing of Taliban "justice" in Kabul in 1998, nearly 20 years after Jimmy Carter decided to start the war in Afghanistan as a trap to lure the Soviets into invading the country and create a Soviet "Vietnam", Filkins shares with us the brutality of that war and the ravages it brought to Afghanistan over a couple of decades. He is able to capture the reasons that the Taliban were reluctantly viewed by the general population as a means to end the bloodshed and blackmail which had seen millions displaced, disfigured and dead over the years. Ironically, Filkins witnessed the amputations and executions in the former soccer stadium the same year that Zbigniew Brzezinski was giving his interview with a French magazine claiming that his advice to Carter to fund the mujahedeen and thus creating "a few stirred up Muslims" was worth the price if it meant the Soviets would end their occupation of his native Poland. Filkins witnessed firsthand just how "stirred up" they became, and how decades later, they are still "stirred up." Filkins does not get into the "who started what and when" trap in this book, but does show that decisions have consequences and "The Forever War" started long before W even thought about running for president. If you are looking for a book that points fingers and lays blame, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for a book that shows the day-to-day reality of war, the deaths, the damage, the decisions, that people have to make in winning or surviving them, this is as good as it gets. Filkins does devote a few pages of placing Iraq today into context with his observations in visiting the cemetery where Gertrude Bell is interred and her role in the creation of the country of Iraq after WWI, as well as his visit to the graveyard and memorial built to the memory of the 30,000 British soldiers who were members of the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force who paid the ultimate price in liberating the country that would become Iraq from the Ottomans during WWI. As I told him after his reading, I am sure that Ernie Pyle is smiling down on him and his courageous return to unvarnished journalism without a political agenda.

After the Soviets left, Kabul became a battleground of competing warlords. At one point it was divided by 41 separate militia checkpoints - each offering looting, plunder, and rape for those traveling through. Further, for two years it was without electricity. Then, in 1996, after four years of street fighting and over 40,000 civilian deaths, Taliban fighters took over. Mullah Omar started the takeover, with 8 men, one rocket launcher, and 13 guns in 1994. They attacked the first checkpoint on the nearby highway, and hung the commanders from the barrels of tanks before proceeding to Kabul and Kandahar. Readers of "The Forever War" find it easy to understand the Taliban's appeal after learning its origin. Fighting in Afghanistan had gone on 23 years prior to the U.S. attacks. War had become a job, fighters often switched sides, and battles were often decided by flipping gangs of soldiers - the fighting began when the bargaining stopped. American B-52s terrified Taliban soldiers, and helped persuade many to switch sides. At that point most of the fighting had become desultory - foreigners (Al Qaeda and Americans) were the most motivated. Readers at this point can easily surmise why the Taliban have re-surged so strongly - they never were defeated in the first place. Filkins then switches locale to Iraq and reports his first-hand encounter of Iraqis hating Americans soon after the war started; later he covers those who were pleased. His main point, however, is that Iraq was a con game - what they told us was usually nowhere near what they told each other, often within earshot of Americans. One "highlight" was the "Blond Auction" conducted by a group of innovative Americans. An attractive blond female from the unit was displayed atop a vehicle in the middle of town, and the locals encouraged to bid for her. Meanwhile, soldiers quickly searched homes and removed large quantities of weapons - unimpeded by the men who were at the auction. Eventually the auction was shut down ("bids were too low") and the men left. This was pulled off at least three times before higher-ups decided it was "politically incorrect" and banned the practice. On a more serious note, Filkins also relates how a stable situation had quickly deteriorated after Al Sadr gave the word to his forces. It doesn't take much imagination to realize this could happen again.

Made In Hero: The War for Soap Dexter Filkins has written THE FOREVER WAR to tell us about Iraq. Afghanistan is also in there, along with countless other wars not directly visible, though just as bizarre and just as real. More improbable than the wars themselves is what an incredibly beautiful book can be written about their depressing situations. Or put another way, what a beautiful world it would be if everyone could write like this, but without the wars. Filkins offers all the elements of great literature: the sublime, the ridiculous, and the Zen. On the surface, Dexter Filkins has chronicled his experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq. But aside from his unfiltered impressions of those distant worlds, THE FOREVER WAR really comes down to the personal quest that is likely to greet anyone trying to come home from a war. Reaching the final chapter of THE FOREVER WAR, I was sad. I hadn't wanted the journey to end, and felt a little guilty about that, considering the suffering between the pages. Still, for all the grief and sorrow, THE FOREVER WAR feels like a story about survivors. The improbability remains. Why the beautiful book about such a doomed affair as THE FOREVER WAR? And what is the Forever War, exactly? Possibly a riddle, or chronicle, or quest? Maybe the definition doesn't matter. Aristotle formulated that writing is catharsis. I wonder if it's an addiction, a kind of cure. Some believe it's an act of redemption. Better yet, Gabriel Garcia Marquez calls writing "a state of grace." Whatever else it is, I hope THE FOREVER WAR is that.

This will, I think, become the classic book of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. It is non-political and consists of multiple snapshots rangng over many years, not always in chronological sequence. These are Filkins's carefully selected memories of his life as a N.Y. Times reporter on the front lines, as well as his experiences on 9/11 at ground zero. He makes no effort to "explain" the turmoil of the Middle East, but one puts the book down with a new understanding of some of the powerful and destructive forces at play. He is respectful of the U.S. military and his sketches of the bravery of the Americans fighting against bad odds, most of them only teenagers, is very moving. Politics don't even intrude in the brief chapter on Ahmad Chalabi, it is rather a sketch on the personality of this complex and slippery player in the power struggles of the time. I recommend this book as a companion to the excellent "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" which documents the appaling stupidity of U.S. policy in Iraq flowing down from the top. The "Forever War" balances that with the street smarts courage of our military. Still, Filkins would, I am sure, agree that imposing "democracy" by military force guarantees a forever war. This is a powerful book, well and clearly written, by an experienced and compassionate observer.