Customer Reviews

The Forever War

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Dexter Filkin's book the Forever War is a collection of short first-person war stories about his experiences as a NY Times correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan. The short pieces are informative and lucid descriptions of what he saw and how he felt about it at the time. FW reminds me of a book of short takes Ernest Hemingway wrote about the Spanish Civil War; short, insightful and clear-minded all written in a minimalist form. The stories make good points while at no time being political, partisan, or propaganda for any side. Filkins has unique point of view, but it isn't a political one. He writes as a human observer of other humans who do good, bad, evil, stupid, smart, heroic and noble things for and to each other. Often the same people, too, just on different days.

Don't read FW if you are looking for a comprehensive view of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars though. FW isn't that kind of book. If you want a narrative of military and political operations in Iraq and Afghanistan read Thomas Ricks' Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq or Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

I recommend this book but only with the warning that a typical war narrative as we've come to understand the genre isn't what you're going to get here. I still think it's worth the read though.

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.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have generated a stream of excellent reporting, commentary, and criticism. I believe that none of it matches The Forever War for reportorial excellence. Though his feelings are clear, Filkins maintains the reporter's distance and neutrality without compromising an intense empathy for those he encountered. His work stimulated both my wonder and my imagination. By never setting aside his own fears, he put me in the midst of the battles he described. Though we did not meet, I spent time in some of the places Filkins describes and knew some of the same people. There is a level of immediacy in Filkins' writing, honesty in his reporters' eye, and objective and subjective truth in his work that will stand long after some of those other excellent books have been forgotten.

With the presidential election and the meltdown of Wall Street having pushed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq off the front page, Dexter Filkins's book is a disturbing reminder that America still has 161,000 troops occupying those two countries (with calls for more). We've already spent $872 billion on the two wars, have lost more than 4,100 troops, and continue to spend over $12 billion a month to sustain the two efforts. No one can predict the outcome. According to the Pentagon, "the security, political and economic trends in Iraq continue to be positive, however, they remain fragile, reversible and uneven." In Afghanistan things seem to be getting worse.

Filkins scribbled 561 notebooks full of anecdotes, interviews, conversations and firsthand experiences during nine years in the Middle East and South Asia. He first went to Afghanistan in 1998 as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He reported on the war there for more than two years, until he was arrested and expelled by the Taliban in 2000. He returned in 2002 for much of that year. Part I of his new book (pp. 3-67) cover that time and place -- the rise of dozens of competing war lords after the humiliation of the Soviet Union, the Taliban that restored theocratic order, the Northern Alliance that battled the Taliban, and then the American bombs that rained down after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In March 2003 Filkins went to Iraq at the beginning of the American invasion, reporting for the New York Times from their Baghad bureau. Part II (pp. 69-342) of The Forever War collects his eyewitness accounts. By now, much of his book is old history -- the looting right after the invasion, the anarchy, the advent of IEDs used by over 100 different insurgent groups, the gross incompetence of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the writing of the constitution, Iraq's first elections, and the disinformation by the American military (Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman). When Filkins left after three and a half years, he believed that "the nation's social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock." Things got worse after he left in August 2006, which is where The Forever War ends.

This book requires a significant footnote. In the fall of 2008 Filkins returned to Iraq. He was shocked by the progress. In his article for the NYT called "Back in Iraq, Jarred By the Calm" (September 20, 2008), he writes that "to return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis? [...] In a personal email, Filkins says that he's not ready to use words like "success" or "victory." "There has been too much blood for that."

Shahin

Contrary to your impression the book is really a snapshot of how poorly the US understood Iraq (and all the middle east) and the consequences of that lack of understanding. The horror we unleashed. It's interesting that he makes no overtly political statements at all -it's just a litany of bodies, family, communities, lives blown apart. How the US template of "democracy" (whatever that means) isn't a one size fits all kinda thing. The lives blown apart are overwhelmingly Iraqi but Filkins allows the killed and maimed in the US to speak as well.

I have been impressed by Filkins, both his on screen and written pieces -
he seems to be struggling to restrain himself, almost jittery from the horror he witnesses every day but that his viewers/readers haven't. And this goes to the point of the argument you and I have been having for years, that good journalism, for me, doesn't tell the viewer/reader what to think but just presents the facts as a sort of literal snapshot and leaves him or her to draw their own conclusions. You always want journalists to challenge official pronouncements, to refute present statements with previous ones. But I think that only causes the official to refuse subsequent interviews and insults the intelligence of the viewer. Yes, it's easy to insult the average American's intelligence, the vacuum that is their knowledge of world history, but doing so only makes them more intransigent. More likely to hew to some red state/blue state idea of patriotism, my country right or wrong,to close their ears and eyes to the reality of what their leaders are doing in their name. Filkins's book is much more a soundless walk through the no longer functioning trauma wards of Iraq, dead and broken bodies everywhere. The thing speaks for itself.

Only in his epilogue does he allow himself to show any emotion and then only obliquely. "...For me, the war sort of flattened things out...so many bombs had gone off so many times that they no longer shocked or even roused;...your dreams come alive, though...your dreams explode...My friend...told me that he couldn't have a conversation about Iraq with anyone who hadn't been there. I told him I couldn't have a conversation with anyone who hadn't been there about anything at all."

Extraordinary.

Filkins is unquestionably a brave man, and does a great job of recapping his field reporting in two long and ugly wars--Afghanistan and Iraq. But given all the gushing reviews of this book, I frankly expected more.

While 'The Forever War' is plenty gritty and atmospheric, it never truly approaches the level of artistry found in other, better-known masterpieces of the genre. Comparisons to classics of fiction (Hemingway) or non-fiction (Kapuscinski or Herr) are seriously overblown. Filkins does us all a huge favor by making these two messy conflicts tangible to millions of people who perhaps only know them through TV or YouTube. But his insights into the pysches of the men who are doing the fighting feel shallow, newspapery, and and his language isn't particularly transporting. For readers who have been monitoring the progress of these wars closely, or for those familiar with the broader sampling of war literature, 'The Forever War' will be informative but not revelatory. Its greatest strength lies in the author's detailed reporting. And that, strangely, also turns out to be its biggest weakness: it reads like a typical war correspondent's book--a tad disjointed, a bit too familiar, and sometimes self-absorbed.