The Forever War

The Forever War
Author: Dexter Filkins 2008 342 pp
My rating: 4*
Started March 06 2009, Finished February 09 2009.

Filkins accounts of his time in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to 2007 come in the voice of an eyewitness reporter, almost completely devoid of political and big picture analysis, instead conveying what it’s like to be a soldier or civilian in the midst of the nihilistic maelstrom that the battlegrounds of the GWOT became. While the writing is uniformly powerful, the sections where Filkins is embedded with marines during the crushing of the Falluja insurgency being the standouts for me, I thought the book could have been even better with some changes. I found the early chapters on Afghanistan, a small part of the book, did not really mesh with the Iraq chapters and that the book probably would have been stronger without them. Also the book lacked an overarching narrative or emotional theme and reads as a series of very strong dispatches, a bunch of newspaper features rather than a book written towards a single purpose. The book’s main character is Filkins himself though he remains a cipher; beyond that he is a determined runner, we learn little about him, particularly how the years of extreme carnage and exposure to personal peril affected him. Both of these weaknesses could have been remedied in a single act by recasting the book as a memoir.

This book could serve as a rebuke to anyone who thought the trillion dollars the US has channeled into the GWOT was money well spent. A virtual case study in the cost effectiveness of the US approach to the GWOT is the section that describes how a single insurgent sniper in Falluja pinned down an entire platoon and survived attempts to kill him by air, artillery and tanks. (200-3)

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The insurgents were brilliant at that. They could spot a fine mind or a tender soul wherever it might me, chase it down and kill it dead. The heart of a nation. The precision was astounding. (82) 

Colonel in the Iraqi army in the early stages of the invasion: “I believe Saddam is an American agent”. (89)

You had to accept your ignorance; it was the beginning of whatever wisdom you could hope to muster. (124)

“They really hate us here.” (127)

The Iraqis lied to the Americans, no question. But the worst lies were the ones the Americans told themselves. They believed them because it was convenient -- an because not believe them was too horrifying to think about. (130)

If you multiplied the raid on Abu Shakur a thousand times, it was not difficult to conclude that the war was being lost: however many Iraqis opposed them before the Americans came into the village, dozens and dozens more did by the time they left. The Americans were making enemies faster than they could kill them. (153)

[Filkins asked an Iraqi woman why she risked voting]
“I voted in order to prevent my country from being destroyed by its enemies,” she said. …
What enemies? I asked …
She began to tremble.
“You -- you destroyed our country,” Saadi said. “The Americans, the British. I am sorry to be impolite. But you destroyed our country, and you called it democracy.” (244)

The marines were still using Vietnam era Sea Stallion helicopters which were much slower and less night capable than the Black Hawks used by the army. The army flew at night in safety, the marines during the day and were shot down. (paraphrase from 278)

[Commenting on the quick destruction of a park the US built in Baghdad] Everything was like that in Iraq: anything anyone ever tried turned to black. (293)

Running at night: it was madness. I was courting death, or at least a kidnapping. The capital was a free-for-all; it was a state of nature. There was no law anymore, no courts, nothing -- there was nothing at all. They kidnapped children now, they killed them and dumped them in the street. The kidnapping gangs bought and sold people; it was like its own terrible ecosystem. One of the kidnapping gangs could have driven up in a car and beat me and gagged me and I could have screamed like a crazy person, but I doubt anyone would have done anything. … The kidnappers had more power than anyone. (294)