THE FIGHTERS: AMERICANS IN COMBAT IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ
BY C.J. CHIVERS
This is the most vivid, emotionally riveting and moving, sobering and inspiring and, in many ways, maddening book on war I’ve ever read.
And I almost stopped reading it on Page 121.
I had had enough; enough depiction of pain. Of fruitless deaths. Of misguided missions. I put the book in a box with other books to be delivered as giveaways to the Public Library.
Then I read a Sunday New York Times review of the book. It made me stop. It described stories I hadn’t come to. Stories of soldiers recovering from massive, life-changing wounds. Stories of soldiers who didn’t recover. Stories of their families. Stories of combat so viscerally described I felt I was in the Humvee or in the airplane. Descriptions of a bullet rupturing a face, cheek to jowl. Descriptions of unsparing prose. Short sentences, saying more than a long sentence ever could.
So I went back to the book. I finished it today. I don’t think I’ve reached any conclusions that would surprise anyone.
War is hell.
Never go into a war unless we’re certain it’s the only path forward.
Never go into a war without a clearly defined end-point.
Never go into a war without realistically assessing the chance for peace to be restored and a better outcome achieved.
Never go into a war without understanding the history of the place.
We didn’t apply these beliefs in Afghanistan or Iraq.
None of this is to say that we didn’t need to take action against Al Qaeda and ISIS which emerged from the forces we unleashed by our ill-conceived attack on Iraq. But it should have been surgical. In view of the history of these countries, it was the height of arrogance to think we could win the loyalty of the Afghani and Iraqi citizens, especially when we were killing their families and children, as is so painfully documented in Chivers’ book.
So many lives wasted, so much turmoil in the Middle East still flowing from this ill-conceived and badly executed undertaking.
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