The Forever War

The focus of our election over the next few weeks looks as if it will be entirely focused on our financial crisis rather than the War. However, since the war has cost $500 billion to date (August 2008) the two cannot be separated. There is also the question on how the war is being fought, for what, and the number of dead which vary wildly but appear to be around 950,000. When you finish this book you will understand why we are in such a quagmire. The book left me very angry. I wish that every politician who voted for the war had been made to spend time in the war zone and share what our soldiers and the Iraqis have gone through.

I will be the first to say that this is not the type of book I would generally read much less buy. When I started reading it a few days ago, I could not put it down. Once you are a third of the way through the book you will fully understand why the author chose the title that he did, and that all by itself is depressing. In fact this realization made me feel that I had been hit in the chest by a very large object. I don’t want to give away anything in the book except to say that the Iraqis must think that they are living through Dante’s Inferno. One wonders who is better off, the dead or the living and were the Iraqis better off before the Americans arrived? What is the price of democracy, is it possible for an occupier to impose democracy on another, and if so is this democracy?

My biggest surprise reading the book was not the lies we were told about going into Iraq but simply what we were not told. Who knew the numbers of different nationalities involved in the war, particularly the Pakistanis and the Uyghur’s’ from Western China. The book opens with the seize of Falluja in November 2004. Dexter Filkins had gone in with the troops and wrote what he saw from his side of the invasion. This chapter is the best piece of war reporting that I have read in a very long time. You could smell the fear and sweat from the soldiers and the reporter. My heart was in my mouth for that entire first chapter.
Picture U.S.1st Calvary Divison


Also read Jo Wildings report of the same event from the other side. Click on the articles tab and then go to April 11th Falluja. http://www.jowilding.net/archiveframeset.html

Now I have finished the book I will add one more comment. Massoud is not who you thought he was, Chalobi was a chameleon and as to Paul Bremmer less said the better.In fact the only person who appears to be what he says is Muqfada Sadir. So while he may be the villian of the piece, I am left wondering about all the other folks on the Iraqi stage, how many of those are equal vilians too?

Dexter Filkins went into areas in Iraq and Afghanistan that most would not. He talked to ordinary Iraqis and Afghans about their life and what they thought of the invaders. He had high level access to folks on both sides of the war which is what makes this book so invaluable. Read this book and you will understand why the war has gone on forever, why it has cost so much in human lives and money, and what Iraqis’ really think about us.


If you want to understand the U.S. role in Central Asia read Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos, a very aptly named book. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/10/descent_into_chaos_ahmed_rashid_on

At the end of a four year history of the war I felt that the shifting sands of Iraq had slipped through our fingers and what we were left with was a $550 billion dollar debt and counting. So how do the Iraqis feel? If Iraqis cannot go outside without the fear of being killed what kind of freedom do them have? Please read this book. In addition for your teanager is Walter Dean Myers' excellent book Sunrise Over Fallauh http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2008/09/29/2_YA_BOOK_REVIEW.ART_ART_09-29-08_D2_OVBEJLV.html?type=rss&cat=&sid=101

To keep up to date with what is happening in these areas of the world visit the New York Times site of Dexter's Filkins reporting.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/dexter_filkins/index.html?inline=nyt-per

The White Tiger

Update: This book is now on the short list of six for the 2008 Booker Prize. In celebration I bought a second copy.

by Aravind Adiga

What a wonderful read! The story is written as a letter to the Premier of China who will be coming to visit China. This sets the stage for a very funny novel indeed, as the writer compares how these two tigers match up in their new found wealth. A particularly funny line was when, addressing the Premier, the writer says “I gather you yellow skinned men, despite your triumphs in sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, still don’t have democracy. We Indians…may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy. If I were making a country, I’d get the sewage pipes first, then the democracy.”

In 276 pages I felt that I had lived a life time with the driver Balram Halwai the narrator of the story alias The White Tiger. The book was both extremely funny and at the same time a bitter critic on how the rich and the poor live in India today. It is one of the few books that I wanted to reread immediately. The need to read it again was because I had been so swept up in the tale that I wanted to make sure that I had not over looked some of the social issues that come to play in the tale. As I put the book down to go to sleep I suddenly realized that although Balram had murdered his employee he was in some ways better than him. For when his employer’s wife did a hit and run they had tried to put the blame on him, their driver. Later in the story, when one of Balram’s (now Ashok Sharma) driver’s runs over a child and kills him, Balram immediately goes to the scene of the accident and takes responsibility. Of course, I realize that he does this because he has paid off the Assistant Commissioner to ensure that nothing gets in the way of his success; lessons that he had learned well from his former employer. And so in the dog eat dog world of India, injustices abound, and everything is possible if you grease the wheels of those in charge.

This book is now on the Man Booker Dozen List. Visit the site at
http://www.themanbookerprize.com/>

Dreaming Up America

by Russell Banks

If ever there was a timely book to read this is it for it is the Story of America and we came to where we are today. The first half of the book argues that the mythology portrayed by American movies does us a disservice for the fantasy these movies project do not match reality. Our nation was founded for materialistic gain based on the backs of “Others” to produce the American Dream. Others are anyone not Christain and white for there were three distinct groups who populated America. Thus West Africans who arrived here in droves as slaved having never been referred to as immigrants. were originally black slaves rather than black immigrants and yet immigrants they were. So starting with the march across the contintent where we eliminated the American Indian was the beginning of our feeling that we were following a Manifest Destiny which led to Nationalism which led to the invastion of Iraq and on and on.

I have a feeling that many people will take offence at what he says for we do not cope well when people disagree with our general ideas of what makes an American.

For information on Russell Banks and a listing of his books and other writings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Banks