The Costs of War

Watching the SAG Awards the other night (and the Golden Globes before that), I was happy to see (six degrees of) Kevin Bacon take home both awards for his role in the HBO drama Taking Chance. Chance told the heartbreaking story of a marine officer's journey escorting a fallen soldier's body back to his hometown. What struck me watching the film was the reverence and deep respect o shown for the dead as they were prepared for their final trip home. Oh, wait. There's a war on? Soldiers are dying? Where? When? Unless you have family in the military or actually pay attention, you can easily forget that we are overtly at war in two countries and covertly in, well, even I can't keep up. But that's for another post. Right now I'm interested in talking about the experience that is the Iraq War and the soldiers charged with fighting it. Two journalists have written books that "embed" you in the action—and you don't even have to leave the comfort of your recliner.

The first is Dexter Filkins' highly praised New York Times bestseller The Forever War. Filkins, along with the great New York Times staff, brought the Iraq war home in vibrant, often chilling daily reports for the Times. Filkins doesn't talk about whether Iraq was right or wrong. He talks about what it's like to be in battle and gives us intimate portraits of the soldiers, many of them still adolescents, who are doing the fighting while we're reading about Jen and Brad and Angelina in People and watching Jersey Shore.

I bought the book within days of its release and inhaled it over two nights. Horrifying, mesmerizing, The Forever War makes you smell the cordite, the stink of cold fear, the iron tang of spilled blood. Filkins doesn't glamorize or celebrate war, and in fact makes you care about the individuals behind the faceless media sobriquet "troops." Filkins takes you on foot patrols on insurgent-held streets, places you in the middle of a rooftop gun battle, allows you to witness the horror of explosions, the sorrow of loss, the harrowing effects of violence on bodies and psyches. The Forever War is an extraordinary, deeply moving read, not only for its revelations of the wounds this war has inflicted on our soldiers, but also on the correspondents like Filkins who have also become casualties of this senseless war.

Aside: For a different take on war's impact, read the remarkable novel by Filkins' ex-wife, Anna Menendez, The Last War (coming out in paperback in July from Harper Perennial) that illuminates the wounds war leaves on those left behind. Together these two searing accounts offer a connected vision of this terrible event and its aftermath.

The second, one of 2009's best books, is David Finkelstein's New York Times bestseller The Good Soldiers. Finkelstein, a reporter for the Washington Post, was embedded with an infantry batallion who believed they could turn the tide as part of President Bush's "surge." Finkelstein follows this unit over the course of fifteen months, showing how, instead of changing the course of events in Iraq, the events they experienced in Iraq changed them. Infuriating and riveting, his is also an indelible portrait of war that everyone should read.

Luckily, both of these books were recognized for excellence and were national bestsellers. I only wish more of my fellow Americans would read these stories and recognize that we are still deeply embroiled in this conflict—and there is still no end in site.

But just who are the men and women who fight in our name? Stay tuned . . .