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niakantorka 's review for:
3,5 stars, rounded down to 3.
Admittedly, this is a low rating for a book that could hold my attention pretty well while reading it and how I’m still thinking about it afterwards. There is a reasons for this:
Compared to other literature about the horrors of war, this one was an eyewitness report. The author went into Iraq with those Recon Marine Battalions and spent two months together with them, living through everything they did, except the killing parts. The author tried to hold back judgment by sticking to the core work of a good reporter (the Egon Erwin Kisch definition of one): by reporting what he saw, what the Marines were thinking and by adorning all that with quotes about how each individual man got into the Marine corps and where he was from. So this is a report that turned into a book. The author slips at times, because he was - understandably- horrified to be shot or bombed at. His fear broke the journalist’s mask at times and those were actually the best parts of the book (to me).
If you read Nothing New on the Western Front or Slaughterhouse Five or any other fictional book on war, the reader needs to make up their own mind about the gruesome world presented. In those fictional worlds we see the story unfold as someone who stands outside, who only tries to comprehend its horrors. Here it’s different, you are right in the middle of things together with the author.
But, I’m not even sure if this was the author’s intention (showing the horrors of war). Maybe it was more a laudatory book about the US army’s Marines, or - worse - a vindication of the US waging war on other countries’ soil with a pretext of ‘killing the bad guy’ while actually being there for oil (Iraq) or to redo their own mistakes (Afghanistan, look up who funded the Mujahideen for decades to piss off the Russians if you think I’m exaggerating).
Well, I really couldn’t tell from reading what was the intention of this book, except for it to be a report about a war. Maybe that is enough intention for you, but it was unsatisfactory to me.
Another thing that really rubbed me the wrong way, was the incompetence shown. Of course that’s not the books fault, but I found it mind-boggling. Maybe every army unit has to deal with as many idiots in their chain-of-command, like this one did (I hope not btw), but it made me sick to my stomach to read about Marines, who didn’t know their own rules or acted against all logic and reason. I was asking myself why these guys didn’t have proper attire or machine gun oil, when at the same time bombs worth so much money were rained down on palm trees because someone thought to have seen something suspicious. In the end all those guys weren’t reprimanded for real, no, they were promoted.
I read this book to get more insights into the story shown in the tv mini series, but that didn’t happen. The author mostly hid himself throughout the book, except for the epilogue and some of the most terrifying moments—and even those rare glimpses of him didn’t give me any clue about his opinion on the whole thing.
All in all it wasn’t the book I thought it would be (which is my own fault for not reading any reviews not to spoil myself beforehand). It wasn’t a glorifying or a condemning book about a war, it was mostly a report, and that was disappointing to me.
Admittedly, this is a low rating for a book that could hold my attention pretty well while reading it and how I’m still thinking about it afterwards. There is a reasons for this:
Compared to other literature about the horrors of war, this one was an eyewitness report. The author went into Iraq with those Recon Marine Battalions and spent two months together with them, living through everything they did, except the killing parts. The author tried to hold back judgment by sticking to the core work of a good reporter (the Egon Erwin Kisch definition of one): by reporting what he saw, what the Marines were thinking and by adorning all that with quotes about how each individual man got into the Marine corps and where he was from. So this is a report that turned into a book. The author slips at times, because he was - understandably- horrified to be shot or bombed at. His fear broke the journalist’s mask at times and those were actually the best parts of the book (to me).
If you read Nothing New on the Western Front or Slaughterhouse Five or any other fictional book on war, the reader needs to make up their own mind about the gruesome world presented. In those fictional worlds we see the story unfold as someone who stands outside, who only tries to comprehend its horrors. Here it’s different, you are right in the middle of things together with the author.
But, I’m not even sure if this was the author’s intention (showing the horrors of war). Maybe it was more a laudatory book about the US army’s Marines, or - worse - a vindication of the US waging war on other countries’ soil with a pretext of ‘killing the bad guy’ while actually being there for oil (Iraq) or to redo their own mistakes (Afghanistan, look up who funded the Mujahideen for decades to piss off the Russians if you think I’m exaggerating).
Well, I really couldn’t tell from reading what was the intention of this book, except for it to be a report about a war. Maybe that is enough intention for you, but it was unsatisfactory to me.
Another thing that really rubbed me the wrong way, was the incompetence shown. Of course that’s not the books fault, but I found it mind-boggling. Maybe every army unit has to deal with as many idiots in their chain-of-command, like this one did (I hope not btw), but it made me sick to my stomach to read about Marines, who didn’t know their own rules or acted against all logic and reason. I was asking myself why these guys didn’t have proper attire or machine gun oil, when at the same time bombs worth so much money were rained down on palm trees because someone thought to have seen something suspicious. In the end all those guys weren’t reprimanded for real, no, they were promoted.
I read this book to get more insights into the story shown in the tv mini series, but that didn’t happen. The author mostly hid himself throughout the book, except for the epilogue and some of the most terrifying moments—and even those rare glimpses of him didn’t give me any clue about his opinion on the whole thing.
All in all it wasn’t the book I thought it would be (which is my own fault for not reading any reviews not to spoil myself beforehand). It wasn’t a glorifying or a condemning book about a war, it was mostly a report, and that was disappointing to me.