Review: ‘The Forever War’ - Military Books - Military Times

Review: ‘The Forever War’

After three years as a war reporter in Iraq, Dexter Filkins reconnected with soldiers he had gotten to know, or the relatives of those he had seen die.

At the end of “The Forever War,” he writes, “The soldiers and their wives and the moms and the dads: they wanted to talk. Maybe nobody else did, but they did.”

Filkins found an “underground conversation about Iraq and Afghanistan. Underground and underclass. The rest of the country didn’t care much.”

It’s hard not to care after reading Filkins’ stunning first-person account culled from 561 notebooks he filled in nine years of reporting from the Middle East.

His perspective is unique. Until he was arrested and expelled by the Taliban in 2000, Filkins covered its reign of terror in Afghanistan for the “Los Angeles Times.”

From 2003 to 2006, his combat reports from Iraq for “The New York Times” won several awards.

Risking his own life, he specializes in misery, chaos and confusion, yet without losing empathy for soldiers and civilians.

His book offers little political analysis or sweeping judgments. The war’s proponents and opponents can find ammunition here for their arguments, but only by reading selectively.

Mostly, Filkins describes the war in Iraq from the ground up, what it felt like and how much is unknowable, despite what officials may say.

He calls Iraq “an elaborate con game; the Iraqis moving and rearranging the shells, the Americans trying to guess which one hid the stone.”

Of the Marines of Bravo Company, he writes, “There wasn’t any point in sentimentalizing the kids; they were trained killers, after all. They had faith, they did what they were told and they killed people. Sometimes I wished they asked more questions. (But) out there in Fallujah, in the streets, I was happy they were in front of me.”

Filkins is full of questions. He wonders “not only what the Americans were doing to Iraq, but what Iraq was doing to the Americans.”

He also writes, “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 — and because not to believe them was too horrifying to think about.”

If “The Forever War” were fiction, it would be a fractured narrative, short stories more than a novel. But it’s that kind of war.