Generation Kill: Five Great Books Written About Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan
The Great Game, historian Peter Hopkirk’s account of Russia and Great Britain’s nineteenth-century battle for Central Asia, reads like an argument as to why one should leave Afghanistan to its own devices. Whether by freezing in mountain passes, dying at the hands of tribal warlords or breaking against the walls of desert fortresses, the British and Russian armies spend most of their campaigns coming to grips with an ineluctable reality: regardless of which century you’re living in, invading Central Asian countries is really, really, really hard.
Since 2001, the United States has expended billions of dollars and thousands of lives proving that it’s just as difficult to subdue Kabul in the twenty-first century as it was in the nineteenth. By turns horrifying, engrossing and majestic, America’s sojourns in Iraq and Afghanistan have shaped this nation’s identity for the past decade and produced a body of literature as jaw-dropping and varied as the campaigns themselves.
1. Generation Kill, Evan Wright
Generation Kill, journalist Evan Wright’s firsthand account of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, came about thanks to a bit of cosmic serendipity. A magazine journalist with a history of substance abuse and a résumé that included stints at Hustler and Rolling Stone, Wright proved a spiritual match for the combat marines with whom he embedded. Riding the tip of the American invasion, Wright produced an account that marvels at the destruction, courage and (occasionally) incompetence of America’s invading forces.
Later adapted into an HBO miniseries, Generation Kill allows uncomfortable questions to form at its center: What does it mean to root for these brave, intelligent young men as they do combat with some of the most impoverished people on earth? What does it mean not to?
2. War, Sebastian Junger
Several of War’s reviewers marveled that Sebastian Junger had managed to write an apolitical account of America’s activities in Afghanistan. Indeed, Junger, best known as the author of The Perfect Storm, portrays war as a natural force akin to a typhoon, and the men and women involved in it as working stiffs, trying to ride it out with only the benefit of courage, gumption and luck.
In researching the book, Junger embedded for a year with soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. His account relates the stress of coming under daily fire, as well as the boredom, frustration and camaraderie bred by protracted isolation.
This material also served as the basis for the documentary Restrepo, which Junger co-directed with British photojournalist Tim Hetherington.
3. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Thomas E. Ricks
Thomas E. Ricks lays bare his intentions within Fiasco’s first page, stating “the U.S.-led invasion [of Iraq] was launched recklessly, with a flawed plan for war and a worse approach to occupation.” After traversing Ricks’s exhaustive catalogue of willfully ignored intelligence, ideological bullheadedness and simple bungling, it’s hard to disagree.