Forever

I just finished The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, a NY Times reporter who has spent more time in Afghanistan and Iraq than anyone probably should. The book is brutally violent and brutally honest and attempts to convey the terrific complexities of ever shifting alliances. It doesn't sentimentalize the soldiers nor their leaders and speaks not at all of the feckless politicians who sent them there.

The story about Lance Corporal William Miller is heartbreaking. Just doing his job, helping two reporters do theirs. 22 years old, shot dead walking up stairs a million miles from Pearland, Texas. Just where we sent him, doing what we asked him to do.

It is amazing how little we really know and understand about what is going on there. John McCain ain't the only one. Shiite vs. Sunni is the least of it. Iraqis being paid by the American not to fight, killing each other for the age old reasons---power, money, religion, oil, revenge, and all of the above. Kidnapping children and torturing fellow Iraqis and blowing up American kids we send there to kill them.

Interesting to note that today's Times has an article by Dexter about how things have changed for the better at least in some parts of the country and by some measures.

Thankfully, there are still some reporters out there, outside the Green Zone, in the real Iraq who are willing to live among that misery to tell us what is happening, at a cost to themselves.