The Forever War

An astonishingly human-level account of the War on Terror that makes you feel it in your gut
Dexter Filkins wasn't there from the beginning, exactly, but for a Western journalist, he was definitely one of the first. "There" meaning the front lines of what came to be called the War on Terror and its arenas of a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and the post-invasion Iraq. Filkins, a New York Times correspondent, chronicles his time — running from about 1998 to 2007 or so — in both countries in The Forever War, constructing beautiful, immersive vignettes that recall Michael Herr's great Vietnam book Dispatches. Nothing can touch the manic energy of Dispatches, those little vignettes snowballing and cascading into an orgy of despair and violence, but The Forever War is one of the most human accounts of war and its victims that I have ever read.

Here's the best way I can think to illustrate this: whereas any other Western writer might see a battle between Afghan warlords and the Taliban as a fight between "warring tribal factions" waged by "a young Taliban fighter," Filkins sees people. He talks to them, shares their names, sees past the cultural divides. He can write about talking to a powerful Afghan warlord and realizing that the man was a hick — a hick, he actually uses the word — and uneducated, and how the warlord realized that Filkins realized that, and the way the conversation shifted as a result. It’s the way you might recount to a friend the interaction you had with someone at the mall. Somehow, Filkins always connects on a very human level. It's startling.

That said, Filkins doesn't hesitate to condemn or cast judgment. Certainly he’s more of a moral relativist than anyone in the American government, but you'd be surprised by the hard lines he’s willing to draw. He sees evil. Not on a cultural or political level but, again, on a human level. And we can sense from Filkins' experienced, weathered voice that this is a man who has seen pain and hard times, this is a voice that is qualified, that we can trust.

Filkins puts himself into his story. He talks about daily life in Baghdad, and its rapid disappearance after L. Paul Bremer's disastrous decisions as head of the Coalition Provision Authority. He talks about his friendships with both American military leaders on the ground and the leaders of both the Iraqi government and resistance. He even has nice things to say about Ahmad Chalabi, praising his wit, intelligence and conversation skills, all the while investigating and questioning his relationship with Iran. (Filkins even visits Tehran with the former INC leader.)

There are plenty of Iraq books that offer a damning, expansive view on all of this occupation's flaws, but there are few that make you feel it in your gut. That share the utter horrors of war, the way it has punished the normal people in Kabul or Tikrit. Filkins doesn't have answers. But he can explain why war is cultural in Afghanistan (Afghans were shocked when the US military and then Al Qaeda began fighting there; they were trying to kill each other, whereas for Afghans, war is closer to a very serious game of pickup basketball. Victory and defeat are not measured by death, but in honor.). He can explain the insane lives that Iraqi interpreters must live. He can tell us about the heartbreaking death of an American soldier. He can explain this forever war, and the horrific costs it has ravaged. For that, we owe him our thanks.