Later, a pair of soldiers under his command go to prison for pushing two Iraqis into the Tigris River, one of whom drowned. Another American who refused orders to join them later reflects on his tour in Iraq, saying that “the gray area in the middle” is where the grimmer business of war occurs. That dissenter is serving a two-year prison sentence for robbing a Comfort Inn in Ohio after leaving the military.
Filkins wonders, as too few Americans have, about “not only what the Americans were doing to Iraq, but what Iraq was doing to the Americans.” As more brave men and women return home and face formidable challenges adjusting to civilian life, this is a question all Americans are duty bound to consider.
This book is also deeply and brutally personal. In Fallujah, the author and a photographer head to a bombed-out minaret to photograph a dead insurgent. Two Marines precede them to secure the minaret, and one, Lance Corp. William L. Miller, 22, of Pearland, Texas, is shot dead. Filkins tries to make sense of it: “Your photographer needed a corpse for the newspaper, so you and a bunch of Marines went out to get one. Then suddenly it’s there, the warm liquid on your face, the death you’ve always avoided, smiling back at you like it knew all along. Your fault.” Another Marine attempts to console him, saying, “That’s what happens in war.”
As for the situation today, Filkins describes early signs of the Sunni awakening. An Iraq insurgent, Abu Marwa, kills two Syrian members of al-Qaeda in Iraq to avenge the murder of his uncle. He delivers their blood in vials to his widowed aunt. “She drank the blood of the Syrians,” Abu Marwa says. “You see. We were for revenge. She was filled with rage.” These are haunting words amid claims of “victory” in Iraq.
They recall Filkins’ sketch of Kabul in 1998, where, at a public execution, he hears over loudspeakers: “In revenge there is life.”
This maxim is as foreign to American ears as the concept of a forever war.
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