Brandon Friedman, The War I always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War (2007) — a Book Review

13 January 2016

My excuse for writing this probably redundant review

The mindlessness of some of the negative reviews of Brandon Friedman’s The War I always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War (2007) irritated me.

Their vacuity is arguably representative of the United States public’s unthinking support for perennial, strategically misguided warmongering:

Author writes as if he is on drugs. Reminds me of the deteriorated attitude toward the end Vietnam war that was mostly composed of draftees. I don't think this is representative of current service members. I served in the US Navy and was part of naval combat actions including raids on North Vietnam.

Not a particularly well written book. The author had a lot of negative experiences in war. He tells his tale from a liberal, anti-war point of view. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's not a balanced account.

A book written from the heart or to sell copies? Not sure how believable Brandon Friedman is. A well written book that just does not pass the smell test.

Having spent 8 years in the 101st specifically 3rd BDE (Rakkasans) I found this book wanting of a little added imagination. Seems like this guy just tried to jump on the write a book band wagon as fast as I can so I can get paid. Anyway, probally doesnt help to have Wesley Clark giving you props for your book.

The above reviewers missed the point and apparently everything that led up to it

The War I always Wanted concludes this way:

Killing is wrong, war is miserable. I miss being a soldier. I cannot reconcile these things.

O’Brien explained it best to me over the phone about a year after we got back from Iraq.

I asked him if he was still bitter about the whole ordeal.

He said of course he was. And then, in his Boston accent, he added, “Yeah, it was miserable . . . ya know . . . prob’ly the wust period of my life. I wouldn’t do that shit again in a million yea’s.” I agreed.

Then he paused. “But ya know . . . we did have a pretty good time, didn’t we?”

A lot of people can’t understand a contradiction like that. But we can. We are enlightened.

Extracts

Here demonstrating a spectrum from innocence to legitimately self-defensive brutality:

(1) The occupiers’ clumsy innocence

They were bloody footprints. . . . I could see every single toe.

I followed them to their source. He was an Iraqi civilian and he was lying on his back, nearly naked. He wasn’t moving, and there was blood everywhere.

Sergeant Salido was bent over the man trying to insert an IV into his right arm, in a last desperate attempt to replenish his limp body with fluid. At the same time, Sergeant Iosefo was performing CPR.

I could see desperation beginning to work its way into Salido’s movements.

Salido knew that no one could help him. We were all the same there — everyone nearly equally ignorant in how to treat traumatic injuries.

A black cloud of flies then descended on the body. Is was as though they had been courteous enough to allow the Americans some time to save the man before diving in to feast on the fresh blood.

Save the guy?, they buzzed. Are you kidding? Couldn’t you tell ten minutes ago he was going to die by the way his body temperature dropped as soon as he hit the ground? By the way his eyes rolled back in his head? This is Baghdad, sheltered Americans. Get used to it.

(2) Inadvertent “mishaps” of military occupation

Then he said to me in broken English, “Please take care of our son. We love him very much.”

I still hear those words sometimes. . . . He had so much faith in us, as Americans, that he was willing to give us his son [as a translator].

Long after I was done with war, I got an email telling me that American soldiers had shot him behind the wheel of his car when he hadn’t stopped at a checkpoint in time. . . . [T]he three bullets that struck him had permanently mangled his arm. And even though they’d shot Mohamed’s father by mistake, the military refused to provide or pay for his medical care.

I often wonder what he thinks of us now.

(3) Survival of the randomly deadliest

My vision quickly became telescopic as the adrenaline forced me to focus on nothing but the back windshield of the car in front of us. All I could see was smoke, flying glass, and red tracers coming from my M4 and Lawrence’s machine gun.

At that moment, with death swirling around me, I felt like I couldn’t be killed . . . . Each time I pulled the trigger of the weapon that I’d slept with for nearly two years, it felt like it had become an extension of my body — as if I were willing those in the Passat to die. And I couldn’t pull the trigger fast enough.

The first one out of the car, the RPG [rocket propelled grenade] gunner, was sitting cross-legged in the street behind the Passat.

Through labored breathing, Mr. RPG said something softly to Waseem. Waseem stood back up.

“What he say?” I asked.

“He says ‘Take us to the hospital.’”

I shook my head and looked down at the guy. He looked up, his eyes meeting mine for the first time. “Go fuck yourself,” I said.

I looked at Collins and thought I could feel what he was thinking as he surveyed the scene of crumpled bodies before him. He must have been satisfied — after two years, our platoon — his platoon — had finally achieved a state of carnage.

Regarding an easily perceived truth

So obvious, based even on purely personal self-awareness, that one wonders how people miss it:

I ended up sitting with Lieutenant Colonel Ahuja in a humvee, where we discussed the merits of invading versus not invading . . . .

“You know, Lieutenant Friedman, everybody keeps talking about how the Iraqis are gonna surrender, and how this is just gonna be a walk in the park. But I’m not so sure.

People don’t like being bombed, and they don’t like tanks in their streets — even if they do live under a dictator. That’s just reality. I think there’s always gonna be that guy who’s out to fight for his country no matter what. He doesn’t care about the politics. He just knows that we’re invading his country. And he knows he’s gonna do everthing in his power to stop us.”

This book quietly connects a handful of glimpses

The opposite of sensational, Brandon Friedman’s mostly combat-peripheral stories comprise an arguably tragic insight into ethical culpability.

Contrary to Amazon’s less insightful reviewers, The War I always Wanted is an understated, unpretentious masterwork.

Recommended — but only to those cognizant of the inescapability of moral ambivalence

Once committed to combat — survival, not sense, drives us. Deadly conflict does not support wisdom. War should (therefore) be a self-defensive last resort.

Our Military Industrial Complex era, however, has prioritized it in the reverse. Friedman senses this tragedy:

I felt like we had been taken advantage of. We were professionals sent on a wild goose chase using a half-baked plan for political reasons.

Lying there restlessly, I was reminded of a Schwarzenegger line in one of his movies — when, after being used and lied to, his muscle-bound character had expressed perfectly what was now on my mind:

My men are not expendable. And I don’t do this kind of work.

PeteFree.com

Brandon Friedman, The War I always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War (2007) — a Book Review