The Forever War

From Barnes & Noble

"Reporting of the highest quality imaginable" is how David Halberstam described the journalism of George Polk Award–winning journalist Dexter Filkins. This New York Times foreign correspondent isn't just a superb writer; he's been there: with the Taliban in Afghanistan; in Lower Manhattan on September 11th; in Baghdad when Saddam's statue came down; and under fire in Fallujah. Filkin's narrative doesn't attempt to pin down a foreign policy or wax philosophical; he sees and listens with the alertness that the sound of nearby gunfire gives you.

Bing West

The Forever War is a splendid volume of short nonfiction pieces about two dozen incidents of war in Iraq and Afghanistan between 1998 and 2006. Dexter Filkins previously covered several of these events in news articles for the New York Times, where he is a correspondent. He has now reworked his material, sculpting each story so that it shines as a work of literature, illuminating the human cost of war…Filkins's singular skill in this book rests in showing how war shatters lives and how some people manage to survive amid fear, violence, intrigue and chaos. He does not describe the intricacies of combat or strategy; his book is not a history of the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Instead, he shows us the oleaginous manipulations of men like Chalabi, who served for a year as Iraq's deputy prime minister; the Dark Ages cruelty of Taliban warlords; the shrink-wrapped self-importance of such high-level U.S. officials as Ambassador Paul Bremer; and the instinctive, unassuming valor of grunts like Lance Cpl. Miller. These stories are accurate but not antiseptic, detached but not uncaring. And they force the reader to reflect on how fragile civilization is and how fortunate we Americans are.
—The Washington Post

Lee H. Hamilton

Mr. Filkins's stories are those of a writer willing to endure hardship, danger and anguish to paint an accurate picture of war for the American public. In Iraq the pursuit of a story can cost a journalist his or her life, a fate Mr. Filkins, a reporter for The New York Times, and others have tempted each day outside the Green Zone in Baghdad. As I read this book, I could not help but contrast his courageous, at times even foolhardy, journalism with the reportage by those restricted to the Green Zone or spoon-fed information by the Defense Department's powerful public relations machine. No doubt such commentators take some risks, but Mr. Filkins's experience is of an entirely different magnitude. His prose is as blunt as it is powerful. Iraqis, and Afghanis, have spoken for themselves, and Mr. Filkins has listened carefully.
—The New York Times

Robert Stone

The work Filkins accomplishes in The Forever War is one of the most effective antitoxins that the writing profession has produced to counter the administration's fascinating contemporary public relations tactic…Filkins uses the truth as observed firsthand to detail an arid, hopeless policy in an unpromising part of the world. His writing is one of the scant good things to come out of the war…Dexter Filkins, one of The New York Times's most talented reporters, employs a fine journalistic restraint, by which I mean he does not force irony or paradox but leaves that process to the reader. Nor does he speculate on what he does not see. These are worthy attributes, and whether their roots are in journalistic discipline or not they serve this unforgettable narrative superbly.
—The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

Author and narrator Filkins offers this jaw-dropping account of modern warfare and the events that led up to and followed September 11, 2001. Told through firsthand accounts from his days as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, Filkins follows the Taliban throughout the 1990s as well as the downfall of Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Returning to the United States after 9/11, Filkins analyzes the nature of war and its modernity. Filkins's raw reading is drenched in experience and wisdom, making for an extraordinary listening experience. The stories are amazing, and Filkins displays his talent for storytelling. A Knopf hardcover (Reviews, June 20). (Oct.)

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Kirkus Reviews

A bleak litany of war's savage absurdity in Afghanistan and Iraq by accomplished New York Times correspondent Filkins. His dispatches from the front lines begin in September 1998, when he stealthily moved among the Taliban in Kabul and observed their murderous rule by fear, and continue through nearly four years of shadowing American maneuvers in Iraq, from "liberation" to anarchy. Filkins writes with candor and clarity of the brutality he witnessed, such as the execution of a criminal in a Kabul soccer field crowded with spectators. He imbues his narrative with galvanizing snapshots of Afghanistan's dramatic contrasts: An interview with Taliban's minister for the promotion of virtue, cheerfully describing the punishments doled out to women who fail to cover themselves, is followed by a woman's bitter whisper through the vent of her imprisoning burqa, "This is like a death." While he found that the Taliban waged war "like a game of pickup basketball" (constantly shifting sides and bargaining) and judged the typical fighter "dumb as a brick," Filkins was genuinely moved by the generosity of the Afghan people. Baghdad seemed to him like "a mental institution. One of the old ones, from the 19th century, where societies used to dump people and forget about them." The author records how the general euphoria over Saddam's fall gradually turned to disillusionment and lust for revenge. He toured Saddam's palace right before the Marines arrived; visited the family of the female politician Wijdan al-Khuzai, slain while campaigning for Iraq's first free elections; talked to scores of the maimed and bombing victims; trailed American field commander Nathan Sassaman and influential returned Iraqiexile Ahmad Chalabi. Filkins also joined a company of 150 Marines as they penetrated Fallujah and took it back from the jihadis. Nonetheless, in his judgment, looters, suicide bombers and kidnappers gained ascendancy, civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis accelerated and the country was lost. Sharing his deeply humbling, transforming journey, the author tempers numbing details of slaughter and carnage with affecting human stories. First Printing of 150,000

The Barnes & Noble Review

Dexter Filkins reported from Afghanistan for the Los Angeles Times and from Iraq for The New York Times. To call him a frontline reporter would be to diminish his work; for the most part he was not embedded in the U.S. Army -- dangerous as that was -- but rather embedded in both Iraq and the United States. He went out to the villages and to the countryside, talking to tribal leaders, village elders, and all the men and women (and children) he could engage. Unlike the stud scuds of the first conflict with Iraq, secure in their rear echelon hotels, and unlike the pundits and theorists, ensconced in their Washington think tanks, Filkins learned everything he has to tell us about the wars and occupations in these lands from firsthand experience -- often near-death experiences.

Filkins gives us the face of battle, jihadi and fedayeen style, as their suicide bombs and sniper rounds take their toll on the young Marines he follows. His descriptions of the wounds are graphic, as are his descriptions of the different ways Sunnis and Shiites dispatch Western hostages. And he is full of practical information: when there are no toilets, he explains how thousands of troops use cardboard boxes. He knows that suicide bombs raise white smoke, unlike artillery rounds. He tells us that Marine helicopters need to take off at night because they lack the maneuverability of their Army counterparts and would get shot down in daylight flights. He reveals that the well-known "corkscrew" maneuver to land at Baghdad airport is a poor description of landing tactics: it turns out that smart pilots head straight for the ground, then pull up at the last minute to avoid incoming fire. If you see black flags, it means insurgents are signaling that American military units have entered the neighborhood. When you enter a kebab restaurant, it helps if your escort casually puts a Browning 9mm pistol on the table. If you want to see wonderful Western paintings by Matisse, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso, and others (including two by the Jewish painter Marc Chagall), you could cross the border to take in a tour of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Teheran. You'll even learn quite a bit of useful Arabic from this book: Aktuluhum! (Kill them!); Kala kala Ameriki (No, no to Americans); Ashrab min Damhum (I will drink their blood).

Often Filkins gets into trouble. If he follows Marine units, he takes the same fire they do; he unsparingly (and perhaps unfairly) blames himself for getting a Marine killed because he and a cameraman wanted to go into a mosque to take a picture, and it led to a fatal ambush. If he goes off by himself, he is subject to the whim of anyone with a gun. Here he describes a Taliban checkpoint in Herat: "The Talibs pulled me out of the taxi and one of them raised his gun to my head so I pulled out a business card, embossed with gothic letters, Los Angeles Times, very impressive, a get-out-of-jail-free card. The Talib grasped it, looked at it, and threw it into the street." It took fast talking from Filkin's interpreter to get him out of that jam. On another occasion, in Iraq, Filkins concluded a successful interview with a Sunni sheikh and then learned from his interpreter that the sheikh "was proposing that both of us kidnap you and hold you for ransom and split the money."

Although most of the book consists of harrowing reportage, Filkins is a wonderful social analyst when he chooses to generalize, especially about postwar Iraq: "Some days I thought we had broken into a mental institution, one of the old ones, from the nineteenth century, where societies used to dump people and forget about them. It was like we had pried the doors off and found all these people clutching themselves and burying their heads in the corners and sitting in their own filth. It was useful to think of Iraq this way. It helped in your analysis. Murder and torture and sadism: it was part of Iraq. It was in people's brains." Yet there were idealistic Iraqis, and Filkins describes them: the doctors who staffed hospitals, the journalists and teachers trying to create a civil society. But he also recounts the tragedy that befell these people, as they were targeted by insurgents determined that no such society could be created.

There were tragedies aplenty for the Americans as well. Filkins recounts how a "can-do" Army lieutenant colonel (who had been a successful West Point quarterback) began his tour of duty with efforts at civil reconstruction. As the insurgency took off, his commanders insisted on higher body counts and harsher measures. The colonel tolerated tough tactics. When some of his men threw two Iraqis into a river and one of them drowned, the colonel failed to cooperate fully with military investigators, was censured, and eventually quit the military. The one enlisted man who had tried to prevent the incident was ostracized in his unit, and he, too, quit the military -- eventually robbing a bank Stateside.

Filkins ultimately found himself cut off from reporting by the deteriorating conditions. The New York Times bureau "became a fortress, a high-walled castle from another century." The street was blocked off, concrete blast walls erected, coils of razor wire strung, 40 armed guards hired, searchlights placed on the roof, a security adviser retained. The bureau kept three armored cars for transportation. To keep his sanity, Filkins jogged by the river, meeting children along the way; two of them often jogged with him, perhaps to keep their sanity as well.

"You had to accept your ignorance," Filkins tells us about analyzing events in Iraq. "It was the beginning of whatever wisdom you could hope to muster." In this extraordinary book of reportage, Filkins has given us all the wisdom he could hope to muster, and in so doing helps to reduce the ignorance of the rest of us. --Richard Pious

Richard Pious is Adolph and Effie Ochs Professor at Barnard College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University. He is the author of The President, Congress and the Constitution (1984) and The War on Terrorism and the Rule of Law (2006), among other works. He has also published articles on military tribunals, interrogation of detainees, warrantless surveillance, and war powers.