Discovered Today! 01/03/2008

Iraq: The Hidden Human Costs - The New York Review of Books  Annotated

Iraq: The Hidden Human Costs

In House to House: An Epic Memoir of War, Staff Sergeant David Bellavia—a gung-ho supporter of the Iraq war—casually recounts how in 2004, while his platoon was on just its second patrol in Iraq,

a civilian candy truck tried to merge with a column of our armored vehicles, only to get run over and squashed. The occupants were smashed beyond recognition. Our first sight of death was a man and his wife both ripped open and dismembered, their intestines strewn across shattered boxes of candy bars. The entire platoon hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours. We stopped, and as we stood guard around the wreckage, we grew increasingly hungry. Finally, I stole a few nibbles from one of the cleaner candy bars. Others wiped away the gore and fuel from the wrappers and joined me.

This incident is notable mainly for the fact that the platoon stopped; from the many accounts I have read of the Iraq war, when a US convoy runs over a car, it usually just keeps going.

In Chasing Ghosts, Paul Rieckhoff, a graduate of Amherst who led a platoon of Army National Guardsmen in Iraq, describes going out on routine house raids in the summer of 2003 during which his men broke down doors, zipcuffed all the men in sight, and turned rooms upside down in the search for weapons, few of which they ever found. These raids, Rieckhoff writes, "were nasty business. Anybody who enjoyed them was sick. Sometimes I felt like I was a member of the Brown shirts in Nazi Germany." As Rieckhoff later discovered, some of his men were stealing cash found on these raids—a practice that, as other accounts suggest, is not at all uncommon.

As probing and aggressive as the reporting from Iraq has been, it is subject to many filters. There are, for example, "family viewing" standards that make it difficult for journalists to write frankly about such sensitive aspects of military life as the profane language soldiers often use. It's also hard for journalists to get an accurate sense of what soldiers really think. Through embedding, reporters have enjoyed remarkable physical access to the troops, but learning about their true feelings is far more difficult, all the more so since soldiers who speak out too freely can be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Finally, there are limitations imposed by the political climate in which the press works. Images that seem too graphic or unsettling can cause an uproar. When, for instance, The New York Times in January 2007 ran a photo of a US soldier lying mortally wounded on the ground, the paper was angrily accused of showing disrespect for the troops. More generally, the conduct of US soldiers in the field remains a highly sensitive subject. News organizations that show soldiers in a bad light run the risk of being labeled anti-American, unpatriotic, or—worst of all—"against the troops." In July, for instance, when The New Republic ran a column by a private that recounted several instances of bad behavior by US soldiers, he and the magazine were viciously attacked by conservative bloggers. Most Americans simply do not want to know too much about the acts being carried out in their name, and this serves as a powerful deterrent to editors and producers.

Wright is no less unsparing in describing the backgrounds of the Marines. This is a sensitive topic, with few journalists willing to look too deeply into the composition of the all-volunteer army. Wright has no such qualms. "Culturally," he writes, "these Marines would be virtually unrecognizable to their forebears in the 'Greatest Generation.' They are kids raised on hip-hop, Marilyn Manson and Jerry Springer." There are "former gangbangers, a sprinkling of born-again Christians and quite a few guys who before entering the Corps were daily dope smokers." While some joined the Marines out of prep school or turned down scholarships at universities, more than half "come from broken homes and were raised by absentee, single, working parents. Many are on more intimate terms with video games, reality TV shows and Internet porn than they are with their own parents." Together, he writes, these Marines "represent what is more or less America's first generation of disposable children."

Like Fick with his visions of ancient Greece, many of these men arrived in Kuwait full of romantic notions about honor, valor, and sacrifice. From the very start, however, those ideas would be put to the test. Both Fick and Wright express dismay at the layers of incompetence among superior officers with which the men in First Recon must contend. The company's operations chief, while failing to bring along enough batteries for the Marines' critical night-fighting equipment, had the presence of mind to bring a personal video camera, which he plans to use to make a war documentary that he hopes to sell after the invasion. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Ferrando, seems more interested in the Marines' personal appearance than in their preparedness for battle. Addressing them in the Kuwaiti desert on the eve of war, he tells them that when they cross the Euphrates, all mustaches must come off. "We're getting ready to invade a country, and this is what our commander talks to us about?" one soldier says. "Mustaches?"

They are soon approached by five Iraqis dragging two bundles. Inside are two teenaged boys. Both have been wounded—one gravely. Examining him, Doc Bryan, a medic, can see that he's been shot with 5.56mm rounds, a caliber used by the Americans. "Marines shot this boy!" he roars. It's now clear that the distant figures who'd been shot at were not fighters with rifles but shepherds with canes.

Fick runs to company headquarters and explains what has happened. He wants the boys evacuated to a field hospital. The major on duty informs him that Lieutenant Colonel Ferrando is sleeping and can't be disturbed. Fick is livid:

I wanted to tell the major that we were Americans, that Americans don't shoot kids and let them die, that the men in my platoon had to be able to look themselves in the mirror for the rest of their lives.

The New York Review of Books

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