Bearing witness to the Iraq war

Marine Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, 22, of Allegany, New York

Marine Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, 22, of Allegany, New York
Dunham died April 22, 2004 due to injuries he received from enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, at Twentynine Palms, California.


BY BRIAN PALMER

Brian Palmer, a journalist living in Brooklyn, was embedded twice with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Babil province, Iraq.August 28, 2005

Even if we can't make sense of war, it is the human impulse to try. Scholars, pundits, even poets, already have weighed in on the grisly and seemingly intractable Iraq conflict. Journalists and military types, however, have been the most prolific Iraq war-story tellers. These authors, many of whom have witnessed combat, have a sort of been-there, done-that credibility that makes publishers - and readers - take notice.

But for such books to be deemed anything more than hasty first drafts of history or disposable vanity publications, a writer must prove to the reader that he's not just talking the talk. We need to know he has walked the walk of war - ventured beyond the comfortable hotel (or fortified military base) into the streets, bunkers and battle zones; spent unhurried time with people outside his immediate bubble; challenged assumptions he brought with him; and then told the truth when his reporting shattered those beliefs.

"Over There: From the Bronx to Baghdad," New York Times reporter Alan Feuer's memoir of his two months covering the 2003 invasion, doesn't quite meet that standard. In fact, it has the feel of a book rushed into print.

Rather than recounting "Over There" in first person, Feuer assumes a new quasi-identity, that of T.R. - This Reporter. The device, possibly inspired by Norman Mailer, is a contrivance that offers little discernible benefit to the reader.

That said, Feuer is an engaging storyteller with a sharp eye for quirky details. Early in his two-month Middle Eastern sojourn, he arrives in Ruweished, a dusty Jordanian frontier town hard by the border with Iraq. It's a refueling stop for smugglers and Baghdad-bound Western journalists. "Great chicken sandwiches!" Feuer finds scribbled in English on a TV reporter's business card. It's part of a tapestry of calling cards taped to the wall at Abu Sayef's Roasted Chicken Place, a hole-in-the-wall eatery packed not with local folks or Iraqis from the nearby refugee camp but "a sunburned standing army of reporters." Their mammoth gear-laden Chevy Suburbans are parked out front as they order ice-cold Cokes and nibble French fries inside.

Bloggers and critics have slammed Feuer for his apparently casual approach to facts in "Over There." He misspells names and mangles quotes, according to some quotees. Feuer was "persona non grata with both management and the rank and file" for his gaffes, Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove quotes a New York Times source as saying.

In fact, Feuer himself, as T.R., suggests he has adopted a more relaxed and poetic approach to the literal truth he practices in his day job at the Times. "Because the telling of a story - any story - is supposed to be a seamless process (moving forward at its own sweet pace), the teller must at times resort to lies to sweep it toward what is often called the point," Feuer - er, T.R. - writes in the chapter titled "Necessary Lies.

"But the backlash against Feuer didn't strike simply because he got some facts wrong. His other sin: reporting on the activities, sometimes questionable, of Times colleagues in Baghdad. A co-worker allegedly cobbles together a front-page story from wire-service reports and recollections of other reporters; another lives in high style amid Baghdad's squalor; and all too many of them drink black-market alcohol, a no-no in increasingly religious Iraq. There's an unspoken rule among foreign correspondents - sometimes it's actually spoken and directed at the newbies - that what happens overseas stays overseas. Feuer apparently missed that meeting.

Wall Street Journal reporter Michael M. Phillips made four visits to Iraq, all with one battalion of the U.S. Marines. Although his focus is narrow in "The Gift of Valor," he plows well beneath the surface of one man's life. Phillips concentrates his abundant energy and investigative skill on Cpl. Jason Dunham, a 22-year-old from upstate New York. With uncommon sensitivity and meticulousness, he chronicles Dunham's short life, emphasizing his Marine years and his tragic death in combat."Dunham died April 22 [2004] due to injuries received from enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq," reads his casualty announcement issued by the Department of Defense, which posts these terse press releases at www.defenselink .mil whenever a U.S. service member is killed. After a hand-to-hand struggle with a suspected guerrilla,

Dunham threw himself on a live grenade to protect the men in his fire team. Dunham's wounds were grievous. Still, he hung on for seven days before dying in the intensive care unit at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

"Third Battalion said goodbye to Corporal Dunham on April 28," Phillips writes at the end of the book. "When the staff sergeant called 'Corporal Dunham,' there was silence.

"Although Phillips doesn't tackle the whole war, he offers a detailed view of one man's corner of it. And perhaps more importantly, he provides a clear and rich portrait of Cpl. Jason L. Dunham and the people who fought beside him, supported him and loved him.

Nathaniel Fick writes from the literal center of the story in "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer," to be published in October. Lt. Fick, a veteran of the Afghanistan conflict, commanded "Hitman Two," a platoon of the First Reconnaissance Battalion, in Iraq. Its motto: "Swift. Silent. Deadly.

"Traditionally, recon teams slip behind enemy lines, observe their opponents' preparations and movements and then report their findings to superiors. "Recon was the eyes and ears of the invasion force," Fick writes. Operation Iraqi Freedom, however, turned into something of an improvisation, so Fick's specialized platoon did a little of everything.

Fick does a solid job of putting the reader into the action, but he takes a standard military approach to weighty, political issues: He avoids them. "I took sixty-five men to war and brought sixty-five home. I gave them everything I had. Together, we passed the test. Fear didn't beat us. I hope life improves for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, but that's not why we did it. We fought for each other. I am proud."

"One Bullet Away" isn't in the same league as combat classics such as Mark Bowden's "Black Hawk Down" or Michael Herr's Vietnam-era "Dispatches." It's a good straight-ahead story, one Marine's ground-level view of the war and the processes behind it.

Anthony Shadid's "Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War" is perhaps the most nuanced, informative and moving recent book about the Iraq conflict. From his first trip to the country in 1998 as an Associated Press reporter to his 2005 visit to cover the national assembly election for The Washington Post, Shadid immersed himself in Iraqi life.

Shadid, fluent in Arabic, sipped tea with militant imams; broke bread with doctors, artists, veterans and professors; visited hospitals and mosques and prisons. He listened to Iraqi fathers, mothers and children, wrote down what they said, and then checked things out for himself. And Shadid stuck around long enough and returned to Iraq frequently enough to measure the damage inflicted by Saddam Hussein and to gauge the effect of America's actions on the nation and its people.

"I can tell you the fear has lifted from people's hearts," an ecstatic man on a Baghdad street told Shahdid on the eve of the city's fall to U.S. troops. But Shadid found many other citizens who were wary of the Americans, even as they rejoiced at the regime's destruction. "Nobody hates freedom, and if they bring freedom, nobody will hate them," a 32-year-old man told him. "If they've come as invaders," another man cautioned, "nobody will welcome them.

"U.S. military power destroyed a terrible dictator, but that dictator happened to be the most powerful unifying force in Iraqi society. The U.S. administration created a vacuum when it destroyed his Baathist government, and it still hasn't figured out how to fill it.

"There was an almost divine quality to American power; it was merciless in its practice, flawless in its execution," Shadid writes. "Saddam had ruled for thirty-five years; the Americans had toppled him in less than three weeks, and relatively few of their soldiers had died in the task. How could these same Americans be so feeble in the aftermath

"Many Iraqis, angry and powerless, have turned to the different strands of Islam for solace. A small but influential minority has turned to violence. Many have turned inward, cynical and resigned.

"I won't hide my feelings," Prof. Wamidh Nadhme told Shadid on one of his many visits with him. The rampant looting, street violence, deterioration of Baghdad's infrastructure and the apparent cluelessness of American occupation officials angered and confused Wamidh, an early supporter of the invasion who once spoke of "our President Bush." "The American invasion has nothing to do with democracy and human rights. It is basically a response to the events of Sept. 11, an angry response to the survival of Saddam Hussein, and it has something to do with the oil interests in the area."

"Night Draws Near" is essential reading for Americans. It is grounded in an indelible reality that is so often ignored here in the U.S.: Iraq belongs to the Iraqis. We ignore this fact at our continued peril. Shadid makes it clear with every profile, every interview, that we must take the time to understand what Iraqis feel, what they know, what they want.

Link Here