WaPo's Iraq Coverage Controversy & Rachman's The Imperfectionists

I've previously posted about war journalism inside Iraq. How was the war reporting from back home?

Here's yesterday's Guardian article "Washington Post accused of censorship:"

The Washington Post has been accused by a journalist of spiking a piece he was commissioned to write about the US media's failures in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. 

Greg Mitchell, a veteran journalist and author, claims his assigned piece for the Post was killed and replaced by an article that defended the media's coverage. Headlined "On Iraq, journalists didn't fail. They just didn't succeed", it was written by Paul Farhi. If Mitchell is right, then the Post is guilty of censorship because his own submission attacked the media coverage. That should not have been too surprising to the Post's editors given that Mitchell's latest book, So Wrong for So Long, is a detailed critique of the failures of US press, including the Washington Post, over Iraq.

For a novel about 21st century journalism and the controversies within newspaper offices, try The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman:

Tom Rachman’s wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it — and themselves — afloat. Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff’s personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines. 

Here's an excerpt I really liked; I think Rachman makes it sound very authentic:

He feeds in a fresh sheet and starts anew, writing the piece as it ought to have been: full quotations, dates, troop numbers, disputes within the cabinet, transatlantic hostilities. He knows his craft -- all is couched in terms of possibilities, proposals, balloons floated. All the fabricated sources are "on condition of anonymity," or "officials close to," or "experts familiar with." No one is cited by name. Fourteen hundred words. He calculates how much that will earn him. Enough to pay the rent -- a reprieve. Enough to buy Jerome a decent shirt. To take Eileen out for drinks. 

He reads the article, using a red pen to slice away what might be contested. This shortens the text, so he concocts a couple of repetitive quotes from "an administration official in Washington."

If you'd prefer a non-fiction classic that reads like a novel (and which brings us full circle, back to The Washington Post), try All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward:

Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing with headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward kept the tale of conspiracy and the trail of dirty tricks coming -- delivering the stunning revelations and pieces in the Watergate puzzle that brought about Nixon's scandalous downfall. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post and toppled the President. This is the book that changed America.

Sexual Assault in the Military & Benedict's Sand Queen

From today's NY Daily News article "Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand ripped into top Pentagon lawyers during Senate subcommittee hearing, charging military has been too slow to stem tide of sex crimes in ranks:"

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was not shy in chairing her first subcommittee hearing as she laced into Pentagon officials Wednesday for failing to curb a rash of sexual assaults in the armed services. New York’s junior senator, elected to her first full term in November, took the reins of the Senate Armed Services Committee's Personnel Subcommittee this year and has made it a priority to go after the problem of rampant rapes, sexual assaults and sexual harassment in the military. Almost 2,500 cases of sexual violence were reported in 2011, but the Defense Department estimated that if all victims had actually come forward, that number would have been close to 19,000. In emotional and sometimes harrowing testimony Wednesday, three victims who were raped while they were enlisted said the system is broken and that victims are discouraged from reporting a crime or ostracized if they do so. It was the first Senate hearing on the topic in nearly a decade.

For a novel that delves into sexual assault in the military, try Sand Queen by Helen Benedict:

Nineteen-year-old Kate Brady joined the army to bring honor to her family and democracy to the Middle East. Instead, she finds herself in a forgotten corner of the Iraq desert in 2003, guarding a makeshift American prison. There, Kate meets Naema Jassim, an Iraqi medical student whose father and little brother have been detained in the camp. Kate and Naema promise to help each other, but the war soon strains their intentions. Like any soldier, Kate must face the daily threats of combat duty, but as a woman, she is in equal danger from the predatory men in her unit.

UPDATE:  you can find a longer review of Benedict's book over at the Literary Treats blog.

10th Anniversary of the Iraq War & Powers' The Yellow Birds

This month marks the ten-year anniversary of the War in Iraq. Here is UPI on the anniversary:

March 20 marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. U.S. forces in December 2011 left under the terms of a bilateral status of forces agreement. Iraq since the invasion has had a series of successful democratic elections, though internal divisions and sectarian violence have undermined the country's progress.

And here is a excerpt from the Atlantic article "As We Near the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War:"

This month marks ten years since the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq. In my view this was the biggest strategic error by the United States since at least the end of World War II and perhaps over a much longer period. Vietnam was costlier and more damaging, but also more understandable. As many people have chronicled, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a "war of choice" whose costs we are still paying.

For a novel about US experiences in the war, you might want to try Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds, which has been described as "Iraq's All Quiet on the Western Front" and was acclaimed as one of the best novels of 2012:

"The war tried to kill us in the spring," begins this breathtaking account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. Bound together since basic training when their tough-as-nails Sergeant ordered Bartle to watch over Murphy, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes impossible actions.

Experience of Returning Soldiers & Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

From today's BBC article "Obama to announce 34,000 troops out of Afghanistan:"

President Barack Obama will announce in his State of the Union speech 34,000 US troops will leave Afghanistan by early 2014, a White House official has said. The move would effectively halve the current US troop levels in the country from about 66,000.

What's a good novel about how soldiers experience their return to civilian life? I'm currently reading Ben Fountain's novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. It's about U.S. soldiers back home from Iraq on a mid-deployment victory tour (not about them re-integrating with society after their deployment is over):

A ferocious firefight with Iraqi insurgents at "the battle of Al-Ansakar Canal"--three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew--has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America's most sought-after heroes. For the past two weeks, the Bush administration has sent them on a media-intensive nationwide Victory Tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. Now, on this chilly and rainy Thanksgiving, the Bravos are guests of America's Team, the Dallas Cowboys, slated to be part of the halftime show alongside the superstar pop group Destiny's Child. Among the Bravos is the Silver Star-winning hero of Al-Ansakar Canal, Specialist William Lynn, a nineteen-year-old Texas native. Amid clamoring patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and Support Our Troops bumper stickers on their cars, the Bravos are thrust into the company of the Cowboys' hard-nosed businessman/owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a luscious born-again Cowboys cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized pro players eager for a vicarious taste of war.

For those of you who prefer classics, there's always Hemingway's short story "Soldier's Home."

U.S. War in Afghanistan & Abram's Fobbit

From Sunday's NYT article "Pentagon Expects U.S. to Retain Presence in Afghanistan:"

The Pentagon’s top civilian and military officials on Sunday expressed an expectation, even a desire, that American troops would remain in Afghanistan after the NATO mission ends in December 2014, although they emphasized that no decision had been made.

A book that seemed insightful about working in a Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Iraq is David Abram's Fobbit. I say "seemed" because I haven't been there and wouldn't know. But the book is excellent: darkly humorous, like Catch-22 for the 2003-2011 Iraq War. While the novel is based in Iraq, I imagine that much of what was true about life in Iraq's FOBs remains true for the FOBs in Afghanistan. Here's the book description:

Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad’s Forward Operating Base Triumph. The Forward Operating base, or FOB, is like the back-office of the battlefield – where people eat and sleep, and where a lot of soldiers have what looks suspiciously like an office job. Male and female soldiers are trying to find an empty Porta Potty in which to get acquainted, grunts are playing Xbox and watching NASCAR between missions, and a lot of the senior staff are more concerned about getting to the chow hall in time for the Friday night all-you-can-eat seafood special than worrying about little things like military strategy. Darkly humorous and based on the author's own experiences in Iraq, Fobbit is a fantastic debut that shows us a behind-the-scenes portrait of the real Iraq war.