A B-47 bomber. Air Force photo.

I’m finally getting around to reading Doug Keeney’s 2011 book 15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation. Keeney describes the mood in 1950s Las Vegas, capital of nuclear America:

The atomic tests added a degree of excitement to a city that made excitement its stock-in-trade. Las Vegas hotels advertised “atomic” room specials, sold “atomic cocktails” at their bars and offered picnic baskets as part of packages and weekend deals that included field trips to nearby Mount Charleston and Angel’s Peak to view atomic blasts.

Hell of a book.

There are probably more exhaustive books about surfing. There are certainly more in-depth books about Middle East politics. There are more profound journalistic memoirs. But I feel safe saying there are no books that better combine surfing, Mid East politics and journalism. Surfing the Middle East is fast-paced, fun and weird. Jesse Aizenstat couldn’t get a job in diplomacy straight out of college so he made his own career, following his passion and surfable waves from Israel to Lebanon. His book describes the hardships of DIY journalism, the thrill of exploring a new and dangerous place all on your own and, in basic terms, outlines the deep historical tensions in the Middle East. I recommend it.

This collection of previously-published essays by Economist reporters is a useful primer on modern warfare. It covers a wide range of topics, from technology to intelligence. If there’s a downside, it’s that Economist articles — and therefore the book’s chapters — tend to be fairly general, and reported by generalist writers. So small but annoying errors can creep into the text. For example, the Global Hawk drone is not “the world’s fastest,” as stated on page 99. Far from it. The Global Hawk is subsonic. Other drone designs are capable of speeds exceeding Mach 5. That said, as an entry into the practice and theory of modern war, the book’s not bad at all.

Steve Lieber art.

by KEVIN KNODELL

War comics rarely get it right.

Just like with movies, TV and books about soldiers and war, there are so many varied ways to get it wrong. Wrong equipment, soldiers not carrying themselves as professional soldiers would, stereotypes and incorrect notions of what duty and patriotism mean to soldiers, making it too frivolous or making it overly serious.

All the same, here at WIB we’re a fan of our comics. Hell, our name is derived from David and Matt’s very own war comic. This why I want to direct everyone’s attention to Shooters, the new graphic novel from DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint.

Shooters follows the story of Chief Warrant Officer Terry Glass, a Special Forces soldier who is wounded in action during the early days of the Iraq war in a friendly fire incident. The story follows his physical recovery, his struggle readjusting to civilian life and his return to Iraq as private military contractor. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a comic that gets it right.

The creative team behind Shooters includes writers Eric Trautmann (who worked as a writer on video games such as Halo and Gears of War and runs on the comics Checkmate and Action Comics) and Brandon Jerwa (GI Joe, Red Sonja), and Eisner-winning illustrator Steve Lieber, best known for his work on Whiteout. Lieber also draws Alabaster Wolves for Dark Horse Comics. It’s a series about an teenage albino girl who kills monsters with a kitchen knife. It’s awesome.

Few works have the feeling of authenticity that Shooters exudes, which is surprising coming from writers who worked on the game Gears and on GI Joe comics, two of the most gung-ho masculine military fantasies in existence.

The authenticity arguably comes mostly from Eric Trautmann, who married into a military family and whose brother-in-law in part inspired the protagonist Glass. The brother-in-law, a Blackwater employee, died in Mosul when he intercepted a suicide bomber meant for a State Department official he was protecting. Trautmann said one of his main motivations was to provide something more nuanced than the overwhelmingly negative portrayals of contractors.

However, he does not glamorize anything or anyone. There are good contractors and bad contractors, good companies and bad companies. Even the good guys in this story are deeply flawed, and our protagonist Glass is no exception. Though a loving husband and father, he isn’t necessarily a great one. He’s an angry man being consumed by his mental and physical wounds and haunted by his past. Despite his flaws, or perhaps because of them, he is immensely sympathetic.

Though flawed, Glass is a truly heroic figure, always trying his best to do right by his comrades, his family and his country. He will risk anything and pay any price to see justice done, to ensure the fallen are remembered and to protect those he cares about. To anyone who’s ever been around soldiers, the characters in this book are instantly familiar.

The book isn’t perfect; the first act is a little rough. Also, early on Lieber makes a few mistakes in terms of military authenticity such as ACU uniforms being worn in 2003 and soldiers wearing garrison caps with their Class As long after berets became the norm. These are minor quibbles, Once you get to the image of Terry in a wheelchair looking up at the Iron Mike statue at Fort Lewis with Mt. Rainier in the background as the rain of the Pacific Northwest falls around him, it becomes clear that this creative team that understands its subject.

Ultimately it’s the emotional authenticity of the military experience that truly stands out — something arguably harder to get right than gear. Already I’ve heard stories of soldiers and military spouses and dependents who couldn’t finish it in one sitting because they got too emotional.

Though a work of fiction, it is a profoundly truthful story about the impact war has on people, and showcases the best and worst aspects of soldiers in a way that is as authentic as it is respectful. Shooters is a masterpiece of the genre, and proves once again that a comic can tell meaningful stories.

Ted Rall art.

I will be hosting an online discussion with cartoonist and war correspondent Ted Rall at the Firedoglake Book Salon on Sunday from 5:00 to 7:00 PM EST. The topic: Ted’s new book The Anti-American Manifesto. Here’s my intro to the discussion:

As a cartoonist, columnist, radio host, TV guest and graphic novelist, Ted Rall has always been hard to categorize. Rall is liberal and an environmentalist, to be sure, but he’s a peculiar brand of both. He’s not scared of guns or all gun owners and he’s got a strong law-and-order streak. He seems to dismiss popular “peak oil” theories that anticipate a rapid and disastrous fall-off in petroleum production. He’s equally critical of Democrats and Republicans.

Rall is most notorious for his U.S. political commentary. A 2004 cartoon criticizing football player-turned-soldier Pat Tillman, who was killed by “friendly” fire in Afghanistan, is easily Rall’s most famous work. But arguably Rall’s most unique and important work has grown out of his infrequent jaunts through foreign conflict zones, particularly in Central Asia. A trip to Afghanistan in 2001 produced the graphic novel To Afghanistan and Back, one of the best and most prescient books on the now decade-old war. For all that, Rall’s most eloquent work isn’t political at all. His memoir The Year of Loving Dangerously recounts his turbulent but passionate youth.

Rall’s new book, The Anti-American Manifesto, is a polemic, a call to revolution against a U.S. government that Rall claims “has become so undemocratic and unresponsive that the only reasonable means of opposing it is to strive for its violent overthrow.” Equally, the book is a prism for viewing the rest of Rall’s work. In reading Manifesto, it becomes clearer what lies at the heart of Ted’s sometimes schizophrenic-seeming career. In short, Rall is a contrarian and a firebrand. He knows it. He believes it’s an important role to play. He admits as much in Manifesto: “I don’t want you to buy into everything I say. … I MAY BE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING. I want you to THINK, dammit!”

The time has passed when Americans could afford to coast through their comparatively comfortable lives, neither caring about nor participating in politics, Rall argues. Indeed, he writes, “the U.S. is going to end soon. There’s going to be an intense, violent, probably haphazard struggle for control” owing to decades of economic, political and environmental decay. “A war is coming,” Rall concludes. “At stake: our lives, the planet, freedom, living. … Are you going to fight back?”

I know Rall well. We’ve shared publishers. We’ve worked with some of the same artists. We’ve written on similar topics for some of the same publications. We’ve both risked our lives reporting from Afghanistan and other conflict zones. We’re friends. I know him well enough to believe: if he’s right, and violent revolution is coming, Rall will fight back even if few others do. If he’s right, I just might join him.

But I don’t believe he’s right. Because as bad as things are in America in 2010, I’ve spent time in many places — Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, East Timor, Somalia, Chad, Congo — where conditions are far, far worse. For all our crises, we remain a comparatively sensible, prosperous and secure nation. Rall disagrees. In Manifesto, he’s asking Americans to at least consider the possibility that collapse is coming, and revolution is necessary. If you consider the issue, and decide collapse is not coming, and revolution is not necessary, Rall is probably just fine with that, as long as we “THINK, dammit.”

Descent into Chaos

by PETER VINE

It is the year 2008 and there is trouble in southern Afghanistan. NATO forces have been engulfed in a violent and bloody struggle with the Taliban and other insurgent forces. In Pakistan, the Pakistani army is slowly turning its war machine away from its border from India and against the same terrorist groups it had once funded and cultivated. In Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, new insurgent groups plot campaigns to take advantage of instability and revolution.

The situation in the region is desperate and despite immense amounts of blood and treasure invested it is difficult to foresee any positive change soon. This is the rather depressing message Ahmed Rashid delivers in his new book Descent into Chaos.

Ahmed Rashid is a noted expert on the region and his previous books Jihad! and Taliban have been praised for their accuracy and research. The man must have a warehouse full of interview notes and copied documents, as he is able to recall numerous conversations and interviews he had with some of the most important players in the region.

Descent into Chaos therefore provides the reader with an in-depth and well-researched background into the recent history of Afghanistan, Pakistan and all of Central Asia. It also describes in disturbing detail how governments — both democratic and republican, American and European — are consistently failing to get a grip of the problems threatening to tear the region apart.

Descent into Chaos is a sobering reminder both of the serious misadventures of neo-conservatism but also of the disinterested nature to which Clinton’s administration and the Social Democratic governments of Europe tended to view India and Pakistan, even when they threatened to ignite a nuclear holocaust in 1999.

The book covers the duplicitous and frankly astonishing nature in which Pakistan’s military sowed the seeds of its own demise, as the multiple terrorist groups it had nurtured and funded turned against them in such spectacular fashion. It describes how, despite multiple attempts to force President Pervez Musharraf to abandon terror, both the Pakistani Army and ISI managed to ensure the survival of its sponsored terrorist groups sometimes right under the noses of their American counterparts.

Further along it talks about how funding from America and Russia supporting totalitarian regimes in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia is fomenting Islamic extremism, leading to a widening of the conflict.

It also covers the baffling incompetence first of the CIA and then of the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon in refusing to create a nation-building strategy (or in fact any post-war strategy) for winning the peace in Afghanistan — the kind of mistakes which would later cause America much pain and hardship in Iraq.

It later covers the confused and at times fractious nature of the NATO mission as it expanded across the country, resulting in British, Canadian and Dutch troops fighting for their lives in the south while other contingents in the north were confined to barracks at night, as part of concessions necessary to persuade them to join the mission.

The tone of the book is of frustration at missed opportunities and mistakes. All point to an experienced journalist who has witnessed war after war and broken promise after broken promise.

Mary Helen photo.

by PETER VINE

The Troubles is one of the most painful periods in recent Anglo-Irish history. The climax of almost over 500 years of conflict between English, Irish, Scottish and even Dutch and French powers, it has touched many lives and families across the British Isles and Europe. My own father, for example, served in 3 Para during the height of The Troubles, while a firm friend of mine grew up in Free Derry. We have found common ground in our own experiences.

It also has uncanny parallels with places as far afield as Palestine — not only with how each conflict has played out, but with how similar the respective players are. Ulster Unionists, for example, have mostly sided with Israel and its settler movement as comrades-in-arms circling similar wagons in different lands, whilst Irish Republicans have mostly found solace with the Palestinians and share their sense of injustice.

So why did the peace process in Ulster survive yet Israel and Palestine remain deadlocked? Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland, by Tony Blair’s former chief-of-staff Jonathan Powell, in a way answers this question.

After he left with Blair in 2007, Powell decided to write a book about his experiences at the sharp end of negotiating peace in Northern Ireland. His mantra is to keep talking to the other side, regardless of what happens. This could have saved the Oslo Peace Process in the Middle East.

He covers the initial optimism of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern in solving the issue of Ulster, which nobody saw as solvable. He covers the bouts of despair when everything seemed lost and the exhausted jubilation when deals were signed and hands were shaken. Powell had a foot in both the Blair and Major administrations and thus had a special and privileged view into how events unfolded.

What Powell does well is give an insight into the hyperactive nature of the Blair government, with envoys and ministers from Britain and Ireland flying everywhere to talk, cajole and persuade. Powell aptly describes just how intractable the two sides were, with Sinn Fein being “addicted to negotiating” and the Unionists refusing to agree to anything.

What the book doesn’t do very well, however, is provide clarity. It’s content to simply reel off events and leave the reader to put the book down and contemplate the meaning. Powell’s failure to be self critical enough, whilst unsurprising, results in the author having multiple Tony Hayward-esque “I want my life back” moments.

Powell’s also takes a scatter-gun approach when covering the main players. He casts Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble as immature, emphasizing his lack of tact and his wild mood swings. Then flip-flops and notes how nice a chap Trimble was and how much pressure he was under. He praises the Democratic Unionists as enlightened intellectuals one moment, and the next as pedantic sticks-in-the-mud obsessed with agreement by committee over everything.

He describes Blair in a mixed light, at times inspired and almost devious in his political cunning. Other times Powell grumbles about how Blair was almost deluded in believing that he could solve any situation simply by being there in person. This “Jesus complex,” as Powell calls it, reached its climax when Blair asked Gerry Adams if he could meet the IRA Army Council in person. Adams politely but awkwardly declined.

Powell’s masochistic fascination with the Republicans also baffles. He does, though, have time to suggest that Martin McGuinness was weak compared to Adams.

Powell couldn’t make his mind up on the people involved in the peace process and as a result there simply isn’t any balance here. This affects the credibility of Powell’s take on events.

Despite these faults, Great Hatred, Little Room is a good read and will interest anyone wanting to know more about the final years of The Troubles.

With this book review, we introduce a new contributor. Peter Vine writes the Web-comic Hard Graft.

HMS Vanguard. Royal Navy photo.

by PETER VINE

“There is very much to be said for a system which is quietly unobtrusive, secure in a relaxed way and ultimate in its bulldog-like determination to retaliate if the homeland is attacked. The submarine system [Polaris] seems in every way compatible with the British character.” So said a study in June 1960. This sums up the British attitude to the post-war world.

A country renown for calmness and sanity attempted to prepare for a future which would be anything but if a nuclear exchange occured. In The Secret State, author Peter Hennessy attempts to describe the complex state within a state that was built between 1945 and today.

The book covers Britain’s plans for a third world war, including procuring an independent nuclear deterrent, how it secured the state against spies and internal groups from Irish republican terrorists to the far right and how Britain would be governed after a nuclear exchange.

The book is a mixture of amusing anecdotes and sobering reality covered by Hennessy in interviews with former prime ministers and senior members of government tasked with forming British defense policy. The delicate balancing act of maintaining peace, handling Britain’s finances and pursuing her interests sees the Foreign Office struggling to contain their increasingly excitable and almost hyperactive American counterparts, who saw war with Russia as inevitable.

It also explains how Britain got “the Bomb” in 1946, despite Britain’s devastated economy at the time. A rather frantic-sounding Ernest Bevin (then the foreign secretary) thumped the table and insisted, “No, Prime Minister, that won’t do at all. We’ve got to have this … We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs. We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.”

Other exchanges are no less comical. During one Cabinet meeting in the 1960s, Lord Mountbatten asked why, despite having a nuclear deterrent, was there no procedure for contacting the PM. Discussions were held to subscribe to the Automobile Association (then Britain’s premier car breakdown service) in order to have a radio fitted to the Prime Minister’s car so he could be contacted in the event of a nuclear attack.

But the overriding theme throughout the book is one of the professional, calm and diligent way in which Britain’s government mandarins carried out the work of setting up the secret state — and it is here that Hennessy shines.

His eye for detail, his impeccable and almost relentless research methods and his relationships with anyone involved at the important levels of cabinet government and civil service in the past 50 years has yielded an incredible record of Britain’s preparations for the worst. Hennessy weaves these stories into a riveting read.

It was a task which none had much appetite for remembering. The crew of the first Trident-armed nuclear submarine in the Royal Navy, HMS Vanguard, had a sobering moment when they test-fired a Trident missile just off of Florida. The American instructors, as if celebrating the catch of big-game fish, slapped everyone on the back and heartily handed out cigars to the rather shaken RN officers.

It reflects the British reaction to just how much the world which Britain found itself had changed since 1939.

The final part in this book covers Britain’s response to the rise of Islamic terrorism between 1998 and 2010. The official files for this period are thinner on the ground yet show the way in which British intelligence apparatus changed over the course of three prime ministers (Blair, Brown and Cameron) reflects the way which Britain has evolved, although not always for the best.

One could say that the fundamental breakdown in intelligence gathering and processing which pushed Britain into war with Iraq in 2003 points to the policy of halting the previously intensive weekly intelligence briefings and Blair’s “sofa government” bypassing  the previously in depth network of committees and reports which had worked so smoothly during the Cold War.

Despite this change however the systems and mechanisms of government adapted and continued to run and prepare for the worst, come what may. Because, as one senior civil servant pointed out, the need for planning was “inescapable, it was necessary and it was lunatic.”

Handbook of 5GW.

Nimble Books has just released the Kindle version of Daniel Abbott’s Handbook of 5GW. That’s “fifth-generation warfare” for you noobs. I wrote the chapter on “Piracy, Human Security and 5GW in Somalia.”

From my intro:

No continent poses less of a traditional military threat to the United States than Africa. But in an age of 5GW, where subtle actors can exploit humanitarian, economic and other crises to undermine the power and legitimacy of the industrial state, no continent poses a greater non-traditional threat. An increasingly volatile Africa begs for greater U.S. intervention and risks corrupting that very intervention, turning American strength into weakness.

“The views within The Handbook of 5GW vary widely,” Zenpundit observes, “as does the disciplinary approach of the authors, intending to stimulate thought, explore possible scenarios that range from the pragmatic and real to the imaginative and ideal.”

Hardcover edition launches in September.

The current horror zeitgeist, the zombie apocalypse, is arguably a product of 9/11 and the threat of terrorism. Zombie books and movies take place in the mundane places of everyday life and reflect a horror that has come home, attacked ordinary people and altered the landscape in some permanent, unwelcome fashion. The enemy is a familiar but a completely new creature, unfathomable in motivations and in many ways indestructible; kill one, and another takes its place.

That nobody has bothered writing a novel about the U.S. Army fighting zombies is a bit surprising, but that’s been fixed now.

The zombie sub-genre is glutted with bad fiction, with many titles poorly written recycling tired story lines. By this time next year another dozen zombie books will have been published, but none will probably be as good and ultimately satisfying as Craig DiLouie’s new novel Tooth and Nail. It’s the Black Hawk Down of the zombie genre. It’s that good.

Tooth and Nail is the story of a U.S. Army light infantry platoon that has been quickly deployed from Iraq back to the United States. The world is in the grip of an influenza pandemic and millions are dead, with millions more infected. In order to secure the homeland, the United States begins a massive operation to redeploy American forces from every corner of the globe. “OIF is over,” the military announces, rather abruptly. Relief gives away to unease among the infantrymen: if they’re sending everyone home from Iraq, what is home like?

Second Platoon, Charlie Company, 1-75 Infantry has just been redeployed from the outskirts of Baghdad to a hospital in Manhattan. They are stuck in the bottom of an urban canyon of concrete and glass, watching helplessly as society unravels in front of their eyes, held back by a lack of manpower and, more importantly, the Rules of Engagement. Strange characters haunt their perimeter at night; as it turns out, the flu turns some victims into violent, mindless killers, known as Mad Dogs. Even worse, there seems to be more of them with each passing hour.

Tooth and Nail breaks new ground in realistically depicting how soldiers would react towards combat on their own soil, against their own citizens, with modern weapons. They can’t believe it either. If you think the ethical dilemma of fighting guerrillas among civilians in a foreign country is unnerving, imagine what it’s like when the enemy is among your own people, naked and bleeding, an eyeball swinging from its socket, drooling, clawing for your throat. Gradually as the gravity of the situation dawns upon them, their reticence to shoot other Americans — even infected ones — is overtaken by events.

DiLouie is a gifted writer and the book moves along at a crisp pace. There is no camp or tongue in cheek — the book is played straight. One of the great strengths of the book is the characterization. You get to know many of the characters, and you care about them. There is no cloying prose to describe the soldiers and their ideals, their honor and their patriotism. They are simply professional soldiers trying to do the best they can. The officer-NCO relationship between Second Lieutenant Todd Bowman and his platoon sergeant, Kemper, is dead on.

The book shines in other ways. Dialogue is realistic, lively and devoid of cliches. The culture of the infantryman is portrayed well. Comms chatter sounds authentic. Weapons are generally described accurately but not overemphasized and fetishized like they are in many techno-thrillers. The newest high-tech weapon system isn’t going to keep the platoon alive. The sergeants will.

DiLouie nails the fighting man, particularly the American fighting man. He gets him, from the banter between soldiers to the outlook on the average joe’s life. In-between the relentless zombie hordes, you could forget this is a horror novel and imagine these at Valley Forge, Chickamagua, Belleau Wood, Hue City or Fallujah. Tooth and Nail is a tribute to the fighting man, the kind of book that will be passed around the FOB or barracks until it falls apart.

Photo via Sebastian Junger.

I have just one complaint about War, the new book from Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and a documentary filmmaker. In the book, Junger draws a clear distinction between “war” and “combat.” War is politics and strategy. Combat, by contrast, is a personal experience entirely divorced from the politics driving it. The book should have been called Combat.

In 2007 and 2008 Junger and his photographer Tim Hetherington spent several months living with a platoon of U.S. Army paratroopers in eastern Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. At one point during a spike in the fighting, the 30 young men of Junger’s Second Platoon — part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade based in Italy — accounted for around a third of all the combat experienced by the 160,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan. Half of the platoon fell dead or wounded. Others suffered psychological injuries.

“In the Korengal the soldiers never talked about the wider war — or cared,” Junger writes. They might not have realized it, but their Korengal campaign represented a turning point in the now nine-year-old war. This year, a bloodied NATO pulled out of the Korengal and some surrounding areas. The alliance characterized the move as a “realignment.” Others might consider it a retreat.

But that’s not what War is about. Instead, it’s a portrait of a small group of young men in extraordinary circumstances. It’s about the terror of imminent death. It’s about violence. Most of all, it’s about brotherhood, as the soldiers find in each other the only motivation they need to fight and risk dying. It’s not for no reason that Junger divides the book into three parts: Fear, Killing and Love.

It’s a sad, sad book. Junger lovingly paints the portrait of the scout squad leader, Larry Rougle, “a short, strong-looking man with dark eyes and jet-black hair … a legendary bad-ass and some kind of ultimate soldier.” Rougle stands with Junger on a bunker roof and surveys the rugged landscape all around. “Everything you can see, I’ve walked on,” Rougle says. Later, he dies in a bloody, complex ambush as Taliban fighters swarm isolated American outposts. Second Platoon is disbelieving, heartbroken. “You’re lyin’ right, man?” one boy cries when he hears the news.

Junger wisely follows up with some of his soldiers in the aftermath of the Korengal. One kid tries to get out of the Army but finds he can’t cope with civilian life. At “peace,” soldiers drink, grow paranoid and depressed. They pick fights. They feel angry. After combat, and the brotherhood of combat, everyday life just seems flat, silly, unfair and, ironically, at times terrifying.

“Combat was a game the United States had asked Second Platoon to become very good at, and once they had, the United States had put them on a hilltop without women, hot food, running water communication with the outside world, or any kind of entertainment for over a year,” Junger writes. “Not that the men were complaining, but that sort of thing has consequences. … [S]ociety should be careful what it asks for.”

Read an in-depth discussion of War with me and the author over at Firedoglake.

Saturday at 5:00 PM Eastern time, I will be moderating a two-hour online book discussion with author Sebastian Junger over at Firedoglake. Junger’s new book War follows a platoon of U.S. Army paratroopers in eastern Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley during some of the most brutal fighting of the war. Junger, the author of The Perfect Storm, will answer questions about the book, his work and his upcoming documentary on the Korengal. Please join us.