Winner of the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Awardhttp://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/2008_nonfiction_finalist_the_forever_war_by_dexter_filkins/

The author had a great deal of experience reporting from Afghanistan and Irag and gives detailed insight into the local situation during his time in each war arena. A more personal account of the actual participants then can be gleaned from news accounts. ( )

Magnificent, chilling, and compelling war reporting. Still working my way through, but immensely impressive.

Some days I thought we had broken into a mental institution. One of the old ones, from the nineteenth century, where people were dumped and forgotten. 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 your analysis. Murder and torture and sadism: it was part of Iraq. It was in people's brains. ( )

If you read only one book about Afghanistan and Iraq this is it. The rare non-fiction that"ll make you want to cry. Strongly recommend. ( )

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins war memoirs from 1997 to 2005, mostly covering the period 2002-2005 in Iraq. Much of it previously published so I experienced deja-vu re-reading passages I remembered from years ago in the Times. Obviously much of it is unforgettable, it has become a vital part of my own experience of the war, as if I was there before and was re-reading an account of what I witnessed, which speaks to the power of the writing and events.

I recommend Filkins's hour long presentation at Google Talks, given just a few weeks after he returned from Iraq, it's what inspired me to read the book. ( )

Outstanding and compelling. Also hard to read. Action takes place before the surge. Cold comfort but a book like this can quickly be dated by events.

Saw Filkins do a piece for the Newshour on PBS. Seemed unprepared and a bit unprofessional. ( )

First hand account of life in Iraq during the insurgency. Grim book in its implications--the title says it all. The book captures the craziness of Iraq and the bravery (foolishness) of the soldiers/reporters. One lapses into the other repeatedly. To say there is a cultural disconnect is to understate the situation. ( )

filkins seems more sympathetic to the afghans than the iraqis. i'm an esl teacher and i am the same. interesting because of its focus on individuals. ( )

An in depth look of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq by the people who live it night and day. The author goes to great detail (and sometimes great danger) to recount the stories of local populations, soldiers, politicians and even insurgents and how the war has effected them and their lives. The author gets various opinions from all sorts of people all over the region. It is a wonderful way to examine not only how American's on the ground view the war, but also local Iraqi's and how the cope with their backyard being a constant war zone. I would suggest this book to whoever wants an un-biased view on either the war in Afghanistan or the war in Iraq. ( )

Filkins manages to give the reader, what it feels like, an insider's view of the war. He was in Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban and not only reflects the well know atrocities but completes the gloomy picture with the stories of individual Afghans.

He was in Iraq and clearly depicts many views into the doings and misdoings of all sides, the Americans and the Iraqis and foreign fighters, from the Court Martial acts to the funny scenes and the Iranian links. ( )

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Great writing about horrific stuff. First off, let me say Dexter Filkins is one helluva good writer. Secondly, I have to tell you that I could only read this book in small portions, a chapter or two at a time, and then put it aside for a time to digest the horror and near hopelessness of what he was describing about his several years - yes,YEARS - spent reporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. During those months and years, Filkins made it a point to get to know the men and officers he worked with and wrote about them, unsentimentally, but still in ways that will break your heart. Here's a brief sample.

"Corporal Nathan Anderson was dead. He was a lanky kid from a small town in Ohio who was always taking his buddies' spare change to raise money for his sister's college tuition. Af few days before, after we'd run through machine-gun fire to cross 40th Street, Anderson had braved gunfire to go back and rescue his friends. Anderson's buddies did the same here, charging into the gunfire to get him. He'd died in their arms."

There are so many small stories of lives cut short here, they will make you weep. Cpl Romulo Jiminez, a hot rod fanatic from West Virginia, shot through the spine, dead. Sgt Lonny Wells, who loved to play poker and "knew all the probabilities," killed by gunfire crossing that same 40th Street. Cpl Gentian Marku, an Albanian immigrant who came to the US at 14, shot and killed on Thanksgiving day. I almost had to turn away as I read these short personal histories, but Filkins did his job; he told their stories.

"There wasn't any point in sentimentalizing the kids; they were trained killers, after all. They could hit a guy at five hundred yards or cut his throat from ear-to-ear. And they didn't ask a lot of questions. They had faith and they did what they were told and they killed people ... Out there in Falluja, in the streets, I was happy they were in front of me."

During his time in the wars, Filkins crossed paths with people you've read about in the newspapers - Paul Bremer, the various commanding generals who have come and gone in the two theaters of the "forever war" on terror. He even crossed the border into Iran and sat in on a meeting between Chalabi and Ahmadinejad. He takes you into the maze-like intricacies of intrigue and vengeance that are common in the tribal systems that have held sway in this region for centuries - things that western minds can simply not comprehend. He makes you feel the grime, the sweat, the unrelenting 100-plus degree heat that permeates everything - in Baghdad, Kabul, Kandahar and Ramadi. You will jog with Filkins along the Tigris river where he is pursued by packs of wild dogs and intimidated by Iraqi checkpoint guards - an insanely dangerous routine he can't seem to stop. Filkins put himself in harm's way repeatedly and always managed to narrowly avert capture and death, and not a few times because some young soldier saved him - at great sacrifice. He is still haunted by those times, and wonders if it was worth it, particularly when he is confronted by a woman who has just voted in the first democratic elections in Iraq -

"'I voted in order to prevent my country from being destroyed by its enemies,; she said ... What enemies, I asked ... 'You - you destroyed our country,' Saadi said. 'The Americans, the British. I am sorry to be impolite. But you destroyed ou country and you called it democracy. Democracy,' she said. 'It is just talking.' ... "

Filkins realizes with sadness that East does not meet West, that there is perhaps an uncrossable chasm between the two cultures that can never be bridged. THE FOREVER WAR is fine journalism, a book that should stand beside the works of Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin; a work to be shelved between Herr's Dispatches and O'Brien's The Things They Carried. ( )

This is one of the saddest and best books so far on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Filkins saw just about everything and was there long enough to be able to put it into context for us. ( )

Wow. This is an awesome book about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Dexter worked for the LA Times and NY Times when he was in country. One of the best "at war" books I've read. ( )

Another depressing account... ( )

Filkins is a foreign correspondent who travelled widely and lived in Afghanistan and Iraq. This book describes his impressions of Afghanistan under the Taliban (from September 1998) through to their overthrow. But the bulk of the book is centred on his years in Iraq, monitoring, analyzing, reporting on events following the US invasion in 2003. Filkins is an astute observer and someone who tried to stay close the Iraqi people and what they were experiencing, rather than retreating into the Green Zone as the security situation grew more and more perilous.

The theme, the odour of violence pervades in both countries, but Filkin strives to see beyond that, to understand, and to see the goodness that does still exist. His description of Afghanistan under the Taliban: “The brutality one could witness in the course of a working day was often astonishing, the casualness of it more so; and the way that brutality had seeped into every corner of human life was a thing to behold. And yet somewhere, deep down, a place in the heart stayed tender.” And in Iraq: “Murder and torture and sadism: it was part of Iraq. It was in people’s brains.”

In Iraq, Filkins charts the mismanagement, the missed opportunities of the successful US invasion, the descent into chaos, political infighting, violence, and ethnic cleansing, and the increasing disconnect between two worlds:

“There were always two conversations in Iraq, the one the Iraqis were having with the Americans and the one they were having among themselves. The one the Iraqis were having with us—that was positive and predictable and boring, and it made the Americans happy because it made them think they were winning. And the Iraqis kept it up because it kept the money flowing, or because it bought them a little peace. The conversation they were having with each other was the one that really mattered of course. That conversation was the chatter of a whole other world, a parallel reality, which sometimes unfolded right next to the Americans, even right in front of them. And we almost never saw it.”

Barriers to understanding were everywhere: cultural, historical, political, social: “…for many Iraqis, the typical nineteen-year-old army corporal from South Dakota was not a youthful innocent carrying America’s goodwill; he was a terrifying combination of firepower and ignorance.” And yet, Filkins, who spent a good deal of time in combat with marines, has an abiding respect and caring for these young soldiers, thrown into impossible situations that they cannot fathom, exposed to very real danger and death, in a world where firepower trumps nuance every time to the detriment of relations with Iraqis, but where they will risk their lives for each other and then return home, dead or battered to grieving families in small towns.

Read by Robertson Dean; Filkins, a correspondent for the New York Times, focuses on the human experience of war through a multitude of personal observations and intimate interviews with both participants and civilians. Beginning in Afghanistan in the mid 1990s and moving over to Iraq just prior to the U.S. invasion, he details the everyday lives of Afghanis and Iraqis, as well as American soldiers. He interviews insurgents, bystanders, and politicians. While commenting on the political reality of the situations he witnesses, Filkins eschews any sort of political agenda, painting all parties involved in both positive and negative lights, always highlighting the terrible physical, emotional, and moral toll these wars wreck on everyone. Of special interest are sections illuminating the lives of members of the press in Iraq, the decent into Shiite/Sunni civil war of occupied Iraq, and a concise history of the chain of brutal occupiers of Afghanistan, from the Soviets to the warlords to the Taliban. Dean does a remarkable job of voicing a myriad of regional accents without resorting to caricature, and of slipping from calm discussions of soldiers’ lives back home or political wrangling to urgent and extremely visceral narrations of combat or torture, often in the span of two paragraphs. His reading voice is deep and extremely nuanced. Constant and extremely graphic descriptions of violence to men, women, and children, including torture and suicide; non-stop explicit language; explicit descriptions of bodily functions.

The Forever War is Dexter Filkins's personal account of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a foreign correspondent for the New York Times stationed in Afghanistan (2001-02) and Iraq (2003-06), Filkins has bona fides in spades. Fortunately, he's also a good writer. Filkins's straightforward prose is well-crafted and clear, never detracting from the real story.
Rather than a comprehensive account of the wars, The Forever War is a zoom lens focusing on discrete scenes. One scene might describe a roof-top discussion with a patrolling U.S. marine, while the next scene jumps to an interview with the family of a suicide bomber. Filkins doesn't waste any time with transitions between unrelated scenes. This choppy structure is occasionally jarring but becomes easier to follow over time. Taken together, the disparate scenes reveal a great deal about the larger war, particularly the futility of the conflict. Despite aggrandizing political statements to the contrary, things aren’t getting any better in Iraq, and there’s no clear way forward. At times, I found myself wishing for a more global perspective—a more panoramic shot—to help me understand the larger picture and to place Filkins's experiences within a more complete timeline. However, there are plenty of other books that present that perspective. In this book, Filkins is trying to do something different and far more valuable.

This review also appears on my blog Literary License. ( )

Filkins's book is not so much a coherent story as it is a collection of multiple and, at times, repetitive vignettes, designed to hammer home his main point to the reader: that THIS WAR IS COMPLICATED. My god I've never seen so much gray in my life as I did when reading this book. Filkins does a fabulous job of painting an accurate, depressing, nuanced picture of what's *really* going on over there. Recommend to anyone who wants the facts about America's 10 years of war-mongering in the Middle East. ( )

Excellent, spare writing about the war.

Most informative (and fascinating) book I've read regarding our military adventures in the Middle East. ( )

The Immorality of War

If you read one book this year, Dexter Filkin's "Forever War" should be the one. Filkins has spent the past decade at the center of the two major conflict zones of this generation in Afghanistan and Iraq. To date, nobody has been able to capture the day to day events on the ground for the entire length of time as realistically as Filkins has done in "Forever War." It is truly a gem of a book.

As a journalist for the New York Times, Filkins is uniquely positioned to witness the barbarity of war first hand and put that experience onto paper like no one else can. When compared to Evan Wright's "Generation Kill," I think Filkins is more polished, more accomplished and therefore there is a profound sense of professionalism throughout that is sometimes laking in "Generation Kill."

The book is structured very much like a diary. Written in the first person, the stories are personal stories. Filkins writes about things that are happening to him and he mixes in some of the major news stories of both Afghanistan and Iraq such as John Walker Lindh, Jessica Lynch, the 4 contractors in Falluja, Nicholas Berg, or Jill Carroll.

We get more than just canned reports from being inside the Green Zone. Filkins tells us what's happening in the streets. For example, in Afghanistan he writes: "In my many trips to Afghanistan, I grew to adore the place, for its beauty and its perversions... I sat in a mud-brick hut near Bamiyan, the site of a gnawing famine, and a man and his family pressed upon me, their overfed American guest, their final disk of bread." (p. 24).

His selection of words, style of writing, its clear that Filkins is an accomplished writer in his own right. He writes: "So the war could go on forever. Men fought, men switched sides, men lined up and fought again. War in Afghanistan often seemed like a game of pickup basketball, a contest among frineds, a tournament where you never knew which team you'd be on when the next game got under way. Shirts today, skins tomorrow." (p 51). The writing is just so fluid, vivid, and ingenuousness. You can't help but stop, reread, and admire passages like that.

Another major coup for Filkins is his impartiality. That is no easy feat for an American, reporting on Americans in foreign lands, there is a built-in bias which is hard to get away from. Filkins shows everything, he gives you the raw data, and he lets you the reader decide what to think. Obviously he has his opinions, but he keeps them mostly close to the vest. I think the following passage captures his sentiments perfectly: "There were ugly moments and there were hopeful ones, and they made me wonder not only what the Americans were doing to Iraq, but what Iraq was doing to the Americans. The struggle for the country was mirrored in the hearts of the men." (p. 152).

The Battle of Falluja is one of the parts of the book (Chp Pearland) that will literally make you cringe. At times, the writing is so raw, unedited, and macabre you literally feel yourself inside the humvee, or on the street, or hunkered down behind a barricade. If there ever was a hell on earth, it certainly was Falluja in 2004.

Last but not least, the story of Jill Carroll's kidnapping, and specifically Filkins role in attempting to find her and secure her release is just the perfect story that symbolizes the complex underground labyrinth of Iraq at war. I can tell that Filkins still thinks about those days quite a bit.

I wouldn't be surprised if "Forever War" or portions of were made into a movie, or if it won the Pulitzer Prize, it really is that good. Filkins deserves every praise, every award for this incredible memoir. ( )