The Forever War Final Post

I chose to read The Forever War because the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were topics that I was interested in. These wars are continually debated in America so I believed that it was an important world issue to learn about. I did not really know a lot about either war before beginning this book. While this book did not really give me a lot of specific and technical information about the logistics of the wars, I think it allowed me to understand something even more important. Filkins’s novel explores the human aspects of these wars. It delves deep into the psyches of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Filkins explores the relationships between the people themselves, between the people and the Americans, and essentially is able to create an accurate and lively portrait of the citizens of these countries. Filkins specifically focuses on Iraq (his exploration of Afghanistan is mainly used for comparison) as that is the more complex issue. I think that Filkins’s novel is an extremely valuable one as it presents the Iraqi people in an unbiased light. Sentiment in America, mainly due to 9/11, is extremely anti-Muslim. Any and all Muslims are persecuted solely for their appearance and religion. The Forever War presents the Iraqi people as individuals with personalities, dreams, and goals. Whether we support their aims or not is irrelevant in Filkins’s book, his goal seems solely to open our eyes to a culture that we do not understand. With understanding of their culture comes compassion and sympathy for a country full of people that ultimately want the same freedoms that we, as Americans, enjoy.

The Forever War taught me that the Iraqi people are complex. Their loyalties can change instantly as they perceive another side will bring them more benefits. Ultimately, however, they all want the same freedom. No matter what side they are on all of the Iraqi people constantly fear for their lives due to the extreme instability of their country. The daily bombings and the violence of the insurgents are random and swift. There are so many reasons for which any individual may be killed, whether it is purposeful or accidental. I think that the root of the problem in Iraq is this perpetual fear and the constant state of mistrust. The Americans are unable to create any strong foothold in Iraq because they cannot communicate their goals effectively. Therefore, the Iraqi people are easily swayed by members of their own population. This has created an atmosphere in which the majority of the Iraqi people hate Americans. They all agree that they want the American occupation to end, but beyond that the Sunnis and Shiites descend into civil war. Even members of the same group attack each other as there are varying degrees of belief. This state of instability reveals the problems that the Iraqi people will have even after the American troops have been completely withdrawn.

Filkins’s account of the Iraq war was mostly grim but it was the moments of hope that were the most beautiful. The moments in which strong Iraqi individuals were portrayed or generous American commanders formed relationships with civilians revealed the bright spots in a country ravaged by war. However, The Forever War left me, ultimately, with a sense of despair. Filkins was able to leave Iraq eventually to return home. The Iraqi people are unable to leave their country. They continue to face threats to their lives every day. It will be interesting to see what happens once American troops are withdrawn and the Iraqi people are left with a country that they helped destroy.

The Forever War Post 5

Initially, the American backed democratic parliament in Iraq had a plausible structure. Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, the supreme Shiite religious authority, was at the center of this parliament. It was through his influence that the Shiite majority would gain dominance in Iraq and lead the country. With Sistani’s support of the American political project, the Shiite Iraqis would be able to become legitimate leaders of the country. Then, Muqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi who had wanted to join the Shiite exiled leaders and the Americans but was refused, called for an uprising against the new government. A year after the Americans had arrived and only a short time after the new government had been installed, Muqtada was able to gain control of key places in the country. With his attack, the new Iraqi police and army (the backbone of the new state) melted away. The country disintegrated into civil war as Iraqis began to fight their own people.

The Americans were essentially powerless to stop the fighting. It was impossible to separate the insurgents from the ordinary civilians as they were now essentially the same thing. Additionally, the nature of the Iraqi people hindered the Americans. The Iraqi people discovered that they could fool the Americans into thinking that the supported their political aims while still maintaining their own agenda. Chalabi, a powerful exiled Iraqi, had played a significant role in encouraging the United States to go to war with Iraq. It was Chalabi who had initially assured the Americans that Saddam Hussein was building nuclear weapons in Iraq. As the situation in Iraq imploded and no nuclear weapons showed up the United States disregarded Chalabi. Chalabi then returned to Iraq to run for a seat on the parliament. In his campaign he stated that Americans, while getting rid of Saddam, did not liberate Iraq. He continued on to state that it is now up to the Iraqi people to take control of their own country. As Filkins referred to him, Chalabi was a gamesman, exile, idealist, and fraud. Essentially, “Chalabi was Iraq” (257). Chalabi represents a specific example that stands for all of the citizens of Iraq. It was easy for them to gain support and trust from the Americans while still maintaining their own goals.

The American soldiers were authorized to give money to Iraqi civilians for projects such as schools, roads, and irrigation citizens. Filkins details how ordinary civilians understood that to get money from the American soldiers the needed to act in a certain way around them. However, once Filkins was able to talk to these people alone they revealed their anti-American tendencies. Even Filkins was taken advantage of by some of the Iraqi people he hired to bring him information. The language barrier alone contributed to an ability to trick Americans, as Iraqi people could say one thing in English and another in Arabic. What was most interesting to me was that some of the Americans were aware that the Iraqi people were double-crossing them, but there was essentially nothing they could do about it. The Americans had to do something to show that they were making a difference in the country and this included building new projects. The Americans essentially chose to ignore the duplicity of the Iraqi people and considered only that which supported their democratic aims.

The Forever War Post 4

In Afghanistan, Filkins had enjoyed the protection that his reporter status gave him. He was able to talk to just about anyone he wanted to and gain insight into the lives of the people without a major threat to his well-being. In the beginning, Filkins enjoyed this same experience in Iraq. Filkins was able to take nightly runs around the city and talk with the guards. They would let him pass with laughter and smiles. However, as conditions in Iraq deteriorated even Filkins’s status as a reporter would not be able to save his life.

Filkins was easily identifiable as an American and as the Iraqi mindset became increasingly hostile towards America, people became increasingly aggressive towards Filkins. Filkins was one of the few Americans that would listen to the people, as the soldiers were prone to violence, and the people unburdened hateful comments about America. They saw Filkins as a representative of America and assumed that he embodied everything they hated about American occupation in their country. When Filkins went to one of the kebab stands that he had been to multiple times without any trouble, the other customers became silent and started to whisper about killing him. Filkins translator, Jaff, rescued him from many situations in which angry Iraqis intended to kill Filkins or take him to the insurgents. Truthfully, this did not surprise me as I read the threats against Filkins life. As a reporter in an unstable country he was bound to face dangers every day. It was especially dangerous because Filkins did not live and work inside the Green Zone, the heavily protected American base. What did surprise me was how long Filkins was able to survive in Iraq without any real instances of torture or attack. Part of this is due to the security team that Filkins was able to assemble. However, most of it was due to Filkins friendliness and Jaff’s skill as a translator.

Another focus of these chapters was the election and democracy that America was trying to promote in Iraq. Filkins attended a meeting in which some of the 7,400 candidates gave short speeches to legitimize their claim to a seat on the parliament. The area was surrounded by armed guards and many of the candidates did not speak up for fear of punishment. However, Filkins saw hope in the meeting. As Iraqi people began to speak up and ask questions of the candidates the meeting began to resemble a real democracy. On the day of the voting, Filkins was astonished at the number of people that braved the bombs of the insurgents to cast their ballot. As one voter said, “We all have to die… to die for this, well, at least I will be dying for something” (243). The Iraqi people saw hope for their future in these elections and wanted to take part in creating a better, safer country. Not all of them had hope for Americanized democracy, but they understood the strength in the power of the people and voted to let their own citizens have a voice.

The Forever War Post 3

A large aspect of Part Two is the violence that Filkins sees while he is in Iraq. Filkins only writes about his own personal hope for the country's future in one chapter, The View from the Air. In this chapter, as he looks down at the country of Iraq from a plane, he can encompass the country in one look. He can imagine the Iraq people uniting together through a time of struggle in order to emerge victorious. However, when Filkins lands he confronts the brutal reality of the war. The Iraqi people are not uniting. Rather, they live in a state of perpetual fear and mistrust due to the nature of the insurgents.

The Iraqi insurgency began shortly after Americans entered Iraq in 2003. The insurgency encompasses all militia groups, foreign fighters, or rebels that are fighting to get Americans out of the country. The insurgents fight against not only American soldiers, but their own people as well. The insurgents punish any Iraq people they believe to be remotely associated with America or the American soldiers. It almost seems to be an elaborate cycle. The insurgents inflict violence on Americans and their own people, while the American soldiers attempt to counteract the insurgents’ murders but kill many innocent civilians in the process. It is this daily violence that characterizes the landscape of Iraq as Filkins explains it.

However, the brutality underlying this violence astonished me. The brutality came from both the American soldiers and the Iraq insurgents. The American soldiers, in increasing attempts to end violence with violence, ordered more violent punishments for captured insurgents. In one such instance, two captured insurgents were pushed into the freezing cold Tigris River when they would not reveal information. One of the men did not survive. Since the Army has rules against this type of punishment, the men who carried out the orders were punished. Those higher up who had ordered for it to happen were not. This misplacement of the blame is a whole different problem. However, the punishment in and of itself is a big issue. It is clear that this type of punishment is inhumane and should not occur, however I understand why the American soldiers felt compelled to undertake such punishments. They became consumed by the Iraqi mentality, “an eye for an eye.” The actions of the insurgents were becoming increasingly violent and the American soldiers were powerless to stop it. Those two insurgents they captured represented a small part of a much bigger machine that could not be stopped.

The actions of the insurgents were often hard to read about. Filkins details their acts of a brutality in a calm, reporter style so it almost did not seem real. One of the main branches of the insurgents’ attempted attack on the Americans and their supporters was the suicide branch. As 9/11 was occurring in the United States, hundreds of suicide bombers were wreaking havoc every day in Iraq. The suicide bombers drove trucks filled with gasoline into walls, strapped bombs to their bodies, tossed bombs into crowded marketplaces. Every day there were numerous suicide bombers detonating across the country. The information that struck me the most was where these suicide bombers were detonating bombs. They targeted schools and hospitals. They bombed the lines into the marketplace, the lines into the polling centers for voting. Every single place in which hope for the future rested, the suicide bombers destroyed. Filkins describes a tortured Iraq in which Iraqi extremists were killing their own people. It was terrible to read about the individuals who lost their lives, the Iraqi people and the soldiers, in the bombings.

The Forever War Post 2

The second part of The Forever War represents the major focus of Filkins’s novel—the war in Iraq. The exploration of the war in Iraq is described in bleaker terms than the hopeful tone of the exploration of the Afghanistan war. Filkins begins Part Two by describing the state of the democracy that the Americans attempted to erect in Iraq. Every day the democracy was getting weaker. People continually approached Filkins asking him to find their son, husband, or daughter who had been taken by the insurgents. The insurgents, those extremists fighting to get the Americans out of Iraq and take control, gained more power ever day. Hope for democracy, embodied in candidates for Iraq’s new national assembly, was continually crushed. Wijdan Al-Khuzai was a strong woman candidate who truly wanted to make a difference in the new Iraq. She was shot before the elections had even begun. However, despite daily struggles for their lives, many Iraq people had hope for democracy in the beginning. 7,471 other candidates signed up to run for 275 seats in the new parliament. Some even campaigned openly in an environment of severe mistrust and violence. Thousands of the candidates, editors, judges, and police officers hoping to make a difference were subsequently killed by the insurgents. As Filkins writes, “[The insurgents] could spot a fine mind or a tender heart wherever it might be, chase it down and kill it dead. The heart of a nation. The precision was astounding” (82). As fast as hope was born, the insurgents managed to kill it.

Despite the hope that the Iraq people initially had in democracy, they did not have any hope in the Americans. One of the most striking aspects of Filkins’s exploration of the Iraq was the anger and resentment with which the Iraq people viewed the American soldiers. Whereas the Afghanistan people had praised the Americans as saviors of their country and of democracy, the Iraq people were merely bewildered and confused as to the American’s actions. A lot of the Iraq people, while condemning the violence of his regime, supported Saddam Hussein. They blamed the chaos into which the country fell on America’s seemingly unjustified attack on Saddam Hussein. When the American soldiers attempted to help the Iraq people, the Iraq people saw only an ulterior motive (whether it was a quest for oil or world domination). After Saddam Hussein was deposed, the insurgents began to form various groups. All of these insurgent groups wanted the Americans out of Iraq; some of them wanted complete power over the country. The insurgents rose up against the American soldiers, leading to countless casualties and acts of violence every single day.

As a reporter, Filkins was somewhat detached from the American soldiers but still experienced his own struggles. While he was in danger daily, his struggles pertained more to the language barrier between Americans and the Iraq people. Filkins views this language barrier as one of the reasons the situation in Iraq deteriorated so quickly. The ordinary American soldier and the average Iraq civilian could not communicate with one another, leading to unnecessary deaths and obstacles. For example, at one American checkpoint the soldiers were ordered to search every car and shoot everyone in a car that continued past the checkpoint without stopping (it could possibly be a suicide bomber). When one truck full of children barreled past the checkpoint, the soldiers followed orders. When Filkins arrived they were shaken but not upset. “We yelled at them to stop,” one soldier explained, “everybody knows the word stop. It’s universal” (116). This ignorance was the cause of many deaths. American soldiers and Iraq citizens did not understand a common language, and could, therefore, not grasp the culture or personality of either population either.

The Forever War Post 1

The Forever War is a novel by New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins. The novel explores the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through Filkins's eyes as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East. This comprehensive view of both wars creates an intriguing novel through which the effects of American occupation in the Middle East can be seen. In the first part of The Forever War, Filkins recalls his experiences in Afghanistan beginning in September 1998.

The most striking aspect of Filkins’s exploration of Afghanistan is the duality of the people. Part One opens with a scene in a soccer stadium located in Kabul, Afghanistan. A young man accused of murder is brought into the center of the stadium while his family and the family of the victim look on. There is a custom in the Koran that says the killer must be killed in order to create peace. This "eye for an eye" mentality is at the core of the Afghanistan culture and defines much of the daily violence there. However, the young man could be spared if the victim’s family decided to forgive him. A full stadium, including Filkins, watched as the brother of the victim shot the murderer in his accepted outlet of revenge. Filkins noted the apathy of the crowd as they watched a scene that had become commonplace. Taliban leaders enforced the law of the Koran to an extreme extent, so this type of spectacle was nothing new to the people. One spectator described his emotions to Filkins when he said that "In America, you have television and movies--the cinema. Here, we have only this" (16).

However, even as Filkins saw the indifference of the crowd when presented with violence he also admired the strength within the Afghanistan people. When presented with adversity the Afghans were able to find the positive side of any situation. In the ruins of an expensive hotel, a food and drink manager attempted to keep it moderately functional despite the absence of food and drinks. He told Filkins stories of the better days, but was still able to find humor in his current situation. He laughed, almost in disbelief, as he showed Filkins a photograph of himself a few years prior standing in front of a bustling, gleaming hotel.

As I was reading Part One this strength within the Afghan people amazed me. Every individual that Filkins met in Afghanistan was surprisingly perceptive. They understood the dangers of the Taliban and admired the Americans for the peace they were trying to bring. As one man noted, recalling the gunfire of the various Taliban gangs, “I like all of the people in the world… just not soldiers.” As a reporter, Filkins was met with a warm reception by every person he met. Young orphans would run up to him with laughter and older men would share their stories without prodding. In Afghanistan, the American people were seen as saviors who rescued the country from years of fighting between the various Taliban groups who continually attempted to gain power.

Abortion

1. The Casey decision, in which the Supreme Court said that states could impose regulations on abortion as long as those burdens did not impose an undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion, opened the door for pro-life advocates to push for changes in the law. I think that undue burdens relate to various aspects of abortion. I would consider an undue burden to be anything that limits a woman's access to an abortion clinic, the money for an abortion, or a healthy environment. For example, there needs to be a certain number of abortion clinics in each state so that all women have access to a clinic. Therefore, states cannot create laws the bar an abortion clinic from opening or from existing. Laws, for example, that regulate the appearance of the clinic are unnecessary. The only laws that can be applied to abortion clinics are ones that regulate the health of those women who enter the clinic. I would also consider an extremely high cost an undue burden, as that means many women will not be able to afford abortions. Overall, I think that all women need to have easy access, transportation, cost-wise, and health-wise experiences at the abortion clinics.

2. I think that abortion services should be covered under all health care plans because abortions are procedures that relate to a woman's health. Other services that relate to health are covered and abortions should not be an exception. Tax payers would end up paying for those children that are born to woman that want an abortion anyways. These children would end up in orphanages or homes that cannot function. I think it is a better option to provide abortions than to have children in the world that are not being cared for appropriately.

3. I think that abortion should be legal with some restrictions. For example, abortions should only be able to occur at certain points in the pregnancy and in certified abortion clinics. At all moments the main consideration should be the health of the mother. However, I think that abortions are necessary because it is a proven fact that the majority of women who want an abortion are poor or unstable and they know that they cannot bring a baby into the world and care for the child in an appropriate manner. Therefore, abortions that protect the mothers' health should be completed because the alternative is more dire.

Renovations

I think that this issue is very controversial because both arguments have merit. The proposed renovations will create a better, more competitive school but if the plan is carried through then tax rates will increase. I think that the renovation plans are a great idea to some extent. When people look to move into a neighborhood one of the main aspects of the neighborhood they explore is the school district. Our schools already benefit from high test scores and great teaches, therefore, we should have a physical property that represents our full potential. The renovation plans include updating the infrastructure of the school, the heating and cooling, the technology, and various other fundamental problems that plague our school experience daily. I think that a lot of these changes are necessary. Since the plan is split into three phases (we can do them in various combinations) it makes it easier to choose those renovations that are most needed. However, there are also renovations that are not completely necessary in the daily functioning of the school but would make DHS a better school. Some of these renovations include a field house with a large swimming pool, new group study areas and common technology spaces. Changes such as these will contribute to the overall atmosphere of the school. It will allow our sports to be more competitive and feel good about the spaces in which they practice. Increased room will make scheduling easier and by updating our sports facilities we will be on par with the other schools around us. Currently, DHS and HPHS are stuck with older, unorganized facilities. I think that it would be nice to have an updated school.

The district, however, faces tough questions. In order to fund these renovations a tax increase and the selling of bonds is necessary. However, this does not seem daunting when you consider that current taxes reflect the 2004 renovations. If we undertake these new renovations on a smaller-scale then the tax burden will simply remain the same instead of going down. My position is that our school should represent our academic excellence. We should undertake some of the renovations proposed, but not all, in order to minimize the tax burden on tax payers. I think that excellent schools with updated technology, common spaces, and new sports areas will make DHS more attractive to potential home buyers and increase the way of life at school.