What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought ItWhat’s going on in Iraq? Do you know? Yeah, I lived in blissful ignorance too.

Yesterday, top U.S. military commanders recommended an increase in U.S. troops. Wonder if any of them have read What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It by Trish Woods. I read the book this past week and was sickened, heart broken, and very disturbed by the stories shared by marines and soldiers.

Up till now, I’d chosen not to pay much attention to the war in Iraq except for the headlines. But the nitty gritty everyday experiences of the people there are what matter the most. Luckily for me, Renee Supriano of Hachette Book Group sent me a copy of What Was Asked of Us and I took it as a sign that I could no longer pretend the entire world was happily celebrating the holidays with shopping and eggnog lattes at Starbucks. And I don’t think you should continue pretending either.

Learn more at the What Was Asked of Us MySpace.

Some book notes:

1. I usually read my books from beginning to end with little skipping around so it wasn’t until I’d read about half the book that I realized there’s a glossary of military terms and acronyms at the end. For example, I didn’t know that IED was improvised explosive device.

2. There’s a section of photographs in the middle of the book that’s nice for putting a name to a face.

3. Some passages that I want to remember:

Introduction from Bobby Muller:

June is beautiful in New York, and the day was bright and sunny, and millions of people were on the highways, going to and from work. I watched them, cocooned in their own worlds, listening to their radios, crawling at a snail’s pace along the Long Island Expressway. It was another world for me, and I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. At that moment in Vietnam, ambushes were being triggered, patrols were engaging in firefights, and young men were dying. Just weeks before, I had been there, heading into battle. Now I was here. And people were leading normal lives, as if nothing else mattered.

I wanted to scream: “Don’t you people know there’s a war going on?”

From Joseph Hatcher:

Email was weird. I don’t know if I was the only one who felt the burden of having to communicate on a daily basis when the same terrible shit was just going to be going on again, and, you know, interesting stories just mean close calls. It’s hard to maintain the exterior of being calm and collected while the entire time you’re just being torn apart. …I thought the Internet would cause a decentralization of power that would influence a new world. But instead it’s just become a haven for time wasters.

From Dr. Earl T. Hecker:

I’ve been to Normandy. I’ve been to Flanders Fields. I’ve been to all these places. The soldiers are dead. They’re dead. But this is an injury war. This is not so much a death war. Maybe that’s the way we should look at it. not dead but injured, an injury war.

From Benjamin Flanders:

If I were to ask you, ballpark–how many soldiers have died in Iraq…well, do you actually know?

I do now – 2,432 American military personnel have died in combat in Iraq since the war begin on March 19, 2003.

Iraqi Civilian Body Count

4 Comments »