The latest release from ex-Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren, author of controversial Iraq reconstruction expose We Meant Well, is set during World War Two. We may find ourselves in 1940s Japan, but Hooper’s War aims its barbs dead-center at the contemporary conflagrations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The men and women in Hooper confront the complex ethical decisions of war, torture, drone-like killings, and the aftermath of moral injury and PTSD. This is an antiwar novel for people who enjoy a good war story—think Catch-22. Sometimes funny, sometimes deadly serious.” —Peter Van Buren
Hooper’s War is fiction, but if it reads anything like We Meant Well the mission will stick to you like the sweaty dust of reality itself:
We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People stands shoulder-to-shoulder with many other great war books. The food is bad and the environment gritty. The Colonel’s in charge; body armor’s strapped on; everybody piles into helos or Humvees to leave base. A young soldier, comrade torn by hot shrapnel, ignores the bloody gristle staining his cheek to stop the damn bleeding.
Throughout Peter Van Buren’s story, the screech of mortality hangs overhead.
My copy of All Quiet on the Western Front is a tattered thing. The cover, already coming apart in brittle pieces, fell off entirely as I read. It was appropriate to the fate of narrator Paul Baumer to see that cover come away.
It is the father of all modern war writing (though it disdains fathers).
It gives us the Lost Generation in its rawest form. It came out about the same time as A Farewell to Arms (1929) and Remarque seems to have tapped the same narrative vein as Hemingway. Is it the standard voice of those who witnessed firsthand the horrors of WWI; or is it the standard voice of all warrior-writers? Mailer, Heller, Tim O’Brien, Kevin Powers write with the same wry tension when they write of the Second World War, Vietnam, the most recent war in Iraq.
Heller is far windier than the others, so it surprises me to think that so much of Catch-22‘s invective can be found in Remarque. It is invective born of rage at the military as an institution, at institutional blindness writ-large.
A lot of excuses have been made on behalf of Brian Williams since his fabrications went public last week. None of them are good. None of them can buy back the credibility every journalist requires as their professional stock in trade. But I was surprised to find one of the worst excuses in The New Yorker on Sunday, a piece titled Brian Williams and the God Complex.
AP Photo/NBC/Dwaine Scott
I take exception to more than one point Ken Auletta makes along the way, but here’s his worst:
While the spotlight is on Williams’ transgressions, a word about the complicity of NBC and the other networks’ marketing machines. The networks have a stake in promoting their anchors as God-like figures… On his helicopter in Iraq, Williams was accompanied by an NBC crew. Did they not speak up to correct the record for fear of undermining the powerful anchor?
First, nobody is to blame for Williams’ transgressions other than Williams himself. He made these falsified claims on numerous occasions over several years, statements made with bloated self-importance and the intent to convince a viewership of his heartiness and bravery. But now we find in him the opposite: cowardice… he remains afraid of the truth. His performance last Wednesday, far from heartfelt apology, was just more spin, insincerity, and excuse making.
Second, in what hierarchical structure does “the crew” have latitude to “correct the record”? Does Auletta suggest that a cameraman should come forward publicly on his own, putting his livelihood in jeopardy? Another crew—the military crew flying Williams’ Chinook—had already been howling publicly for years about the falsehoods, to no avail. It might be fair to ask if a crewmember approached the NBC brass about the issue, but we’ve already learned from Auletta’s own argument that the network would have no interest in such claims. After all, he says, they have a stake in Williams’ God-like status.
Another excuse Auletta offers is that “The anchor is treated as the citizen’s trusted guide to the news. As a result, they can feel expected to dominate discussions, to tell war stories, to play God. It’s a short distance from there to telling fantastic stories—and maybe actually believing them.”
Maybe this pop psychology is true. But believing one’s own lies through repetition does not excuse mendacity. And in the case of an anchor—a journalist—it flies in the face of a core professional value. Rather than excuse Williams, this line of reasoning should serve to shame him further. A “trusted guide” is a position of humility, not omnipotence. It is a position of responsibility, not power.
None of this should have surprised me given the thin gruel with which the article began. At the outset Auletta compares Williams’ situation with that of former Miami Dolphins Quarterback Dan Marino: “I’m reminded of Marino because he just appeared on my TV screen as a pitchman for Nutrisystem”. So, this piece is driven by whimsy? By the chance appearance on TV of a disgraced celebrity? There is barely the thinnest of connections between an NFL star’s off-field philandering, and subsequent cover-up, and a trusted journalist’s blatant, repeated disregard for his professional code of ethics while on the job.
No, Williams’ case is less like Dan Marino’s, and more like that of Milli Vanilli, the 80’s pop stars who hopped around in black tights while pretending to sing, “Girl you know it’s true…” All performance, all show, all sizzle and no bacon. And now, we know, it just isn’t true.
In time for Veteran’s Day (also Armistice Day), Atticus Review posted my latest look at today’s literature with David S. Atkinson‘s The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes.
What better way to suggest the futility of the human experience than with a card game called Armistice? This game is not War, it is Armistice. Because, as the narrator ofThe Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes by David S. Atkinson explains, “Battles have costs. Even the winner of a battle is a loser in some way, at least most of the time.” Armistice, like life, is a game that proves there is no winning. Not even in victory.
The latest release from ex-Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren, author of controversial Iraq reconstruction expose We Meant Well, is set during World War Two. We may find ourselves in 1940s Japan, but Hooper’s War aims its barbs dead-center at the contemporary conflagrations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It gives us the Lost Generation in its rawest form. It came out about the same time as A Farewell to Arms (1929) and Remarque seems to have tapped the same narrative vein as Hemingway. Is it the standard voice of those who witnessed firsthand the horrors of WWI; or is it the standard voice of all warrior-writers? Mailer, Heller, Tim O’Brien, Kevin Powers write with the same wry tension when they write of the Second World War, Vietnam, the most recent war in Iraq.
