The Will to Resist (a short book review)

Some of you may have heard about a young mountain guide in Alaska who was so disgusted by the "cheerleading" mainstream media in the prelude to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he decided to head to Iraq himself and find out what was going on.

That journalist's name is Dahr Jamail. He is originally from Texas, but over the last six years he's traveled to the Middle East many times, reporting independently (as in unembedded, that is not "in bed with" the military) from around Iraq as well as Syria and the Gulf states.

Dahr also travels extensively across North America and Europe speaking about the realities of America's war making and the cold, ugly truth about how it impacts civilian populations. I was fortunate enough to meet, interview and listen to Dahr here on Kauai in December 2006. I was impressed with Dahr's ability to tell in very stark, honest terms what he saw and experienced in Iraq. Dahr is a raging critic of U.S. militarism, but he is far from unhinged; rather he's calm, measured and has done his homework, and then some.

An interview I did with him at that first meeting ran in the Haleakala Times, a one-time liberal small newspaper on Maui. The accompanying story is still on line here. A second article about Dahr's work ran in the Monthly Review (MR Zine on line) here.

Better still, google "Dahr Jamail" and listen to what he has to say. There is plenty out there...

This week, Dahr's second book was published. It is a quick, sharp read and essential for anyone who wants to know how many in the military are holding up under the prolonged strain of war.

A short review of this new book follows:

For those who thought the anti-war movement in America was dead, independent journalist Dahr Jamail shines a brilliant, revealing light on an under-reported, overlooked segment of the resistance in his second book The Will to Resist: Soldiers who refuse to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jamail, a former mountain guide in Alaska, was so dissatisfied by the lack of critical reporting in the early days of the Iraq war, he decided to head for the conflict and dig for the truth on his own, unembedded. The result was a hard-hitting look at the U.S. military’s devastating impact on Iraqi civilians in Beyond the Green Zone (2007).

In The Will to Resist, Jamail examines the U.S. military’s impact on the very people fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – the soldiers themselves. What he describes is a brutal system that teaches young recruits to dehumanize “the enemy” and each other.

From a military culture of misogyny, homophobia, racism, and intimidation to a system that “chews ‘em up and spits ‘em out,” (battle wounds, stop-loss, and veteran’s benefits be damned), Jamail interviews scores of veterans and active duty soldiers who’ve come to realize they can’t “be all they can be” if they are killing civilians, dodging bombs, struggling with traumatic brain injuries, or plagued by suicidal urges.

Jamail documents the soldier’s experiences in their own blunt language, giving the war, and swelling internal resistance, an immediacy and realism the U.S. Military would rather go unexamined, but is increasingly hard to ignore.

With detail and clarity, Jamail describes how a growing number of soldiers are resisting by refusing orders, speaking out, acting up, coming out (of the closet), writing, blogging, demonstrating, and just plain saying “no” to wars in which they find themselves being used as disposable pawns.

Some of the stories Jamail tells are shocking, some are depressing, while others are inspiring, irrepressibly human and unexpectedly brimming with promise. The soldiers in The Will to Resist offer hope at a time when America’s war-making seems to be accepted as “just one of those things.” Even if the American public is too busy, too indifferent, or too desensitized to offer any meaningful resistance to the ongoing American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, there are a growing number of military personnel who will.

Find The Will to Resist at Haymarket Books or Amazon.