Anti-war activism from the deepest of patriotic roots, advocated by those who have paid a heavy price in order to speak.
Veterans from far-flung conflicts decry the American way of war.
The writers whom Bacevich and Sjursen assemble all take a sharp-eyed view of combat. “My childhood delusions of saving the galaxy like Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, or Lando Calrissian were met with the stark reality of being a mere storm trooper for the US empire.” So writes one veteran of Afghanistan in a classic trope of childhood-inspired enthusiasm for war soured by reality. He has particular authority, for the writer is Kevin Tillman, brother of NFL star Pat Tillman, both of whom became Army Rangers after 9/11. Pat died, a victim of friendly fire, worried that their mission was being hijacked by those who would turn the American soldier into “a glorified state-sponsored terrorist.” That’s just how it played out. As Gil Barndollar writes, when his unit requested the code name Hessian (denied), it was with a knowing nod to history, while most of their time was spent killing “dirt farmers,” as a Navy SEAL said bitterly. According to Iraq veteran Roy Scranton, whereas war can unite a nation (“A dead soldier makes the imagined community of the nation real”), it can also divide it, especially if that war is waged for cynical reasons or on the basis of lies. There you have Iraq, a war that the dedicatee of this edited volume, the late Maj. Ian Fishback, helped expose as corrupt. In a powerful introduction, Bacevich writes about his fears for the long-lasting effects of those wars, as the “flagrant malpractice by those at the top [has] inflicted untold damage on the troops we ostensibly esteem, on populations US policymakers vowed to liberate, and ultimately on our own democracy. The adverse effects of war are by no means confined to the immediate arena in which fighting occurs.”
Anti-war activism from the deepest of patriotic roots, advocated by those who have paid a heavy price in order to speak.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-87017-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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