Generation Kill by Evan Wright (4 stars)

A friend lent me this after I raved about the HBO miniseries of the same name created by the brains trust behind The Wire (my favourite TV show of all time) - Ed Burns and David Simon. The HBO series is brilliant and, like The Wire, struck me as a brilliant warts-and-all exposé.

I usually don't like reading the book after watching 'the movie', because I find myself inserting scenes from the movie in my head instead of using my own imagination. I felt the same in this case, although I think this is one of the very rare situations where the TV show is as good as, or better than, the book. As an aside: Sgt. Rudy Reyes plays himself in the HBO series!

The full title of the book is Generation Kill: Living dangerously on the road to Baghdad with the ultraviolent Marines of Bravo Company. It was written by a Rolling Stone reporter who travelled with the elite of the American Marines: the Recon Marines that were at 'tippity-tip' of the pointy end of the initial invasion of Iraq.

The marines are all complex characters. Many of them are conflicted and disillusioned, some extremely well educated, while others occasionally fit the mold of stupid killing machines that love war. The latter produced some of the most horrible and memorable quotes:

[Trombley:]"I was just thinking one thing when we drove into that ambush," he enthuses. "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I felt like I was living it when I seen the flames coming out of windows, the blown-up car in the street, guys crawling around shooting at us. It was fucking cool."

Tonight he entertains his fellow troops by pacing the tent, reading letters aloud sent by schoolchildren to boost morale. He opens one from a girl who writes that she is praying for world peace. He throws it down. "Hey, little tyke", Person shouts. "What does this say on my shirt? 'U.S. Marine!' I wasn't born on some hippie-faggot commune. I'm a death-dealing killer. In my free time I do push-ups until my knuckles bleed. Then I sharpen my knife."

"They kill hundreds of people, those pilots. I would have loved to have flown the plane that dropped the bomb on Japan. A couple of dudes killed hundreds of thousands. That fucking rules! Yeah!"

[Person:]"I just read that all these pussy pop stars like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears were going to make an antiwar song. When I become a pop star, I'm just going to make pro-war songs."

In the TV series, the Marine senior leadership appears totally incompetent, they constantly endanger the lives of First Recon in ways that seem astounding. They frequently send the marines into known ambushes and against suspected tank battalions in open-top un-armoured humvees without air or artillery support. In the book the strategy actually gets explained, and the author has a grudging respect for it:

The rationale makes sense when it's explained to me by [General] Mattis after the invasion: The small force [First Recon] races up back roads ahead of the big force rolling behind on the main road. The enemy orients their troops and weapons on the small force (not realizing it's the small one), and the big force hits them where they're not looking for it. It's a trick that works best when you're going up against an army like Iraq's, which has no air assets and bad communications and will have a tough time figuring out that the small force is just a decoy. I admire the plan when Mattis and others explain it to me. And in a way, I'm glad I didn't know about it in advance, because it would have been scarier to remain with Second Platoon. Perhaps this is why they didn't tell the Marines in the platoon about this plan either.

The most depressing part of the book is reading about the continued tolerated incompetence of key officers that constantly endangers everyone's lives, and results in civilian and Marine casualties. 'Captain America' abusing a prisoner and 'Encino Man' calling in a 'danger-close' artillery strike that would almost certainly have killed the platoon come to mind. Thankfully most of the time the other officers and enlisted men can negate the stupidity and incompetence.

Very interesting book and miniseries.

4 stars.