Big Boy Rules: America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq
Steve Fainaru. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2008. 241 pp. Illus. Bib. Index. $26.
Reviewed by David Wood
We will be pondering for years the consequences of the strategic misjudgments made in Iraq by America's civilian and military high command. This slim, readable volume will help count the costs in tragic, personal terms. More than simply a good accounting of the private security companies operating in Iraq, this is a compelling and horrifying story of the five private security contractors kidnapped on 16 November, 2006 outside Safwan, just north of the Kuwait border. The men, with whom Fainaru had ridden on convoy duty on that route, were never again seen alive.
Common on yesterday's battlefields and today's, mercenaries came into their own in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld to the contrary, there simply weren't enough troops
and there was plenty of money. By last year the private contractors outnumbered uniformed American on the ground by 30,000 according to one estimate (no one really knows); the total cost of their known contracts ran to $25 billion, a fifth of the war's total cost.Many were professionals who served honorably; too many were sociopaths and misfits with little or no military training sent on missions without adequate communications or ordinary first aid gear such as tourniquets.
Almost all of them, in Fainaru's telling, seemed to crave the adrenalin rush of risk. John Young, a security contractor who was later among those kidnapped, once told Fainaru: "I want the normal things in life, but I am not normal." On his final leave home, he spent the entire time in his mother's basement, she told Fainaru.
They operated outside Iraqi and American law and outside supervision, policing themselves if at all under a loose set of practices they called "Big Boy Rules.''
Guarding convoys, some used the escalation-of-force procedures of the U.S. military, signaling, then firing a warning shot. But some contractors just blasted away, a practice that big boy rules easily tolerated. "There was a certain group of guys who were always trying to measure their wieners based on how many times they fired," one merc told Fainaru. Another referred to a colleague as "one of those dudes you keep in a box that says
Break Glass in Case of War.'"After four years of combat, the U.S. command had brought dozens of charges against Soldiers and Marines accused of wrongful shootings, including 64 servicemen accused of murder, Fainaru writes. At that point, not a single case had been brought against mercenaries. This would change, of course, with the Blackwater shootings of Iraqi civilians in September 2007.
Working outside real rules, private security contractors often found themselves beyond the reach of the U.S. military when they needed help. In contrast to what Fainaru characterizes as a muted U.S. military effort to find the kidnap victims, 4,000 troops were dispatched to hunt for a trio of kidnapped Army Soldiers. (True, the kidnapped mercenaries had not registered with the military's convoy tracking system, which could have quickly sent help.) "The mercs fought by their own rules and so they died by their own rules," he writes. "But there was a whiff of shame about how the military and the State Department ignored them so assiduously. It was as if by not counting them—in life or death—no one had to acknowledge that America had been reduced to relying on a private army to prosecute a war that had entered its fifth bloody year.''
Fainaru, a Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his reporting on private security contractors in Iraq, found himself in a particularly acute form of the journalists' dilemma: liking those he is covering; despising the work they are doing. "I never really resolved the ambiguity," he writes in particular about one of the young mercenaries he found most interesting. "I liked Jon the moment I met him and I fell in love with his family. But it was an ugly business he had gotten himself into, perhaps the ugliest business there was.''
David Wood is the national security correspondent for the Baltimore Sun.
The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan
Gregory Feifer. New York: Harper, 2009. 336 pp. Illus. Maps. Notes. Index. $27.99
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Brian Hanley, U.S. Air Force (Retired)
This book warrants a place on the shelves of anyone interested in Russian politico-military affairs, the difficulties of waging war in Afghanistan, and how an apparently irresistibly powerful belligerent can go down in defeat against a poorly organized but ferocious enemy. Feifer's work makes a vital contribution to a subject that has received scant treatment over the past 30 years. Apart from a few first-hand accounts of varying quality, the only other substantive study of this subject, The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost (University of Kansas Press, 2002), amounts to a translation, with editorial glosses, of the official Soviet staff study of the conflict. Feifer's volume amends the deficiency of accessible, instructive books on the Soviet-Afghan War.
Feifer tells the story of what turned out to be one of the pivotal conflicts of the Cold War through the eyes of the combatants, interspersed with commentary on the political and diplomatic tides that gave the war great significance. This is a relatively recent form of historiography that was pioneered by William Craig in Enemy at the Gates (Penguin, 1973) and perfected, commercially, at least, by Steven Ambrose. A journalist by profession, Feifer imbues his narrative with a grace and liveliness that makes this book a quick read despite the immense research that underpins it and its relative bulk.
Feifer's prose could not be characterized as magisterial, but it does transfix the reader with pithy anecdote. Witness the following passage from The Great Gamble, which follows observations on the casual brutality of the Red Army toward Afghan civilians:
The mujahideen were no less cruel to their captives. One of their favorite tortures was skinning Soviet soldiers alive by slitting them around the waist, pulling their skin above their heads, and tying it there, leaving the doomed to suffer excruciating deaths. (p. 109)
Is there a more expressive means of conveying to readers the primitive cruelty that characterized fighting in the field? Here's another anecdote that embodies the moral disintegration of the Red Army in ways that a compilation of statistics of dead and wounded never can:
Life in the Charikar base near Bagram airfield had turned into a mind-numbing grind for Vladimir Polyakov—the once-idealistic young lieutenant transferred to Afghanistan from East Germany—and his fellow officers. Boredom was alleviated only by moments of absurdity and tragedy, some during long bouts of heavy drinking. One oft-inebriated lieutenant regarded even by conscripts as the unit's village idiot was fond of running around the tents in his underwear, shooting his pistol in the air. (p. 141)
Observations of this kind put the lie to facile arguments that crop up every now and then that the current fighting in Afghanistan is somehow redolent of the Soviet fight. Indeed, the one recurring reflection for this reader is pity—which we can define as conquered disgust—toward the Soviet Army. One gets the sense that in the Afghan wastes the Red Army rank and file discovered the essential hollowness of the rancid, cruel, stubborn self-deception of a political culture that negated the valor and suffering of tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers. Put another way, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was defeated less by a collection of increasingly well-armed nomads than by the hubris of Kremlin political orthodoxy.
Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood
Donovan Campbell. New York: Random House, 2009. 336 pp. $26.
Reviewed by Tom Bowman
The Iraq War is starting to parallel both World War II and the Vietnam War as a literary conceit. The writings of Norman Mailer and James Jones have given way to Jim Webb. But the recent books on the Iraq war are nonfiction accounts from junior officers, rather than novels inspired by the experience of warrior writers under fire.
Nathaniel Fick's One Bullet Away, told of his time serving in Iraq. Now we have Joker One, a gritty and highly charged narrative of a platoon's seven months in Ramadi during some of the darkest days in that western Iraqi city.
"For what they did and what they suffered, my men deserve to have their story told," Campbell writes. And write he does. With insight and honesty, about his own failings and those of his fellow Marines and officers.
We experience the full range of men at war and are given an unflinching look at how their time in Iraq changed and hardened them. We witness the mistakes, the brutality, and above all the love they have for one another. This is the kind of bond that civilians will rarely know.
Like Fick, Campbell is a product of privilege. He graduated from Princeton and then found himself wanting to participate in something greater than himself. His mother thought he was crazy when he left for the Marine Corps' Basic School at Quantico.
Campbell gives a fine account of his transformation into a Marine, but he really shines when he describes the members of his platoon. There's the Marine who seems laconic and passive, but who Campbell later notes wears a tattoo of the Lord's Prayer on his chest—in Aramaic. There's the slow Marine who Campbell later learns is reading Che Guevara's writings on guerrilla warfare.
Campbell and his men arrive in Kuwait in the spring of 2004, waiting to cross nto Iraq and into Anbar Province, where a growing insurgency will produce some of the most horrific fighting of the war.
Campbell provides a good overview of Ramadi, with its narrow streets and trash, heat, and despair. The barriers and barbed wire, the constant explosions and the ever-present loudspeaker wail from the minarets. Campbell quotes then-Lieutenant General James Mattis, that in an insurgency, the people are the prize. Mattis said, "One civilian death equals mission failure."
We witness Campbell's green troops getting lost in the city, or setting up their computers in their shorts late at night, to watch chick flicks like The Notebook. It's a nice touch of humor and very telling. Then Campbell describes
their first contact with the enemy and having to collect himself before he can radio back to his command. "Frantic-sounding lieutenants lose everyone's confidence immediately. . . . Calm-sounding lieutenants make everyone believe the situation is well under control."Over time, they become a tight unit,
but it's not long before bad things happen in Ramadi.Joker One is an important book for young military leaders expecting to head over to Iraq or Afghanistan, leading platoons in this murky world of irregular warfare. And civilian leaders especially should read it, as a guide to what their policies really mean for those left to carry them out.
Escape from the Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew
Alex Kershaw. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press, 2008. 216 pp. Illus. Notes. Bib. $26.
Reviewed by Captain James H. Patton Jr., U.S. Navy (Retired)
Among the many other arcane Reef Point facts I had to memorize during Plebe Summer at the Naval Academy in 1956 was that "in WWII, the submarines Tang and Tullibee were sunk by the circular run of their own torpedoes." At that time, having no intention of staying in the Navy, let alone having a career in the submarine force, I could have cared less about the "rest of the story" about Tang.
However, as a submariner one could not help but learn more and be fascinated by the saga of Medal of Honor winner Dick O'Kane and his good ship Tang. In fact, until reading Escape from the Deep, my belief was that I had long ago been exposed to the rest of the incredible story about him, his ship and crew, and their collective successes and tragedies. I was wrong.
Some histories are well-written and others are well-researched. Escape from the Deep is one of the few that I have read that are both. From the adrenalin-charged opening chapters, through the descriptions of the terrifying events on board the sinking Tang and the subsequent horrors of POW captivity for ten months as "special" prisoners of the Japanese (their existence as POWs not having been made known to the U.S. government or the International Red Cross), to eventual liberation ten months later at the end of the war, the book is riveting and fast-paced.
Already a submarine force legend from the previous four war patrols, Tang held a Presidential Unit Citation and her skipper a Navy Cross when O'Kane volunteered to conduct his final patrol in the dangerous but target-rich Straits of Formosa (Taiwan Straits). In feverish consecutive melees, Tang exceeded even her own precedents before sinking rapidly by the stern in 180 feet of water during a night surface attack when struck aft by her own and last torpedo when it circled shortly after being fired.
While half the crew were killed outright by the initial explosion and flooding, four people on the bridge, including O'Kane, were thrown into the water, and of the 40 that reached the forward torpedo room and its escape hatch, five were able to accomplish what no other submariners had ever previously accomplished: escape by buoyant ascent with no support from the surface.
When finally liberated, carried on a litter, the 88-pound O'Kane was among the first to be taken off the beach to a waiting hospital ship where he was listed in critical condition with a 50 percent chance of survival. Even after reaching Pearl Harbor, he would need six weeks in the hospital before gaining enough strength to travel back to the States.
In a twist worthy of the best fiction, the U.S. naval forces that had gathered for the surrender ceremonies in Tokyo Bay across from the Tang survivors' last POW camp included a reporter from the New York Times, whose editor was from O'Kane's home town of Dover, New Hampshire. When the editor learned that O'Kane was on one of the hospital ships, he had his reporter file the following wire report, and sent a copy to O'Kane's wife Ernestine:
Aboard the USS Reeves in Tokyo Bay, August 30 1945:
The saga of the submarine Tang and her nine survivors cannot be retold too often. It ranks among the epics of American naval history. In daring raids in Formosa Strait this little ship sank 13 enemy ships, including one destroyer, totaling more than 100,000 tons, between October 10 and October 24 1944. Commander Richard H. O'Kane . . . told quietly and without emotion today . . . about the last day of his daring craft.
Not only is Escape from the Deep a well-written narrative of submarine warfare, it indeed tells "the rest of the story" I hadn't heard since Plebe Summer.