If you’re curious about what soldiers are really going through in Iraq but are leery of the militaristic, blindly loyal tone that many higher ranking officers display when interviewed, I’ve got the book for you. Chasing Ghosts is written by Paul Rieckhoff, an Army National Guard infantry platoon leader who served almost a year in Iraq, but also an Amherst poli-sci grad who’s thoughtful, articulate, and independent. You get the sense of the tone of the book from the opening in which Rieckhoff admits one of the first things he wrote in his journal as he headed off to Iraq was, “George Bush had better be fucking right.” As it turns out, of course, he wasn’t, and Rieckhoff illustrates how badly Bush’s folly translated for the soldiers on the ground.
A lot of the book is stuff I’d heard before in bits and pieces – undermanned, undersupplied, poorly educated troops who didn’t know anything about Iraq and its people and didn’t care to learn (actually, they didn’t know much about their own country, either – about 60% of Rieckhoff’s platoon didn’t know who the U.S. vice president was) – but Rieckhoff puts it into a narrative. I was surprised to learn that most of the Iraqis Rieckhoff encountered seemed happy to have the Americans there – at first. He’s very good at describing how the U.S. liberation soured into an occupation as time stretched on. It’s truly scary reading.
The book is less successful when he returns from Iraq (although there’s also some very interesting stuff about the shit soldiers have to go through when they return). He gets involved in the 2004 presidential campaign despite his disdain for both candidates – for some reason, he decides Bush should have the chance to make up for his mistake, so he first offers his services to the Bush campaign, which ignores him, and then to Kerry, who actually takes him seriously. But, as far as I can figure out, because Kerry didn’t instantly turn over his entire campaign to Rieckhoff and do exactly what Rieckhoff thought he should do on Iraq, Rieckhoff quit and started his own organization that ultimately ended up doing nothing to elect someone who cares about the soldiers (this is my interpretation). I had little patience for Rieckhoff’s political naiveté – he has no clue of how political campaigns work and is contemptuous of volunteers who are probably just doing the best they can. Plus, he has a bizarrely blind devotion to John McCain based solely, as far as I can tell, on McCain’s having been a POW rather than on any actual knowledge of McCain's positions (McCain slavishly supports Bush on the Iraq war, after all), and he holds the noxious notion that military service should be mandatory for presidential candidates.
It’s a good read, and I recommend it if you’re interested in this stuff. If you want to read some of Rieckhoff’s stuff, he blogs for Scary-anna Huffington’s site, and he’s started an organization, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
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