War stories highlight hidden history, heavy costs - Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

War stories highlight hidden history, heavy costs

Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan

Trying to figure out the strategies behind what is happening in Afghanistan? “Little America” clearly and convincingly details the many misguided and misinformed operations and intentions — and some achievements — in the 11-year-old war.

Chandrasekaran, a Washington Post correspondent, took readers to Baghdad in “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” (which became the Matt Damon film “Green Zone”), and he wades in “waist-high water in Marja” to report about the Afghanistan wars.

Wars, plural? Yes. Conflicts between the Army and the Marines and allied forces, the State department and contractors, and administrations at the White and Karzai houses. Not to mention tribes, the Taliban, some Pakistanis and a few al-Qaida members.

A $3 billion counternarcotics effort by the Bush administration is “the most wasteful” a diplomat has ever seen. An Army colonel flouts prescribed counterinsurgency doctrine and “nobody stood in his way.” Army Gen. David Petraeus’ own COIN definition, the author senses, includes “every military tactic in his arsenal except the use of nuclear weapons.”

When misperceptions pervade, meaningful efforts stand out. In a “strategically insignificant area,” Marine Lance Cpl. Rick Centanni dies a “hero.” Pashto-speaking Carter Malkasian of the State Department earns the respect of Afghans — and Marines. Maj. Gen. Larry Nicholson of the Marine Corps and Kael Weston of the State Department “are the gold standard of civilian-military cooperation.”

By any standard, the hindsight in “Little America” is golden. “We dwelled on the limitations of the Afghans,” Chandrasekaran concludes. “We should have focused on ours.”

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

Some might disregard “Drift” as mere pop politics, but the MSNBC host with the Ph.D. is persuasive, and Maddow’s thesis of how most Americans view what they perceive to be war might make somebody doubt her liberal credentials.

“While a tiny fraction of men and women fighting our wars are deploying again and again, civilian life remains pretty much isolated in cost-free complacency,” she writes. Presidents redefined executive power to keep Congress away. Contractors started doing troops’ jobs. The CIA became an “assassin corps.” “Decisions to use force have become painless and slick.”

She mistakenly refers to Sen. Jim Webb as a soldier instead of a Marine and to an “Army” character in his “Fields of Fire” — but why quibble? “Drift” is witty and worthwhile. War costs and few pay, but “ ‘Freedom isn’t free’ shouldn’t be a bumper sticker. It should be policy.”

The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo That Ended World War II

The lady in white in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous V-J Day photograph in Life magazine — not on the cover — was a dental assistant, not a nurse.

That’s one of the mysteries solved in this playfully suspenseful history of how strangers George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer Friedman became anonymously famous in August 1945 in Times Square. The subtitle boasts that the photo ended World War II when “the photo that symbolized the end” is more appropriate, but the documentation is delicious even when over-dramatic.

The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows

The first sentence compels with cleverness — or repels with cuteness: “The first thing you should know about me is that I’m Crazy,” with a capital C.

Castner, a former Air Force explosive ordnance disposal officer with a Bronze Star from Iraq, uses humor, horror and upper-case letters to try to convince his Old Counselor, his running buddy, his wife, his New Shrink — and his reader — that he has PTSD.

During his first exposure to explosives, he realizes “what I wanted to be when I grew up.” But the hard-knock life of the bomb squad is more exciting than the routine of “wrench-turners and computer-junkies,” and tension takes a toll. “You don’t have only one lucky scrape, only one detonation where you were a little too close. You have dozens. Or hundreds.”

Huffman is a Military Times book reviewer.