Army Times Rates Best MILITARY Books of the Decade

Now this is going to sound like sour grapes. I appreciate all the emails I received that were upset that my book House to House was not on the list. Thank you. You are all very kind.  To be fair the Army Times never reviewed my book. I guess the four copies we sent them never made their way to the proper people. Even though they were addressed to the proper people, as well has confirming the delivery with an email to the proper people. I am sure it was a mistake.

I have major issues with this list.

Okay, they don’t like me. I get that and can live with it.

Now it is no secret that most enlisted soldiers will only buy the ArmyTimes for the pay chart, the promotion list or if they are actually in the paper. The rest of them sit at the checkout line at the PX alone and abandoned like rice cakes in Kelly Clarkson’s pantry.

Forget me for a second. Look at this list:

• “Shane Comes Home” by Rinker Buck, 2005. Buck reports on the days leading to the funeral of the first Marine casualty in Iraq, 2nd Lt. Shane Childers, a “Brad Pitt in uniform” whose integrity and energy were admired by everyone, including the casualty assistance officer. In the end, you admire Childers, and the officer, too.

• “Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership and Brotherhood” by Donovan Campbell, 2009. This is “sweat-soaked, blood-soaked reality,” written by a Princeton and Harvard graduate and Afghanistan veteran who talks about managing warriors and himself. The story is a first-rate study of management and manhood. Campbell’s platoon taught him that “love was expressed in the only currency that mattered in combat: Action.”

• “The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army” by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, 2009. Two reporters present four personalities who have been off and on front pages since 2003: Army Gens. John Abizaid, George Casey, Peter Chiarelli and David Petraeus. The four have crossed paths — and one another — in the 40 years between Khe Sanh and Kabul. The four-character study has enough political and inside intrigue to humanize the brass.

• “The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier’s Account of the War in Iraq” by John Crawford, 2005. The writing is understated but powerful, some of the best to come out of Iraq. Crawford was in the Army’s 101st Airborne division, then joined the National Guard. He was called to active duty during his honeymoon. “The world hears war stories told by reporters and retired generals who keep extensive notebooks and journals. They carry pens as they walk, whereas I carried a machine gun.” The gun is hot.

• “One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer” by Nathaniel Fick, 2005. A Dartmouth graduate learns how to lead troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and how to understand his strengths and limitations. (“Generation Kill” is about Fick’s unit.) Because of “Fick’s descriptive and exacting writing,” USA Today put the book on a list of the “most promising memoirs.”

• “The Forever War” by Dexter Filkins, 2008. This award-winning collection of reports and impressions takes you into harm’s way with a journalist’s eye for details and a dramatist’s ear for dialogue. In Iran, Filkins finds Warhols and Picassos. In Iraq, he finds two conversations: “The one the Iraqis were having with the Americans and the one they were having among themselves.”

• “The Good Soldiers” by David Finkel, 2009. A Washington Post writer goes inside the 2007 surge with an infantry unit out of Fort Riley, Kan., under the command of Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, who saw deployment as an opportunity to be a part of President George W. Bush’s effort to make a difference in Iraq. Finkel’s description of the Army’s burn center in San Antonio is as devastating as any combat scene.

• “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America” by Nathaniel Frank, 2009. “Unfriendly Fire” separates opinion from fact, and a reader could suggest Congress and the Pentagon accept this engaging study as definitive. Why? Frank asks and tells, and service members and statistics lend credibility.

• “The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War” by Brandon Friedman, 2007. The story of a college “hawkish war junkie” who goes from Manhattan to Bagram to Hillah and discovers that being an Army officer is “not as easy as it looks on TV.” And after service in two battle zones, disenchantment displaces his desire. He writes he “wanted to believe in my work,” but “instead, I was watching as politicians with no military experience hijacked the Army.”

• “Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq” by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, 2006. The Marine Corps War College calls it “the definitive history.” This 600-page document by a retired Marine lieutenant general offers indictments and cites intelligence as well as any lack of it. Five days before the assault, Army Gen. Tommy Franks summoned his team to his Qatar command center. Showing on the big screen? Actor Russell Crowe, ordering men to “unleash hell” in the opening scene of “Gladiator.” “Franks was trying to infuse his commanders with a warrior spirit.”

• “Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq” by Jason Christopher Hartley, 2005. War with wit. “It’s no wonder so many homeless people are vets; they’ve all been trained to be professional bums. … We lived in conditions that were part central booking, part homeless shelter with a twist of male brothel.” And this: “The average grunt is fairly in touch with his primary self and therefore wants generally only two things: To [have sex] and to fight, in that order.” Hoo-ah.

• “The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education” by Craig M. Mullaney, 2009. Mullaney offers his lessons from blue-collar Rhode Island to West Point, Ranger School, Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar) and Afghanistan. The eternal student quotes everyone from Krishna to Clausewitz. You’ll laugh and you’ll cry at the clear-eyed, open-minded, warm-hearted candor. There’s a love story, too. And a reading list.

• “The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family” by Martha Raddatz, 2007. Others have compared the homefront with the battlefront. But Raddatz’s book about the 1st Cavalry Division’s operations in Sadr City in April 2004 is nonfiction that reads like a novel. After eight soldiers died and 70 were wounded in 48 hours, Gen. Peter Chiarelli “was horrified by what he saw.” “Sir,” a sergeant asked the general, “why didn’t we bring our tanks?”

• “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” by Thomas E. Ricks, 2006. “Cobra II” tells you what went wrong in the invasion of Iraq, and “Fiasco” picks up from there with descriptions of blunders and blowhards. One officer who was privy to discussions with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Ricks: “We didn’t get it right, and 1,500 troopers” — the number of U.S. dead in Iraq at the time — “have paid a price for that.”

• “Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles” by Anthony Swofford, 2003. The subtitle says the book is one Marine’s story — not all Marines’ stories. Despite the disclaimer, Swofford’s take on war has its detractors. Nevertheless, the book is sometimes funny but usually an intense look at life and death in Operation Desert Storm, “neither true nor false but what I know.” Read Swofford’s words for the language. Then watch the 2005 movie.

• “Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War” by Evan Wright, 2004. The adventure started in Rolling Stone magazine and introduced Marines including a lieutenant named Nathaniel Fick. Wright is embedded with a few (23) good men who face mud and dust, mortar and death, false starts and “bad comm” — and Wright’s reporting. One of the first books out of Iraq unwittingly set a standard for subsequent ones.

There are some good books on here. But a whole lot of crap. Eight of these books are not only anti-Iraq (war) books, but they are completely embarrassing to the military in general. Are you honestly going to claim you represent the Army and put your name on books that disparage the war in which our branch has lost the most life fighting?

How can anyone miss the single biggest selling military book in the last ten years, Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor? Navy SEAL. Alone in the mountains. 150 dead muj at his feet. Are you kidding me?

There is no story like Luttrell’s. HBO’s mini series Generation Kill was panned by the critics. Watch what happens when Lone Survivor is made into a film.

Cmon now.

How about Rick Atkinson? We are talking Rick Atkinson.

Bing West?

Michael Yon?

Matt Burden?

John R. Bruning?

Andrew Carroll?

Jack Coughlin?

Jeremiah Workman?

Too many others to note.

The Army Times is owned by the Gannet Company. They own USA Today and all the other military Times themed papers. The sick irony is that the military themed newspapers are as pro-American, pro-military as Muqtada al Sadr. The Military Times is most famous for one sided polls showing troops turning against a war they are currently bleeding in and of course who could forget the beating of the drums to force Donald Rumsfeld to resign. They wrote an op ed publicly asking for his resignation five days before election day 2006. Just so happened that the pro-war, “we can win this thing” Republicans were trounced, losing the House and Senate,  by the anti-war and “pull out now” Democrats.

What was the Army Times’ response to John Kerry and John Murtha’s vitriolic commentary about the troops and our chances of success in Iraq?

Crickets. Raindrops. Nothing.

Hmm, no editorial board standing up and calling them out? Odd.

Of course the Military Times and Army Times never bend toward political favor. It was a complete accident that they piled on Secretary Rumsfeld a full newsweek cycle before a mid term election.

They have taken the Vietnam era accusations that the military themed papers were simply propaganda tools and flipped it so far to the anti-military side that it is absurd. Honestly, I would rather have a New Times reporter embed with my unit than one of the military papers. Stars and Stripes included.

J. Ford Huffman complied this list. Huffman was axed from the staff at USA Today because more people are falling out of hot air balloons than reading Gannet papers these days. So he held on to his review job at the Army Times. Let’s look at his record:

Paul Rieckhoff, founder and Director of left leaning Iraq Afghanistan Veterans Against War of America (IAVA)

LOVED IT.

The Pat Tillman conspiracy book… “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman” … LOVED IT.

He lauded left winger Jeremy Scahill’s “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.”

Could you imagine writing for the NYPD monthly newspaper and exposing your theory that 9/11 was an inside job? Of course not. It would never happen.

Huffman and Gannett Company can claim they represent the voice of the military… but they worship at the alter of left wing partisanship. Another reason why Military Times and Army Times line more bird cages than they do racks at the PX.

Tags: andrew carroll, army times, bing west, david bellavia, j ford huffman, jack coughlin, jeremiah workman, john r bruning, marcus luttrell, matt burden, michael yon, rick atkinson