The sharp imagery in 'The Forever War' brings the Iraq conflict to visceral life

South Florida Sun-Sentinel (MCT) - "The Forever War" by Dexter Filkins; Knopf ($25)

Like no war before it, Iraq has spawned a rich body of literature while still being waged. The resulting books vary greatly in quality and intent, from journalistic accounts of combat (Evan Wright's "Generation Kill") to justifications by failed U.S. administrators (Paul Bremer's "My Year in Iraq") to meticulous examinations of what went wrong ("Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran).

If Dexter Filkins comes late to the party, it's only because he's been otherwise occupied. Since 2001 Filkins has reported from Afghanistan and Iraq for The New York Times _ dodging bullets alongside U.S. forces and venturing among the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents, with no escort beyond a translator.

Driven in equal measure by professionalism, obsession and what appears to be a suicidal disregard for personal safety, Filkins gained an on-the-ground perspective of the war against radical Islamic terrorism _ "the forever war." He uses his reporting skill and writing talent to expose the humanity of everyone involved: soldiers, insurgents, civilians, officials, clerics, children.

"The Forever War" opens with a scene from the American attack on Fallujah, then an insurgent stronghold, in November 2004. In a few pages Filkins delivers a white-knuckle account of urban combat: "The wind from the bullets brushed my neck. Marines were writhing in the street, tangles of blood and legs, while other Marines were stooping and helping them and also getting shot." It ends with U.S. soldiers throwing open the doors of a captured mosque to allow Iraqi troops, their uniforms clean, to march inside.

Later, he talks with Yacob Yusef, headmaster of Baghdad College, whose brother was tortured and executed by Saddam Hussein's government. When Yusef went to collect the body, he was charged for the two bullets used to kill his brother. "Iraq was filled with people like Yacob Yusef," Filkins writes. "They weren't survivors so much as they were leftovers. The ruined byproducts of terrible times."

During the 2004 Mahdi uprising in Najaf, Filkins crouched with a photographer in an alley behind a mosque while Apache gunships raked the streets: "A pair of Mahdi fighters entered the alley, carrying a bleeding comrade. 'No pictures, no pictures!' one of them cried, carrying their comrade past. His black tunic was soaked in blood. 'You are a hero,' one of them whispered to the wounded man."

Filkins' portrait of Ahmad Chalabi, the wealthy and brilliant Iraqi exile whose unreliable intelligence helped justify the American invasion, has been criticized already for being too positive. Yet Filkins reveals Chalabi as a double-agent working for Iran.

"The Forever War" eschews context, analysis, explanation, presenting instead a succession of crisp, unadorned images that gain in power as they mount. Filkins provides just enough information to make each scene intelligible, then allows the reader to project his or her own emotional response onto them.

This technique extends to Filkins' portrait of himself, presented with little commentary. He persists in daily fitness runs in Baghdad, long after the city has descended into chaos. "As an American _ as someone who could leave Iraq any time I wanted _ I sometimes found myself taking cheap thrills from my brushes with death."

By refusing to tell the reader what to think, and through his reportorial excellence and stylistic severity, Filkins bestows "The Forever War" with the moral and literary authority of fiction. This is a book that can stand alongside "The Red Badge of Courage," "Dispatches" and other modern classics of war.

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© 2008, Sun Sentinel.