Here’s a link to some very special reading in the New Yorker Magazine about the winding down of the war in Iraq.
by Charlie Leck
Dexter Filkins’ piece in the New Yorker Magazine about the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is quite short and it won’t take you more than a few minutes to read. It’s also exceedingly well written and it will raise amazing questions for your mind and significant emotions in your heart. Here’s where you can find it!
What happened in Iraq anyway? Does any good come out of it?
Nearly 4,500 Americans lost their lives in the war. More than 32,000 were wounded and injured there – some extremely seriously. Troops from other countries died also. For what?
Filkins, who spent almost four years in Iraq, crosses his fingers as he answers the question – not because he is fibbing, but because he is hopeful that his most ideal sketch of an outcome will prove correct. Yet, he talks of all the possibilities and you should not miss reading his essay.
The writer is receiving significant criticism for being too optimistic and hopeful. I wonder what else we can do after a decade of scorching so many parts of the nation. Will we ever know how many Iraqis lost their lives – perhaps hundreds of thousands? Lordsy, can’t we hope, for this price, that something wonderful will now happen there – that democracy will blossom and that people will learn to respect one another and be more tolerant about each other’s differences?
About Dexter Filkins
“Dexter Filkins joined The New Yorker in January of 2011, and has since written about a bank heist in Afghanistan and the democratic protests in the Middle East. Before coming to The New Yorker, Filkins had been with the New York Times since 2000, reporting from Afghanistan, Pakistan, New York, and Iraq, where he was based from 2003 to 2006. He has also worked for the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times, where he was chief of the paper’s New Delhi bureau. In 2009, he won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of New York Times reporters in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2006-07 and a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2007-08. He has received numerous prizes, including two George Polk Awards and three Overseas Press Club Awards. His 2008 book, “The Forever War,” won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book, and was named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and the Boston Globe.”
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After nine years and a loss of 4400 American lives in Iraq it is tempting to say we have made a difference. Realistically we have not changed the culture of religious discrimination and its volatility. Iraq will be Iraq. At least our young people will be coming home.
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