Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars

Historian Bacevich (After the Apocalypse) and retired army officer Sjursen gather in this grim and often gripping essay collection U.S. soldiers’ indictments against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contributors include Erik Edstrom, who attended West Point out of “a conflated mix of economic necessity and idealistic do-goodery” and eventually came to believe that the “war on terror” was “illegal, immoral, self-perpetuating, and counterproductive.” Joy Damiani enlisted at age 19 and spent two years in her division’s public affairs offices in Georgia, “making PR look like news and an unwinnable war look like a victory,” before being sent to Baghdad, where she was rarely permitted to leave the base for her reporting and never allowed to use the word failure in print. Elsewhere, Dan Berchinski describes losing both his legs to an IED in Afghanistan, and Kevin Tillman details how the Bush administration lied about his brother Pat Tillman’s death from friendly fire. Full of potent criticism and anguished admissions of guilt—“We shot at noncombatants. We tortured prisoners. We blew up civilian structures. We ran over, mutilated and took pictures of dead Iraqis. Frankly we did whatever the fuck we wanted”—this is a visceral takedown of America’s forever wars. (Aug.)