Financial Time, June 26-27, 2004

CHARLES CLOVER

One of the more jarring memories from my experience covering the war in Iraq as a reporter “embedded” with US troops was of a young American soldier after a firefight in the streets of Najaf. During a shoot-out with a sniper, a blue Fiat raced into the the street, trying to escape. The soldier fired 15 rounds from his SAW (squad automatic weapon), killing the driver, who we found out was an unarmed university professor. An hour later, I heard the soldier complaining that his weapon had jammed, preventing him firing off more rounds. Meanwhile, fellow soldiers clustered around him, congratulating him on “busting his cherry” - making his first killing. It was riot clear at the time if he knew who he had killed and if it mattered.

I have always had difficulty understanding how someone like this, an American teenager who probably grew up in some suburb, like me, could have this attitude toward taking a life. I saw plenty more like him.

This group of young, violent Americans is the subject of one of the best books to come out of the Iraq war: Generation Kill by Evan Wright, who covered the war for Rolling Stone magazine as an embedded reporter with a US Marine reconnaissance battalion. One does not know quite how to categorise Generation Kill. It is not anti-war in its exposition, but the sum total of Wright’s observations lead to a harsh indictment of US conduct in Iraq. Like the generation it observes, the book has no moral compass, it is simply a grim ledger of conversations, . deeds and misdeeds - all recorded in an adrenaline rush of intelligent prose.