A Screaming Eagle in Afghanistan and Iraq

From Publisher's Weekly:

This cynical but appealing memoir by a lieutenant in the elite 101st Airborne recounts his unpleasant times fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. After a quick review of his youth (shy, smart, dreaming of glory), Friedman describes his unit's deployment to Afghanistan after 9/11 to fight the Taliban. Its mission turns out to be guarding an air base, four months of demoralizing boredom followed by urgent orders into battle. The result is an exhausting 11-hour march high into freezing mountains, where the soldiers arrive as the fighting ends. A year later, as American forces invade Iraq in March 2003, Friedman's unit advances almost to Baghdad without encountering resistance but yearning to fight. There follows three months of dull occupation duty until, to everyone's horror, a grenade kills two soldiers on patrol, and the insurgency begins. The author accepts that America needed to fight in Afghanistan, but can't fathom why we invaded Iraq. He does not re-enlist. Given the public's waning support for the war in Iraq, Friedman's voice is likely to be heard by sympathetic ears. (Aug. 15)
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From the Publisher: 

The "war he always wanted" took him to the front lines of Afghanistan and Iraq as a young infantry officer in the elite 101st Airborne Division.  For Lieutenant Brandon Friedman, however, the reality of his war fell far short of his youthful fantasies of combat heroism: he never stormed a beach, he never ducked tracer fire while parachuting onto an enemy-held airfield, and his best buddy didn't die in Brandon's arms talking about his mom and the girl back home.

There was nothing Hollywood about it.  In a literary style reminiscent of the late Kurt Vonnegut, Friedman helps readers understand the apparent contradiction of soldiers who can reflect upon the worst period of their lives as "a pretty good time."

In an era of smart bombs, satellite communications, and mult-million-dollar tanks that can hit targets from miles away, Friedman and his colleagues weren't prepared for what waited for them during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, nor in the streets and country of Iraq.

THE WAR I ALWAYS WANTED is the story of today's military--the military that went to war at the height of our age of technology, yet found itself struggling to overcome counterattacks and strategies steeped in hundreds of years of history.

While Donald Rumsfeld stated that we "go to war with the military we have," Friedman witnessed the reality of that phrase--a definition lost to the many leaders that led from behind, safe in their air-conditioned offices on the Hill.

Friedman had been a platoon leader for 53 days when he was given his deployment orders.  The World Trade Center was still smoldering and Friedman and his platoon were a part of the "payback plan."  However, that plan didn't resemble any of Friedman's illusions of war.

Friedman saw soldiers that were under-prepared and leaders that were overconfident.  And while he'd joined the military, in the tradition of his grandfather before him, the patriotism he felt for his country didn't even the scale when weighed against  the many problems he found with the War on Terror.

As politicians debated the reasons for going to war, Friedman and his brothers in arms debated using traditional strategies vs. improvising tactics that actually worked in the arena in which they fought, slept, laughed, cried, and tried to survive.

While most Americans were struggling to understand the images on their television screens, Friedman struggled to understand a war for which the old rules didn't apply, while also questioning his dedication to "the cause."