Article of the Week 7: IRB Sections 2 - 3.5

After taking about a month to read the first section, the book took off and I am almost done in less than a week. After landing in Afghanistan, Marcus and the other three men on his team begin to look for a good place to stay in order to have good visibility of the village where their target lives and have a good defensive position in case if any Taliban fighters find them. They find a spot and are set up, when three goatherds accidentally go by them. The soldiers need to decide whether to kill the goatherds. They eventually decide to let the goatherds leave, but they are spies for the Taliban and the nearby Taliban army of about 200 quickly descend on the four American men. Both sides fight and the battle ends with half the Taliban forces dead. Miraculously, Marcus lives (though more than half dead) when some local people find him near a river. They bring him to their village and give him hospitality which, by their laws and customs, means that they have to defend him from harm by any means necessary. After some time, Marcus decided to leave so that the people protecting him would no longer be in danger, but as soon as he tried the Taliban decided to attack.

Throughout these sections, Luttrell uses many combat terms and abbreviations. He never refers to a weapon with something as general as "gun" or "rifle." His weapon is a "Mark 12 Sniper Rifle" and the native weapon is an "AK-47." The author spends much of his time closely describing his surroundings. He often notes the impossibility of his mission compared to the bravery and attitude of his friends. Each one was shot multiple times before they died. He describes each occurrence in detail, not just to get across the gruesome injuries, but to express the strength of these men and their bravery. One man was shot in the neck and continued to fight until shot another shot killed him. Also, throughout the book, even before the Taliban attack, cursing is prevalent. While in most cases, this would be frowned-upon, his use of this language gives the book a more realistic feel and helps to convey the mentality of these men.

One section that I found particularly interesting was:

     "Look at me, right now in my story. Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home... Afraid of American civilian lawyers... if you don't want to get in a war where things go wrong... where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place."

This section was remarkably reminiscent of "How to Tell a True War Story." Throughout the book, Marcus explains how he is never allowed to shoot a person until they begin to shoot at him because of America's laws on "civilized" warfare. He states that he is more afraid of the American media than any of the Taliban. His point hits home at this part of the book because over fifty people died in order to keep up an American pretense of being righteous.