Kayla Williams Loves Her Rifle More than You

This is a very good memoir, with quite a lot to say about the Army we now have, the trap America has fallen into by engaging in eternal war, as the world's policeman, the nature of who Americans are and what we have become.

It is well worth reading.

There are some things which you have to get past: Ms. Williams complains about some things I would think few men would complain about: She is a Vegan and she discovered the Army does have vegetarian MRE's (prepackaged meals) but her sergeant would make no effort to supply her with these. (She finally found a cache on her own, and was miffed he would not make the effort for her.) He was likely being passive aggressive, not liking a soldier who had "special needs" on the front lines.

On the other hand, she details the incompetence of many of those who out rank her in convincing detail: One who orders her to stay in her Humvee rather than taking cover in a building during a mortar attack, when commanders had radioed everyone get out of the Humvees and into better protected stone buildings and another (a woman) who retorted that as the sergeant in charge of William's outfit she had no interest in learning the technology or the details of what the unit was doing, so it was up to Williams to know that. This jaw dropper, fortunately was flounced before a lieutenant, so Williams was saved.

There is a wonderful chapter about a woman attached to her company who had been in Iraq only a month and committed suicide, shot herself in the head, and Williams reaction was anger at the dead woman, anger at herself for not seeing it coming and fury at the commander who made the whole company sit through a maudlin, absurd memorial service for this dead woman who nobody knew and who had caused everyone else a lot of trouble by shooting herself, had let down the unit. This sounded completely real and honest to me: It reminded me of how angry interns used to get at alcoholics who would drink themselves into ulcers, come in vomiting blood all over everyone and keeping us up all night. We had lost all capacity for sympathy. We were the ones who dealt with the consequences of their misbehavior.

But most of all, there is the picture of the "mission" in a war where you are trying to win the "hearts and minds" of a people whose language you do not speak, culture you do not respect and who harbor people who are trying to kill you.

We have not studies the history of Vietnam and we are doomed to repeat it.

The sociology of what the Army has become is also clearly presented: As Bob Dylan once said, "Join the Army ,if you fail." The Army is populated by people for whom the Army is the best or only financial option. They are all hired Hessian's now.

Sure, after 9-11, there was an NFL football player who gave up his millions to fight--only to be shot to death by his own troops, but the army now is comprised of people who feel they have no better options, or no other options.

In Vietnam, we were sold the lie we were fighting the relentless march of world communism, when in fact, we were intervening in a local nationalist movement which had no implications beyond that small, agrarian nation, but oh, if we didn't fight them in the Mekong Delta, we'd be fighting them in the streets of San Francisco.

Now we are fighting them in Afghanistan rather than fighting them in the streets of New York. We are fighting the world war on terrorism. We are engaged in endless war. As Carver says, in The Wire, when Kima shakes her head at his war on drugs, "You sad ass losers, fighting the war on drugs, one brutality case after another." And Carver retorts, "Girl, you can't even call this a war." And Kima asks, "Why not?" Carver says simply, "Wars end." That is, wars have defined objectives, you capture the flag, burn the capital city. But these "wars" of occupation never end, and the "War on Terrorism," is so nebuluous we would not even know if we'd "Won." No objectives, no mission.

So we fight to "deny terrorists their training camps."

As if terrorists can only be trained in Afghanistan rather than Somolia or in an apartment in Berlin.

I like Kayla Williams. I might not like her, if I had to live in her neighborhood, but reading the book, she passes the test of Holden Caufield: You know it's a really good book when you finish it and you put it down and you want to call up the author, on the phone, right away.