Before I have an opinion. I'm betting 8 posts, tops before they get it confused.

Great introduction. I look forward to the publication of the other half of this article.

I just ordered the book. I can't wait to read it.

I highly recommend Joe Haldeman's 1995 "1968: A Novel", available at used book sites. He was there as a combat engineer, and I was there in 25th Inf Div HQ overlapping the first part of the book.

Also Josiah Bunting's "The Lionheads". Bunting later was Superintendent at VMI, but left the army when this was published.

Both books show the absurdities of war.

...the absurdities, absurdities, absurdities, and total absurdities, total absurdities, total absurdities, and total absurdity's. war is total absurdity. War is haunting, War is totally absurd.

Thanks ReverendZafod @9:23.

Stephen Elliot- To attempt to write about war is to believe in pain and total absurdity of war. Thanks

People aren't paying attention because they feel guilty. No war is glorious but the Iraq war is downright hideous and just plain wrong and most people know it. I know a lot of people just can't believe we've ended up in this situation again, in spite of all the disasters and suffering we know war causes. There's probably even a sense of failure but no one could have stopped the neo cons from having their war. They'd been planning it since the nineties and wouldn't be denied and if they had to lie and cheat to have it, then so be it. If this war could be made to seem heroic it might attract more readers but how do you make madness and incompetence seem heroic? It's 'Catch 22' with a lobotomy. And of course that strange group of Strangeloves led by Dick Cheney are determined to carry out their masterplan and attack at least six other Middle East Countries as well. Who in their right mind wants to read about phase one when all that horror waits in the wings?

Though not fiction, there's great personal reporting on war done by comic journalist Joe Sacco.

Like I said, it's not fiction in the purest sense, but the mix of personal reporting in his journals, the subjective esthetics of his drawing, and the dry shocking facts of war make his work a must-read.

Make sure you read his "Palestine" and his best to date "Safe Area Gorazde".

http://www.fantagraphics.com/artist/sacco/sacco.html

By Bernard B Fall. Oh wait - not fiction. Nevuh mind.

"The army was out there too, massing to the southwest and the northeast, along the main road that ran down the coast and through the city."

Thus, modern warfare creates all of the anxiety of real warfare but none of the cathartic killing that used to make warfare so endearing. There is, in this sort of Troop Massing, the symbolic prospect of a bloodbath that conceals a real horror. The symbolism here conceals the reality.

The reality is this: THESE KINDS OF TROOP MASSINGS ARE PURELY SYMBOLIC. The US military is mainly a camping club. They camp in the desert. They camp in Afghanistan. They camp in Korea. The uniforms, the drunken debaucheries in Thailand, the repetitive cleaning on Weapons... these are the real Violences we endure by putting up with this utterly ridiculous farce called the Modern Military. It is all an elaborate bluff. The reason that it (i.e. The Modern Military) works at all is that people have completely forgotten what warfare really is.

Almost all of the So-Called Soldiers in Iraq are IN FACT merely office workers who do ALOT of paperwork. Very few people in the military actually do anything violent. Yet, all participate in the Narratives of Heroism. They are afraid. They are traumatized by their experiences of "war", which means that for the most part they are finding it unbearable to live over there.

Today's soldiers fantasize about killing but are powerless to actually do so. That is the true source of their malaise. When they are doing paper work, when they clean, when they fold their laundry, when they play video games, when they sit bored to death staring out the window for hours on end, when they drive around in their cute little humvees... they are constantly fantasizing about killing an enemy in a direct hand-to-hand fight.

But the killing today is mainly a matter of meticulous preparation on the part of tens of thousands of people, none of whom will actually be present at the moment the bayonet blade is thrust decisively into the belly of the enemy. All of the dying happens at a distance. We know somebody, somewhere is dying and we fantasize about Being There.

Every act turns into a blood bath. Every act is part of the overall planning and preparation of Killing People. Every act is symbolically killing somebody. Every act carries with it elaborate fantasies of actually being somehow the decisive act that does in fact thrust the knife blade into the belly of the enemy.

And because these fantasies of Action permeate all of life, anxiety and guilt take over the mind of the modern soldier AS IF he or she were actually engaged in real killing.

Thus, there is a Purely Fictitious Blood Bath concealing A REAL HORROR:

I was afraid and powerless. The success of the war came down to me doing my job, which means I had to sit there and focus on DOING ALMOST NOTHING in the midst of all of this anxiety, fear and guilt. The Fantasies of Violence, therefore, protected me from the True Horror at the heart of my Service, i.e. that I was weak and powerless and if I really ever did meet an enemy I would not be able to actually fight him.

But I was really, really good at doing paper work. And the modern military needs alot of paperwork to be done.

Do you see how Combat in Post-Modern Warfare is almost entirely an Imaginary Battle waged in the minds of Those Who Know The War Is Happening Somewhere Else? Real Combat would actually come as a relief.

Thus Al Qaeda is able to make every little American School Child a Combatant in Post-Modern Warfare by inducing a kind of Mass Psychosis: we all sit around fantasizing about plunging a knife into Osama Bin Laden.

School children who dream of war do not know the reality of it. They imagine themselves to be something like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. In reality, they will all be little Eichmanns. The dream of every little Eichmann is that IN REALITY he will be like NEO from THE MATRIX.

So, now, let's talk FOR REAL about Post-Modern War. Modern War became obsolete AGES AGO.

It's not like the people who run the US military are unaware of what I am talking about here. It's not like they are losing in the sort of war I am describing, even if half the country has proven themselves to be little more than hysterical babies.

Thinking about the war, fantasizing about the horror of the war, is exactly what you have to STOP YOURSELF FROM DOING, even though it is very seductive to engage with that little Stalingrad in your head. You need to focus on concrete tasks in reality or else you will become psychotic from anxiety.

Thus, riding the subway like a normal person turns out to be a martial art in Post-Modern Warfare. It's very hard to just sit there in the middle of all that horror. Cleaning your rifle is another such Martial Art. Patience is the ultimate martial art. Time Management is the last martial art. The martial arts we practice are not the martial arts you see in movies. The martial arts you see in movies are useless in post-modern warfare.

Cue up "Zombies" by The Cranberries. Interpol is good warmusic too.

You can't REALLY fight. That's what scares you the most.

THE MOST HORRIBLE ASPECT OF (post) MODERN WAR YOU DO NOT KNOW KUNG FU.