Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground by Robert D. Kaplan; Waging Peace: ASpecial Operations Team's Battle to Rebuild Iraq by Rob SchultheisReview by: Lawrence D. FreedmanForeign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2005), p. 140Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20031794 .

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Recent Books

both within and across nations (since gains in happiness are demonstrably greater among poor people than losses are among rich people), focusing on economic stability over growth in rich countries, and income taxation as a device for encouraging greater leisure, which gets shortchanged when happiness depends in part on one's relative income.

Military; Scientific, and Technological

LAWRENCE D. FREEDMAN

Imperial Grunts: TheAmerican Military on

the Ground. BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN.

Random House, 2005, 448 pp. $27.95. Waging Peace: A Special Operations

Teams Battle to Rebuild Iraq. BY ROB SCHULTHEIS. Gotham, 2005,

304 pp. $26.oo.

These two books are similar in style and outlook, both having been written by journalists who have spent time in the field with U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the case of Kaplan, in Yemen, Colombia, Mongolia, the

Philippines, and Ethiopia as well. The authors write about their temporary comrades with affection and often

admiration, conveying their working conditions, gripes, and earthy humor as well as their patriotism and sense of

mission. A familiar contrast is drawn between the softness of safe, civilian life and the lives of those doing Amer

ica's business in harsh and often hazardous settings.

Kaplan's book is wider ranging. His

underlying thesis is that the places he

visits represent the periphery of a new American empire, whose fate will be determined by how its foot soldiers the grunts-engage with the local populations. The analogy is to the frontiersmen of the nineteenth century: everywhere he goes he is welcomed to "Injun Country." It is probably best not to worry too much about the thesis, which is half-baked, and instead enjoy the insights and reportage from a master of this sort of extreme travel writing. In Iraq, he conveys the tension between the recognition that victory requires

winning hearts and minds and the de mands of survival. When he first joins the marines, they are sporting mustaches to blend in with the local population;

when they prepare for their April 2004 battle of Fallujah (the account of which is vivid and depressing), they shave them off.

Schultheis is even more focused on the hearts-and-minds side of the equation, as he works with an army civil affairs team in Baghdad trying to make life easier for the battered inhabitants and help the country rebuild. This task turns out to require considerable inge nuity, as well as commitment, especially as the insurgency gathers pace. Like

Kaplan's, Schultheis' main reportage runs up to the crisis point in Fallujah and the calamitous revelations about the abuses at Abu Ghraib, after which relations between the Iraqis and the Americans do not get any easier. To "salvage" Iraq, Schultheis recommends giving civic affairs even greater prominence and

budget, improving language training, getting the public involved, and "tripl[ing] the real number of troops in Iraq until real security has been achieved."

[140] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume84No. 6

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