A few years ago I wrote a column on how the Iran-Iraq War was the war nobody watched.
Well, thank God I was wrong. Maybe the US networks ignored that war but it turns out there were a lot of Iranian wannabe directors right there on the front line, getting it all on video. And thanks to the miracle of YouTube, you toobs can watch it all.
This is my absolute favorite clip so far. It’s shot from the very front of the Persian lines as Iraqi armor (T-55s, I think) advance toward them. (more…)
One of the best things about war is that it’s a huge IQ booster. The only people who use their brains in peacetime are the suits: salesmen, real-estate agents. The rest of us just slog along for the paycheck, get home and get on the computer so we can have a virtual war. But once real war comes to town, every guy turns into MacGyver, thinking up ways to convert harmless civilian items like alarm clocks and remotes into killing devices.
The Shia militias in Iraq have just demonstrated this kind of killer ingenuity by finding a new way to say “thank you” to their American friends using nothing but a few unguided 107mm rockets, propane tanks, and a used truck. It’s like the kind of problem they give you in those online intelligence tests: how can you use a crummy unguided rocket, a lowly propane tank, and a junker of a truck to blast a heavily-defended US base in Baghdad?
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Here’s another great war graphic, courtesy of Yasha Levine at eXile. This one shows every coalition casualty as a red drop, so like Yasha wrote me, you see this blood rain falling on a map of Iraq as the days click by from the invasion in the spring of 2003 right through 2007. And it really is like rain: first the storm front comes through, up from the Gulf dripping through Basra and up the river valleys all the way to Mosul. But once the occupation settles in—you may remember that was when we were getting out our suntan lotion and expecting fine weather—the rain started falling hard. (more…)
The hills are alive with the sound of RPGs
After six years of ignoring Afghanistan, things have gotten bad enough to force American officials to pay attention. For the past two months, U.S. casualties in Afghanistan have been higher than in Iraq. And on July 13, Afghanistan definitely got everybody’s attention when nine U.S. troops were killed in what Wikipedia is now officially calling “The Battle of Wanat.” Three days after the battle (more…)
I love this map of middle-east history converted into blots spilling out along a timeline. It’s like a bunch of different flavors of Hawaiian Punch getting spilled on a rug of the Middle East by drunk ten-year-olds who spiked the birthday party dixie cups with dad’s Old Crow. (more…)
War & Drugs: flying while you’re dying
Hey, I’m back! For a few weeks there, the War Nerd was unhorsed, pulled over to the side watching life’s rich convoy zoom by. Thanks to the damn ungrateful Russian government, the old exile got shut down. I was particularly pissed because I’d just done my most Russia-friendly piece, a long respectful article about the Soviets’ big victory in Manchuria in 1945. I was proud of that article. (more…)
FRESNO, CA – It’s summer, you’ve got a little more time off, so you can read up on war instead of trying to live in whatever boring suburb you live in. Lawns, neighbors, dogs, kids—it all sucks and the best thing you can do is get as far out of it as you can. A lot of war fans do it by logging into the game world, where we’re all seven feet tall and bulletproof.
But I’m old school. I still actually read those book things, about actual wars where people die and stay dead, magic amulets just get you killed, and elf princesses are few and far between. The only way to stay on top of this game is to keep inhaling a lot of info, so after a while you get a taste for B.S. That means you have to study up. You know when the Bible says, “They shall study war no more”? Well, I’m not one of the they’s they were talking about. Here are some of the war books I’ve been chowing down on lately. Hopefully they’ll help you get through your hot dull summer too:
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