welsh said:
I agree, Welsh.
-------- Generation Kill spoilers again ------
I was a bit surprised by the number of civillian casualties, and as you point out, quite a few of the encounters in the book resulted in them.
I am glad the book at least shows that not all the Marines agree with every time the civilians are fired upon, and that the possible after-effects are displayed too. Being a soldier in a situation like that is very harsh, and some will spend their lives having to deal, (or spend a lifetime trying to avoid dealing), with what they have seen and done, or not done...
The frustration of being a soldier in combat comes to show during the times when they are not in the middle of a fire-fight where all you can think about is trying to survive by all menas necessary. When faced with the enormity of the civillian disaster at hand, and with the burning sensation that there was never a plan for how to rebuild what they have bombed back to the stone age, some of the soldiers start to doubt their own effort and the value of said effort. This is a very risky situation in terms of morale and interest in future similar campaigns.
All in all I liked the book very much, and I think that reading such books should be mandatory for all those who claim soldiers should be held accountable for every mistake just as if it was commited in peace time. The challenge of making split second decisions governing life and death must not be underestimated - nobody who have not been in such a situation can imagine what it is like. We are often afraid of things we don't understand or don't have knowledge of so all the war-opponents should atleast try to educate themselves about how such an experience effects the people involved, and how hard, no impossible, it is to always make the right choices.
/rant off
