Mark Danner, Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016) (From the book jacket: "The war on terror has led to fourteen years of armed conflict, the longest war in America's history. Though al Qaeda, the jihadist groups that attacked us on September 11, 2012, has allegedly been 'decimated'--the word is President Obama's--its place has been taken by multiple jihadist and terror organizations, including the most notorious: the Islamic State." "Spiral describes how the perpetual, ever-widening war has plunged the country into a never-ending 'state of exception .' [] Although only a tiny percentage of Americans are engaged in combat, all have seen their accustomed rights and freedoms circumscribed in the name of security. With indefinite detention, 'enhanced interrogation,' and drone warfare, ideals we once took for granted have been degraded and compromised." "Meantime the war on terror grinds on, the Caliphate expands, the Middle East drowns in civil wars, and whole populations flee and seek asylum in Europe. Because the threat is defined as boundless and unceasing, we have . . . 'let it define us as ideological crusaders caught in an endless war.' Only by casting our eyes over--and beyond--this ideology can we ever hope to escape the spiral.").
Maximilian Uriarte, The White Donkey: Terminal Lance (New York: Little, Brown, 2016) (From the back cover: "A graphic novel of war and its aftermath. The story of a United States Marine and his journey to and from Iraq. A powerful experience that will leave you change.").
Lawrence Wright, The Terror Years: From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State (New York: Knopf, 2016) (From the book jacket: "On the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, The Terror Years is at once a unifying recollection of the roots of contemporary Middle Eastern terrorism, a study of how it has grown and metastasized, and, in the scary and moving epilogue, a cautionary tale of where terrorism might take us yet." From the text: "Terror, as a strategy, rarely succeeds, except in one respect: it creates repression on the part of the state [for example. restrictions on the domestic and constitutional liberties of Americans] or the occupying power [for example, mistakes made by the occupying U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan]. This is an expected and longed for goal of terrorists, who seek to counter the state's vast military advantage bu forcing it to overreact, generating popular support for the cause." Id. at 341. "It's a myth that terrorism never succeeds . . . " Id. at 344. "The conflict that the Islamic State has provoked will ultimately bring about its destruction, but not without much more havoc and heartache." Id. at 348.).
