Oct. 14, 2007
BOOK REVIEW: 'Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts' Continues Robert Kaplan's Travels – Begun with 'Imperial Grunts' – to Military Hot Spots Around the Globe
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf – George Orwell, quoted on Page 191 of Robert D. Kaplan's "Imperial Grunts"
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Continuing the incomparable reportage of America's military around the globe that he began with "Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground" (Random House, 439 pages, $27.95, 2005, paperback edition, 2006), Atlantic Monthly correspondent Robert D. Kaplan has followed up with the second volume of his projected series: "Hog Pilots and Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground" (Random House, 448 pages, $27.95, maps, notes, bibliography, index).
Together the two books – and yes, they should be read together as I did in preparing this review – present a vivid picture of what master reporter and student of history Kaplan, in full command of his powers, with twelve books produced so far, shows the U.S. as an imperial power. That makes the Bush Administration unhappy, Kaplan notes, but the sailors, soldiers, marines and airmen he lived with embody all the elements of an empire reminiscent of the British, French and Roman ones. It may be the most benign empire, despite lapses from time to time, but it qualifies if only because of its scope.
Born in 1952 in a working class area of New York City, Kaplan is one correspondent who has had military experience: In the 1970s, living in Israel, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces, he notes on pages 190-191 in "Imperial Grunts": "In Israel in the 1970s, finding life exclusively among Jews in a small country claustrophobic, I discovered my Americanness anew. For a quarter century thereafter, I had been covering wars and insurrections. During this time I made more friends in the American military than in the international media."
No, Bob Kaplan is not a neoconservative, whatever that is; I read him as a realist and student of military history, reaching back to the roots of warfare to Sun-Tzu ("The Art of War"), Mao Ze Dong ("On Guerilla War") and Karl von Clausewitz, the Prussian author of many books on warfare.
Perhaps most of all, he's walking in the footsteps of the great war correspondents of World War II, especially Ernie Pyle, but including Robert Sherrod and Richard Tregaskis. These are the three he mentions, but he also includes Rudyard Kipling and the young Winston Churchill, who was the Bob Kaplan of his day on the Northwest Frontier in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Imperial Grunts" covers Yemen, Colombia, Mongolia – perhaps the most entertaining of the chapters, where Kaplan quotes the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones, Roy Chapman Andrews, and evokes a sense of this ancient country that sings with authority—the Philippines, Fort Bragg, NC, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and winds up in Iraq in the spring of 2004 with the battle of Fallujah.
In every instance in both books -- and I emphasize one more time that they should be read together – Kaplan lives with the "grunts" and the noncoms, for which he expresses the most profound admiration. American non-commissioned officers in all the services are what produces great fighting forces in the U.S., he emphasizes again and again. The diversity of the all-volunteer military is a point emphasized many times in both books, with Kaplan naming the people – in most cases – and giving their home towns, just as Ernie Pyle did. In "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts" Kaplan tells of visiting the grave of Ernie Pyle, killed in the South Pacific in 1945 and buried in Honolulu.
"Hog Pilots" are those who fly the A-10 Thunderbolt II "Warthog," an ugly plane that the grunts love because of its capabilities. It's not a beauty like the F-22 fighter or B-2 bomber, but it has extraordinary troop support capabilities that will keep it operating for many years, much like the B-52 and C-130 aircraft that have been flying for decades now.
The newest book from the prolific Kaplan, who's been based at The Atlantic Monthly for two decades now, covers the African Sahel, Thailand, on a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine from Hawaii to Guam, Algeria with the Army's Green Berets, Nepal, Iraq, Mali, the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and the Philippines, Guam and Las Vegas and Korea.
Nobody covers as much territory as Bob Kaplan and writes so well about everything, from the Lithuanian troops in Afghanistan bringing along a pregnant cat whose offspring take care of the mouse problem in their barracks to the attraction of American fighting men for young Filipinas – and the hatred of the wives of the married troops for same.
If you like detail, as I do, you'll find that Kaplan knows his weapons, mentioning that Colombian Army troops have adopted the Israeli-manufactured Galil assault rifle, which uses the principles of the AK-47 but uses the 5.56 X 45 mm NATO round instead of the 7.62 X 39mm Russian AK-47 caliber. He writes authoritatively about many subjects, including food. He started out as a travel writer in the vein of Bruce Chatwin and Peter Fleming and his military writing has elements of a polished travel writer.
I try not to read other people's reviews of a book I'm reviewing, but I couldn't help noticing one review that called Kaplan a cheerleader who rarely if ever says anything bad about the troops with whom he's embedded. This is a fairly accurate assessment: Kaplan reserves most of his criticism for the rear echelon types who persist in fighting yesterday's wars, as they seem to be doing on a continuing basis in Iraq.
Most of all, Kaplan says the fighting men and women are in the military because they like the warrior lifestyle. They know Kaplan's reputation and accept him because he doesn't write lugubrious accounts of the poor suffering reservist or National Guardsman who wants to return to his stateside civilian job. On the contrary, states Kaplan, fighters long for a fight, including but not limited to marines.
Kaplan knows of the nuances of the various branches of armed services, from the youthful marines, often escaping urban gangs and problematic families, to the older professional non-coms, the "lifers" who love their jobs.
If we really are an Imperial nation, we're certainly an unusual one, occupying limited terrain and willingly giving up a colony like the Philippines, where American forces in a low-key effort in southern – mostly Muslim – territory like the Zamboanga peninsula of Mindanao and Basilan Island work to root out radical Islamist fighters and convince the local Muslims that the U.S. represents the forces of good, rather than evil. "The Philippines, perhaps more than any other place in the world since 9/11, was a success for the American military," he writes.
Kaplan tries to put Iraq into perspective. In both of the books he notes that the Pentagon and many of the generals, including some who are now calling Iraq a quagmire, are fighting a big war in the manner of World War II and Korea, when a "small war" strategy is called for. He reminds readers that we've been in South Korea now for 56 years and we still have troops in Germany after 62 years. Americans, he notes, long for wars that end neatly and produce victory parades.
A few quotes to show the kind of writing these books provide:
"I had met many like them since 9/11. For despite their uniforms and short haircuts that were supposed to have robbed them of their individuality, the American troops whom I met I remember only as individuals. Of course I might have had the same impression writing about coal miners with pickaxes and shovels instead of rifles, or about construction workers, or cod fisherman, all of whom dressed in veritable uniforms….While the troops looked alike to outsiders, after a few days with them their personalities achieved vivid proportions, without the need of affectation." – Pages 369-70, "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts."
* * *
"I could have a well-paying job with a company like DuPont, and be home every night. But life is supposed to have meaning. Whenever I'm ready to collapse on the bridge at three a.m., I think of the chiefs' retirement ceremony and the clanging bell that declares, 'While others slept, you stood the watch.' --Kaplan quoting Ensign Zephyr Riendeau of Colebrook, NH, a Drexel University engineering graduate, whom he queried as to why he joined the Navy. Pages 134-5, "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts."
* * *
Summing up his goal (on Page 258 of "Imperial Grunts") Kaplan states:
"My goal as a writer was simple and clear. I wanted to take a snapshot for posterity of what I was like for mid-level commissioned and noncommissioned American officers stationed at remote locations overseas at the beginning of the twenty-first century: a snapshot in words that those sergeants and warrant officers and captains and majors would judge as sufficiently accurate, so they might recognize themselves in it….It did not mean that I ignored tough issues and problems. It did mean that I wrote about their problems and frustrations, informed by their perspective."
My recommendation: Read both books and judge for yourself if Kaplan has succeeded. I think he has.
Publisher's web site: www.atrandom.com
BOOK REVIEW: 'Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts' Continues Robert Kaplan's Travels – Begun with 'Imperial Grunts' – to Military Hot Spots Around the Globe
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf – George Orwell, quoted on Page 191 of Robert D. Kaplan's "Imperial Grunts"
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Continuing the incomparable reportage of America's military around the globe that he began with "Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground" (Random House, 439 pages, $27.95, 2005, paperback edition, 2006), Atlantic Monthly correspondent Robert D. Kaplan has followed up with the second volume of his projected series: "Hog Pilots and Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground" (Random House, 448 pages, $27.95, maps, notes, bibliography, index).
Together the two books – and yes, they should be read together as I did in preparing this review – present a vivid picture of what master reporter and student of history Kaplan, in full command of his powers, with twelve books produced so far, shows the U.S. as an imperial power. That makes the Bush Administration unhappy, Kaplan notes, but the sailors, soldiers, marines and airmen he lived with embody all the elements of an empire reminiscent of the British, French and Roman ones. It may be the most benign empire, despite lapses from time to time, but it qualifies if only because of its scope.
Born in 1952 in a working class area of New York City, Kaplan is one correspondent who has had military experience: In the 1970s, living in Israel, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces, he notes on pages 190-191 in "Imperial Grunts": "In Israel in the 1970s, finding life exclusively among Jews in a small country claustrophobic, I discovered my Americanness anew. For a quarter century thereafter, I had been covering wars and insurrections. During this time I made more friends in the American military than in the international media."
No, Bob Kaplan is not a neoconservative, whatever that is; I read him as a realist and student of military history, reaching back to the roots of warfare to Sun-Tzu ("The Art of War"), Mao Ze Dong ("On Guerilla War") and Karl von Clausewitz, the Prussian author of many books on warfare.
Perhaps most of all, he's walking in the footsteps of the great war correspondents of World War II, especially Ernie Pyle, but including Robert Sherrod and Richard Tregaskis. These are the three he mentions, but he also includes Rudyard Kipling and the young Winston Churchill, who was the Bob Kaplan of his day on the Northwest Frontier in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Imperial Grunts" covers Yemen, Colombia, Mongolia – perhaps the most entertaining of the chapters, where Kaplan quotes the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones, Roy Chapman Andrews, and evokes a sense of this ancient country that sings with authority—the Philippines, Fort Bragg, NC, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and winds up in Iraq in the spring of 2004 with the battle of Fallujah.
In every instance in both books -- and I emphasize one more time that they should be read together – Kaplan lives with the "grunts" and the noncoms, for which he expresses the most profound admiration. American non-commissioned officers in all the services are what produces great fighting forces in the U.S., he emphasizes again and again. The diversity of the all-volunteer military is a point emphasized many times in both books, with Kaplan naming the people – in most cases – and giving their home towns, just as Ernie Pyle did. In "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts" Kaplan tells of visiting the grave of Ernie Pyle, killed in the South Pacific in 1945 and buried in Honolulu.
"Hog Pilots" are those who fly the A-10 Thunderbolt II "Warthog," an ugly plane that the grunts love because of its capabilities. It's not a beauty like the F-22 fighter or B-2 bomber, but it has extraordinary troop support capabilities that will keep it operating for many years, much like the B-52 and C-130 aircraft that have been flying for decades now.
The newest book from the prolific Kaplan, who's been based at The Atlantic Monthly for two decades now, covers the African Sahel, Thailand, on a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine from Hawaii to Guam, Algeria with the Army's Green Berets, Nepal, Iraq, Mali, the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and the Philippines, Guam and Las Vegas and Korea.
Nobody covers as much territory as Bob Kaplan and writes so well about everything, from the Lithuanian troops in Afghanistan bringing along a pregnant cat whose offspring take care of the mouse problem in their barracks to the attraction of American fighting men for young Filipinas – and the hatred of the wives of the married troops for same.
If you like detail, as I do, you'll find that Kaplan knows his weapons, mentioning that Colombian Army troops have adopted the Israeli-manufactured Galil assault rifle, which uses the principles of the AK-47 but uses the 5.56 X 45 mm NATO round instead of the 7.62 X 39mm Russian AK-47 caliber. He writes authoritatively about many subjects, including food. He started out as a travel writer in the vein of Bruce Chatwin and Peter Fleming and his military writing has elements of a polished travel writer.
I try not to read other people's reviews of a book I'm reviewing, but I couldn't help noticing one review that called Kaplan a cheerleader who rarely if ever says anything bad about the troops with whom he's embedded. This is a fairly accurate assessment: Kaplan reserves most of his criticism for the rear echelon types who persist in fighting yesterday's wars, as they seem to be doing on a continuing basis in Iraq.
Most of all, Kaplan says the fighting men and women are in the military because they like the warrior lifestyle. They know Kaplan's reputation and accept him because he doesn't write lugubrious accounts of the poor suffering reservist or National Guardsman who wants to return to his stateside civilian job. On the contrary, states Kaplan, fighters long for a fight, including but not limited to marines.
Kaplan knows of the nuances of the various branches of armed services, from the youthful marines, often escaping urban gangs and problematic families, to the older professional non-coms, the "lifers" who love their jobs.
If we really are an Imperial nation, we're certainly an unusual one, occupying limited terrain and willingly giving up a colony like the Philippines, where American forces in a low-key effort in southern – mostly Muslim – territory like the Zamboanga peninsula of Mindanao and Basilan Island work to root out radical Islamist fighters and convince the local Muslims that the U.S. represents the forces of good, rather than evil. "The Philippines, perhaps more than any other place in the world since 9/11, was a success for the American military," he writes.
Kaplan tries to put Iraq into perspective. In both of the books he notes that the Pentagon and many of the generals, including some who are now calling Iraq a quagmire, are fighting a big war in the manner of World War II and Korea, when a "small war" strategy is called for. He reminds readers that we've been in South Korea now for 56 years and we still have troops in Germany after 62 years. Americans, he notes, long for wars that end neatly and produce victory parades.
A few quotes to show the kind of writing these books provide:
"I had met many like them since 9/11. For despite their uniforms and short haircuts that were supposed to have robbed them of their individuality, the American troops whom I met I remember only as individuals. Of course I might have had the same impression writing about coal miners with pickaxes and shovels instead of rifles, or about construction workers, or cod fisherman, all of whom dressed in veritable uniforms….While the troops looked alike to outsiders, after a few days with them their personalities achieved vivid proportions, without the need of affectation." – Pages 369-70, "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts."
* * *
"I could have a well-paying job with a company like DuPont, and be home every night. But life is supposed to have meaning. Whenever I'm ready to collapse on the bridge at three a.m., I think of the chiefs' retirement ceremony and the clanging bell that declares, 'While others slept, you stood the watch.' --Kaplan quoting Ensign Zephyr Riendeau of Colebrook, NH, a Drexel University engineering graduate, whom he queried as to why he joined the Navy. Pages 134-5, "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts."
* * *
Summing up his goal (on Page 258 of "Imperial Grunts") Kaplan states:
"My goal as a writer was simple and clear. I wanted to take a snapshot for posterity of what I was like for mid-level commissioned and noncommissioned American officers stationed at remote locations overseas at the beginning of the twenty-first century: a snapshot in words that those sergeants and warrant officers and captains and majors would judge as sufficiently accurate, so they might recognize themselves in it….It did not mean that I ignored tough issues and problems. It did mean that I wrote about their problems and frustrations, informed by their perspective."
My recommendation: Read both books and judge for yourself if Kaplan has succeeded. I think he has.
Publisher's web site: www.atrandom.com
