Sunrise Over Fallujah

“Operation Iraqi Freedom has four phases. The first was the understanding and assessment of the area…that phase is completed. We know what we’re facing, what we’re doing, and why we’re here…The fourth and final phase will be the building of a successful democracy in Iraq. That’s where Civil Affairs comes in. It’s our job to assess and start that rebuilding process.” 

This quote shows the textbook way the army addresses the situation in Iraq without realizing that there is an entirely new war being fought, and that the army has no real idea what the rules are.

“What they understand over here is power…they got to see your power. They got to see you take out their cities, kill a few folks. In a way, we’re teachers getting ready to let them know what American power is really all about.” 

Sergeant Harris echoes the sentiment of many soldiers during the Iraq War. The consensus was that a display of power and force was needed, ignoring the fact that the region had been at war far before America ever got involved. As the army finds out, their enemies are patient; they could outlast displays of power and look for moments of weakness.

“What I think”—Jonesy put talcum powder in his boots and shook them—“is that Saddam got a tune in his head and he wants to play it real bad. And when it don’t go right he just play it louder. A lot of dudes do that. They call it music, but it could just be war.” 

Jonesy’s thinking is startlingly accurate for both sides of the fight. When something doesn’t go right for the U.S. Army, the Civil Affairs unit is sent in to rectify the situation. Though named Civil Affairs, the unit is still a part of the army, and while members of this unit are designed to put a human face to war, it is still war.

“So you want to break it down to us one more time?” Danforth asked. “We’re supposed to go out and kill the Iraqis and blow up their stuff. Then we help them find their arms or legs, or whatever we’ve blown off, and patch them back together. Then we all sit in a circle and sing campfire songs, right?”

Many of the older officers don’t understand the mission of the Civil Affairs unit or the role they play in the larger war. Likewise, many soldiers within the unit have a hard time shooting and killing Iraqis and then putting a human face on it all by then absurdly offering to bandage them. 

“King had been talking about treating people humanely, and with dignity, but we were thinking about how hard staying alive was going to be.”

Again, the officers at the top, those not in the hot zones, are interested in saving face and winning over the noncombatants. Though this is an admirable task, it is hard to accomplish when soldiers can’t identify the enemy.

“If we just go in and take out their weapons of mass destruction and their regime, then we’re just tough guys. But if we go in and take out their desire to fight us and help them build their own democracy, then we’re heroes.” 

This quote alludes to the hero type of person/soldier that Birdy doesn’t believe he is. Again, on paper the objective looks nice: get the bad guys to not want to fight any longer. But the soldiers know it isn’t that easy. They are being randomly targeted by insurgents and don’t know who to trust.

“We settled into the storm. We were not the winners. After the first few minutes of cowering near whatever stable object we could find, we just stayed put and hoped we would outlive it…The sandstorm lasted two days. Two days of misery and wanting to die. When it ended we were all a mess.”

This quote foreshadows the rest of the novel. The sunrise was meant to be something beautiful, spectacular. Instead came the two-day sandstorm and destruction. The soldiers could barely outlive the storm and were helpless. And yet, this is a country and people they are supposed to know thoroughly. It shows that every new day can bring a new set of problems.

“The best laid plans of mice and men…” Captain Coles said. “Centcom is trying to figure out what happened to the 507th. They were supposed to be in a safe area. Now they’re rechecking the Lines of Communication to figure out just what is safe and what’s not.”

The soldiers start to understand that war and victory, especially in Iraq, is not black-and-white. Gains and losses change on a daily basis. The most important thing is that the attack on the 507thhighlights just how hard it is to know what is safe and who to trust in a war environment.

“I walked away. Away from the house, away from the body, away from the grandmother. The buildings across the street, the soldiers moving cautiously past them, were unreal through my tears. It was a horror movie badly out of focus, with only the images in my head crystal clear.” 

Birdy sees death up-close for the first time. He had spoken to the kid, looked him in the eye, and now sees him dead. It is the first time that he’s come so close to knowing death intimately.

“I didn’t want to be connected with the wounds, or with the dying. It all looked so much better in the training films, when the figures were just silhouettes flickering across a screen. When it was all just a video game.” 

Like many kids, Birdy first experienced violence as part of video games. Violence and/or death are quite one thing when playing a game and no personal connection to the violence is established. When face-to-face with death, however, and when realizing that death can just as easily come for you in the very same manner, life becomes chaotic and surreal.

“An image of my mom, sitting at our kitchen table in Harlem, flashed through my mind. If I were killed she would cry, I knew. It would hurt her so much, and as I stood watching the ritual of gathering the dead, I felt sorry for her. I knew what Jonesy was saying, that the dying hurt everybody.”

This is a beautiful quote in that it attempts to show the humanity that soldiers and the Civil Affairs unit are trying to add to the war. Dying wasn’t just something that happened to the insurgents. It happened to fellow soldiers as well. Birdy learns through all of this that death stays with you, long after the killing.

“Hey, man, we all weird,” Jonesy said. “Or do you always do drive-bys in the name of democracy?”

Jonesy’s joke shows that the Americans, like the Iraqis, seem to have no method to the attacks. The Americans are on the defensive and shoot at shadows like a drive-by shooting, hitting a target and then speeding away.

“When you kill a camel it is better to cut off the body than the head,” the old man said. “If you cut off the head then the camel doesn’t know what he is.” 

This quote from Jamil is in response to being asked about Saddam being taken out. Though many Iraqis are grateful, without leadership, they aren’t certain who they are and a power vacuum has been created. Jamil alludes to the fact that more harm might have been done by taking out the head with no real plan for the body.

“The things is,” Miller went on, “is that we don’t need to compromise. Maybe somewhere, somebody has to compromise, but we don’t. If we’re supposed to be putting a human face on this war, then we need to seriously figure out what that means. We can’t make it right by giving these people a smiley face.”

Captain Miller is voicing a complaint that even Birdy begins to understand by the end of the novel. Being humane in the face of war is a tough act, but it’s near impossible if accidents like friendly fire and civilian deaths are being shrugged off as the fog of war.

“It’s hard to be brave when you can stumble across a world of hurt around any corner, where dying becomes so casual you don’t even notice it sitting next to you.”

Birdy is becoming a very different person from when he first started writing to his Uncle Richie. Now he’s aware of the fact that he is in constant danger while in Iraq. It’s not only hard to be brave but to be humane when faced with those seeking to kill you on a daily basis.

“The marine patrol had been coming down the street, the IED had exploded, and now people were dead. There was no confrontation, no blurred figures flying across the busy street, no one to chase down for revenge, no one to be mad at.” 

The war has turned into a war of not knowing who the enemy really is. Makeshift bombs can be detonated from remote devices such as cellphones. In this way, the Americans can only stay on the defensive. They can’t even avenge fallen soldiers as there’s no way of knowing who the culprit is.

“I hadn’t thought about it much, but Jonesy was right. We needed one another to get out of this war alive. We needed one another and a whole lot of luck.” 

Though many of the soldiers have attitudes and egos, Jonesy once again provides words of wisdom by saying that, despite all of their differences, the soldiers need to stick together. The only way to get out of the war alive is to watch out for one another. 

“Come back and ask me the same question in one year and I will tell you,” Jamil said. “We knew that Saddam was Satan, but we could recognize his mustache and learn to smile when he walked down the street. Who will be the new Satan?”

Jamil alludes to the fact that, at least with Saddam in power, the Iraqis knew who the enemy was. They knew who to fear. With him gone, there is no way of telling what evil to fear or what the new danger looks like.

“It was weird – weird and unnerving. Somebody buying onions, somebody getting their fingers blown off, somebody dying.” 

Birdy and the others struggle to come to grips with the randomness of the killing. In the same place that people are going about their lives and children playing, a car bomb goes off or someone is gunned down. Not only is the act itself unnerving, the frequency of the act is equally horrible.

“But now I was willing to kill because I was afraid of being killed, willing to kill people I had never met, had never argued with, and who, perhaps, had never wanted to hurt me. But I was afraid so I would kill.”

Birdy is very much a different person than the young man we encountered early on in the novel. The old adage of “kill or be killed” applies to the Iraq War and, as much as Birdy and others don’t want to kill, they have to protect themselves.

“I didn’t want rest. I wanted to be outside if we were attacked. I wanted to hurt something, to make something right. But what?”

Birdy initially joined the army to make a difference, to make something right after 9/11. At this point in the novel, however, and especially right after Jonesy’s death, he wants to hurt something, a striking difference. It is pain he feels, and he wants someone to be responsible for that pain.

“If there’s a God.” Her face was stretched tight in her anguish. “If there’s a God, Birdy, where the hell is He hiding?”

Birdy himself broaches this topic in the novel’s closing letter. With all of the violence and bloodshed, where is God? This could all be a part of God’s plan, but perhaps humans are too weak to understand this. Birdy doesn’t know if he and God will ever be on the same page again. Marla alludes to this feeling of despair and abandonment after Jonesy’s death.

“But over and over I thought we were in a war of complete randomness. Death was hiding in every shadow, lurking along every roadway, flying through the midday air. It came suddenly and randomly. There was no logic except the constant adding up of numbers.”

As much as the army tried to bring logic to the war and as much as the rules of engagement tried to inform the soldiers who to kill and who not to kill, there was no point. For many like Birdy, the war and its random violence all seemed unnecessary. Was anyone even winning? And what, if anything, were they winning?