George Packer

Critics who got an early look at Generation Kill, the new HBO miniseries about the first 40 days of the Iraq war created by Wire masterminds David Simon and Ed Burns, were treated to more than the first five (of seven) episodes on DVD. As part of a multipacket press kit, they also received a glossy, four-color guide explaining where each soldier ranks in the unit of elite Marines that is the show’s focus.

It’s unfortunate that such a guide doesn’t seem to be available on HBO’s Web site (though Maureen Ryan of The Chicago Tribune has posted it on her blog), because unless you come in to Generation Kill with a strong grasp on Marine hierarchy, it won’t be until the third or fourth episode that most of the characters will differentiate themselves, or that any kind of chain of command seems clear at all.  read more »

The last time The New Yorker's George Packer was in Iraq was January 2007. He's not sure if he wants to go back, but that doesn't mean it's not on his mind. "I do find myself thinking about it all the time still," he says. "Thinking of other ways to write about it."

One of those ways was the play, Betrayed, which was based on his article of the same name from March 2007. (In January, The Observer's Doree Shafrir profiled Mr. Packer as his show was set to debut at the Culture Project in Soho, where it will close June 16th.)

 

>> Click here to check out this week's special coverage of the Baghdad Bureaus from observer.com

 

He also says he has "a little novelistic idea," but, for now, that project remains in his head. "It's as if, maybe the journalism has run its course," Mr. Packer says. "But there are other levels of experiencing it that journalism can't capture."  read more »

"It's really easy to get killed in Iraq," says Phillip Robertson, a freelancer who covered the war for Salon and wrote the introduction to the book Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq.

"They want to kill you. All you have to do is give them a chance and somebody will kill you or kidnap you." Mr. Robertson had his own near-kidnap experience, but he managed to get away. His driver's car was totaled, but Salon paid for a replacement. "No one has ever been killed because of me," he says. "And I'm very, very proud of that. There have been repercussions because of my stories but I can look you in the eye and say no one has been seriously hurt because of me."  read more »

“It’s the oft-stated phrase that truth is the first casualty of war,” said Michael Ware, CNN’s Baghdad correspondent, on the telephone from Iraq. “In this war, as in every other conflict, everybody lies to you. Your government is lying to you. The Iraqi government is lying. The insurgents are lying. The militias are lying. The U.S. military is lying. Even the civilians lie. Or in the best case, there’s confusion and exaggeration. The truth is the most elusive thing in war, particularly in an insurgency.”

Sixty-two months into the war, this is the language of the American journalist in Iraq. It’s not the only language; there are others: Cyclical, monotonous, brutal, strategic, hopeful. But slowly, as Iraq slips from the front pages and Web pages, today’s news starts to sound like yesterday’s; violence explodes; a spectacular military success, or failure. Casualty lists grow until they become incomprehensible, and then unreadable, unquantifiable. Against that metronomic numbness, 90 American journalists (according to a November 2007 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism) continue to work a dangerous war that becomes a harder and harder story to sell to Americans. As the American press corps gets older, wearier—and simultaneously younger and more untested as the veterans leave—there are truths that some of the reporters of Baghdad have learned about the war in Iraq.  read more »

Why are New Yorker writers so stage-struck? Betrayed, George Packer’s adaptation of his 16,000-word New Yorker feature of the same name that exposed the U.S. government’s shameful indifference to the fate of its loyal Iraqi employees in Baghdad, is a memorable contribution to downtown’s Culture Project. It’s Mr. Packer’s first play, and it’s a trend.

Only a year ago, The New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, made his stage debut at Culture Project in a solo performance of his own script, My Trip to Al-Qaeda. At this rate, Anthony Lane will be performing his collected movie reviews. And why not? Henry James was famously stage-struck and look what happened to him. (All his plays were a bust.)  read more »

“It was the most shaming experience of my life, talking to these people,” said New Yorker writer George Packer the other morning, sitting on an antique sofa in the living room of the Prospect Heights townhouse he shares with his wife, writer Laura Secor, and their 4-month-old son, Charlie. Mr.  read more »

So now that the Democrats have won control of Congress, what should they do about the war in Iraq?  read more »

A month after he did so, I learn that Vice President Cheney gave a long toast to the neoconservative scholar Bernard Lewis at a lunch in Philadelphia. As usual, Cheney's speech is significant for what it doesn't tell us: anything specific about the ideas that Lewis brought to the White House. Though Cheney notes that he first met Lewis 15 years ago, and that Lewis has been coming to the White House to talk to the President in the last four-and-a-half years. I.e., after September 11.

Lewis's message to the White House is summarized in The Assassins' Gate, by George Packer:

For decades, even centuries, [Arab] civilization has steadily fallen behind as the West and the rest of the world progressed into modernity. This decay is a source of humiliation and rage to millions of Arabs and non-Arab Muslims. In recent years, the sickness has produced a threat that ranges far beyond the region. American power has helped to keep the Arab world in decline by supporting sclerotic tyrannies; only an American break with its own history in the region can reverse it. The Arabs cannot pull themselves out of their historic rut. They need to be jolted out by some foreign-born shock. The overthrow of the Iraqi regime would provide one.

I believe Edward Said named this, orientalism.

Note that in Michael Massing's superb dissection of the power of AIPAC in the latest New York Review of Books, he states that Lewis's son Michael is an editor of the pro-Israel lobbyist's "Activities Update"—"a compilation of dozens of press clips, speech transcripts, and minutes of meetings... periodically e-mailed to a select list of AIPAC supporters. This research provides the raw material for AIPAC's efforts to intimidate and silence opponents. "

Note, too, that the VP's comments in Philly included this nice turn:

Some years ago, Professor Lewis was asked why he was always writing about sensitive topics. This was his reply: "The sensitive place in the body, physical or social, is where something is wrong." "Sensitivity," he said, "is a signal the body sends us, that something needs attention, which is what I try to give."

Contrary to appearances, Hillary Clinton may well have a detailed, thoroughly thought-out plan for d  read more »

Here’s a charitable view of the Iraq War:  read more »

Here’s a charitable view of the Iraq War:    read more »

“George Packer has to live in the world of the readers of The New York Review of Books, The Ne  read more »

“George Packer has to live in the world of the readers of The New York Review of Books, The New Yo  read more »

Once again, Americans are given to Great Awakenings.  read more »

Once again, Americans are given to Great Awakenings.  read more »