Un-American: A Soldier's Reckoning (book)

Erik Edstrom, Amazon, 5/19/20; Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Author Erik Edstrom (amazon.com)

Un-American: A Soldier's Reckoning of Our Longest War

Uncle Sam kicks butt in war!

"Eloquent, devastating...packed with gimlet-eyed analysis ― cultural, economic, historical ― of how American life came to look the way it does...Edstrom’s keen observational powers encompass both the physical world and social nuance."

― Los Angeles Review of Books

• (RATING: 4.7/5 stars, 71 raters)

Happy Veterans Day. This book is a manifesto about America’s unchallenged war machine. It is written by a West Point officer, U.S. War on Afghanistan veteran, and new kind of military hero.

Before engaging in any kind of war, author Erik Edstrom asks us to imagine three, rarely imagined scenarios:

• First, let's imagine our own death.
• Second, imagine war from “the other side.”
• Third, imagine what might have been if the war had never been fought.

Un-American (Erik Edstrom)

Pursuing these realities through his own combat experience, Edstrom reaches the unavoidable conclusion about America at war.

 

But that realization came too late. The damage had already been done. 

Edstrom grew up in suburban Massachusetts with an idealistic desire to make an impact, ultimately leading him to the gates of West Point. Five years later, he was deployed to Afghanistan as an infantry lieutenant.

Throughout his military career, he confronted atrocities [unprosecuted American war crimes], buried his friends, wrestled with depression, and struggled with an understanding that the war he fought in, and the youth he traded to prepare for it, was in contribution to a bitter truth:

The "War on Terror" [which is a tactic that cannot be defeated, not an enemy that can] is not just a tragedy, but an international crime.

The deeper tragedy is that our country, the US of A, lacks the courage and conviction to say so.

Un-American is a hybrid of social commentary and memoir that exposes how blind support for war exacerbates the problems it’s intended to resolve, devastates the people allegedly being "helped," and diverts assets from far larger threats like climate change.

Un-American is a revolutionary act, offering a blueprint for redressing America’s relationship with patriotism, the military, and military spending. More