I dedicate this book to the American, English, Italian, Polish, Canadian, Australian soldiers and all the other soldiers of the coalition who have been killed or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. From these wars a new generation of heroes has emerged; stories of gallantry have come out, accounts of valour and courage, which speak of the horrors of war, and are far from the everyday life of our society; acts of heroism, often born as acts of desperation, following an ambush, a situation with no way out. Among the U.S. soldiers, some of these acts of heroism, the few that have been made known, have been conferred a medal and have become part of the military legacy of America. The lights have gone up, for a moment, on these episodes, leaving everything around them in the dark; the unspeakable suffering and atrocious mutilations; the fissure that opens up in what seemed to be a solid life; the factories and towns in the heart of America that young people are disappearing from; and then nightmares, “post-traumatic stress disorder,” emotional breakdowns, wounds that never close. It was not what these boys were expecting, when they looked at the black sky and the bolts of lightning in the prairies, and thought the world was going to reveal some big secret to them. Enormous human tragedies have taken place in the wretched heat of Iraq and under the cold stars of Afghanistan. If it is true, and it is, that death is an intolerable waste of life, then this waste in Iraq and in Afghanistan has taken place with insane liberality. For the U.S. soldiers that come back from Iraq or Afghanistan there are no parades down 5th Avenue; New York no longer is in mood for parades. The wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan have been wars with few medals, assigned after years, rather than months, of Pentagon scrutiny.
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