The Good Soldiers

Not surprisingly, the most conspicuous theme running through David Finkel's The Good Soldiers is conflict, although; it's not the obvious conflict of the Iraq conflict as a whole. Instead, Finkel focuses on the internal conflict within the soldiers battling the war on the ground and on the Iraqi citizens of Rustamiyah seeking to find their footing in a world turned upside down by war.(Finkel, 213)

Rather than focusing solely on the large-scale image of the Iraq War, Finkel utilizes the larger narrative of the war as a backdrop to notify the story of the soldiers on the ground. Finkel, who traveled to Baghdad, embedded with the 2-16—a battalion with an average age of 19—during the surge in 2007, highlights the inward confrontation of the soldiers he meets. By exposing their fear, self-doubt, and the inward struggle many of the men have over what they're asked to manage as soldiers in the war, he also brings their humanity to the surface. He shows an assembly of soldiers that often waver intermittently from total conviction in what they are managing to an entire loss of faith in their mission. The romanticized image of the American GI lowering into Baghdad for his trip and saving the world is hurled out the window as it becomes clear that these are ordinary juvenile Americans being asked to tolerate extraordinary situations on a daily basis.

Unlike other books that have appeared from the war so far, this is the first innovative to really trial and notify the story of the soldiers themselves. The 2-16 is stationed not in the bubble of the Green Zone but on the outskirts of the town in one of the most dangerous areas imaginable and the story Finkel tells is of the physical and emotional toll the war takes on the 2-16 ...