On American War

Ok, so this was a bizarre book. I think I get it, but there’s a lot of intersecting ideas and I don’t know where El Akkad wanted to go with them. Essentially, this book is not really about the United States at all. I think it is instead a way of instructing Americans about 21st century civil wars by taking them and placing them here in the United States (above all, this work reads like a book on Syria).

Terrorism is central to this book. Throughout much of the story, the Free Southern States (the secessionist government of the South) and a number of rebel groups are vying for power. The Free Southern States are more concerned with governance and, when necessary, fighting against the Union, while the rebel groups often engage in terrorist attacks, blowing themselves to smithereens.

Spoiler

Our main character (and anti-hero), Sarat Chestnut, is one of these. Although she is not formally with the rebels, she also is not formally supported by the FSS. She’s essentially a lone-wolf.

El Akkad elaborates for us the ease of becoming radicalized when it feels like the world is against you. If everyone is your enemy, then everyone is possible.

Another line of thought that extends through the book is the role of foreign intervention. In this book’s timeline, another Arab Spring takes place in the late 2010s or early 20s and successfully democratizes the Arab World. Arab states then unite, forming the Bouazizi Empire, one of the current global superpowers. It may sound far-fetched, but the purpose is not to convince us that the Arab World can solve its problems overnight, but to act as a superpower capable of counteracting the United States, China, and “the Russian Union.” As the US does in the Arab world’s civil wars today, the Bouazizi Empires ships aid packages, lends assistance in building refugee camps, and sends weapons and food to the rebels.

Spoiler

As Joe makes clear at the end of the story, the aid for the rebels is not to necessarily help them succeed, but to secure the Bouazizi Empire’s own interests.

Other themes that support this story include the brutality of torture, inhumane massacres, bullshit rhetoric over “reconciliation” while kicking the can down a few decades, the myth of humanitarian intervention for democratic reasons, the lives of refugees, and our own specter: climatic change (which has profoundly shaped the Bouazizi Empire and Europe—rather than refugees fleeing north to Europe across the Mediterranean, Europeans now flee south to the Bouazizi Empire, which has underground cities, as the surface is often too hot for human habitation). El Akkad is far harsher on the North than he is on the South, which I found he wrote about quite sympathetically.

Ultimately, Omar El Akkad takes the crises of the Middle East and inverts them in a way that could be understood by Americans. Further, the writing isn’t generally that good. The texture is there, but it is hard to suspend disbelief throughout much of the book. That isn’t because the story is unbelievable, but because the plot feels ham-fisted and the characters are caricatures. It isn’t the characters that drive the plot, but everything beyond them. Yet, perhaps that’s the point.