About 20 days ago, Pepe Escobar let us know that part 2 of his Forever Wars series is now available for purchase and download as an e-book. I sat down to read it in order to write a book review for The Saker Blog. It is now 20 days later and I am still in awe, comparing the historical with the recent. It is as if the same bells are ringing once again, yet they are more muted and discordant. So my book report is that I am still on part 1, which starts before 9/11 and to 2004. I don’t want to miss one moment of Pepe’s evocative word sketches of the War on Terror, which he calls the War on Terra, and want to take my own sweet time to read Forever Wars I and II. Because I am reading slowly, let us then not hold up the announcement of the new book.
It is my great pleasure and honor to announce that Pepe Escobar, our friend, our colleague, fellow warrior, and outstanding journalist, has published the second part in the series, Forever Wars.
Now Pepe will take the podium:
(Amarynth exists, stage left, spots on Pepe!)
Forever Wars, recaptured in real-time
By Pepe Escobar
The 21st century, geopolitically, so far has been shaped by the U.S.- engineered Forever Wars.
Forever Wars: Afghanistan-Iraq, part 2, ranging from 2004 to 2021, is the fourth in a series of e-books recovering the Pepe Escobar archives on Asia Times.
The archives track a period of 20 years – starting with the columns and stories published under The Roving Eye sign in the previous Asia Times Online from 2001 all the way to early 2015.
The first e-book, Shadow Play, tracked the interplay between China, Russia and the U.S. between 2017-2020.
The second, Persian Miniatures, tracked the Islamic Republic of Iran throughout the “axis of evil” era, the Ahmadinejad years, the nuclear deal, and “maximum pressure” imposed by the Trump administration.
Forever Wars is divided in two parts, closely tracking Afghanistan and Iraq.
Forever Wars, part 1 starts one month before 9/11 in the heart of Afghanistan, and goes all the way to 2004.
Part 2, edited by my Asia Times colleague Bradley Martin, starts with the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Taliban adventures in Texas and goes all the way to the “Saigon moment” and the return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The unifying idea behind this e-book series is quite a challenge: to recover the excitement of what is written as “the first draft of History”.
You may read the whole two-volume compilation chronologically, as a thriller, following in detail all the plot twists and cliffhangers.
Or you may read it in a self-service way, picking a date or a particular theme.
On part 1, you will find the last interview by commander Massoud in the Panjshir before he was killed two days before 9/11; the expansion of jihad as a “thermonuclear bomb”; life in “liberated” Kabul; life in Iraq in the last year under Saddam Hussein; on the trail of al-Qaeda in the Afghan badlands; who brought us the war on Iraq.
On part 2, you will revive, among other themes:
Abu Ghraib as an American tragedy.
Fallujah as a new Guernica.
Iraq as the new Afghanistan.
The myth of Talibanistan.
The counter-insurgency absurdities in “AfPak”.
How we all remain hostages of 9/11.
The Pipelineistan Great Game.
The failing surges – in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
How was life in Talibanistan in the year 2000.
NATO designing our future already in 2010.
Afghanistan courted as a player in Eurasian connectivity.
And since July 7, the chronicle of the astonishing end of the 20-year-long Forever War in Afghanistan on August 15, 2021.
The majority of the articles, essays and interviews selected for this two-part e-book were written in Afghanistan and in Iraq and/or before and after multiple visits to both countries.
So welcome to a unique geopolitical road trip – depicting in detail the slings and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune that will continue to shape the young 21st century.
Ride the snake.
The dilemma with books is they must be read.
But, if we love books, then the romance is worth the time.
With Pepe, the romance is a dance, a slow, fluid ballet, with sudden leaps, Nurejev-like, inspiring our apt attention.
I’m sure his newest book contains great ‘music’.
I’m off to the Bookshop to get my copy.
I wish there was an importance order to books, so you could sort through all the fog of uncertainty and locate the tools of the reading trade.
It would make life so much simpler and easier to interpret not only life, but other books, books that came after the important books, to see if they have read the important books and reached the level of, book smart.
But then again this was just a wish, books are books and nothing else.
Mortimer Adler did that in the early fifties. Great Books of the Western World collection.
Came with its own bookcase. Elegant presentation of the West’s greatest books.
Exquisite leather covers, acid proof pages, esthetic presentation in itself.
I bought it in my college days, have owned them since, never letting anyone touch them, used the set prolifically, kept right next to my bedside, under other bookshelves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World
I’ve got my stack too, but i’ve never heard of those guys.
I had never heard of this Great Books series. But I see that Gibbon’s decline and fall of the Roman empire is among them.
Well, there ya go, eh Saker? As it turns out, I am not the only one who thinks Gibbon’s work belongs among the greatest books ever written.
The Great Books are excellent starting points.
My father bought a set decades ago and they are near comprehensive.
And they provide an ever receding window into the logic, erudition, and perspective some Western intellectuals of past generations used to have.
Which books would you say are suitable reading now?
The Greek tragedies, Gibbon, or Animal Farm?!
If it was in the set, I would choose Lewis Carroll, the playbook of end stage decadence.
Pepe’s article today, “When the West was itchin’ to go to China,” as usual cites several books/journals, and as always I pursue them. I’m a historian thus my moniker; and our inboxes are always full; and we can never ever hope to read all that we must, but we still try. Today, however, I was in for a shock when I looked to find History of the Later Han and discovered that it’s merely one volume from the Sinica Leidensia Series, which is a collection of 153 volumes with more to be published that I’d never heard of despite my China studies.
I do hope some will take the time to look into that vast resource. I also discovered the original Book of the Later Han in Chinese online, along with a host of other sources, which is par for the course with Pepe’s references it seems.
Thanks so much OH,
like most in Zone A, I have read almost exclusively on western civ ; I need primers on China.
So much to read, so little time!
Is there a physical book version?
Yes, it would be good to know if there is. I couldn’t find one on amazon, perhaps because it is new?…
P.S. Some other books of his, in pdf format, free of charge: https://1lib.us/g/Pepe%20Escobar
No Margaret, no physical book.
These books look awesome. I’m an American and I buy when I can but most of the time I can’t afford this stuff without selling my kids into white slavery….it’s not available at my library. My stem student is loving the Roaring Twenties. If anyone could benefit by reading these books it’s us heavily armed and provisioned newly poor but collapsed early people. Love Pepe, the Saker, and must say great article and great company.
“Fallujah as a new Guernica.” or “Fallujah as a new Dresden”?
Guernica is a military mistake due to navigation errors.
Dresden is a cold high level political decision. It was taken by Churchill himself.
Regards
And the US followed in Churchill’s fart trails like they always do if someone has an idea…which they never do.