Download The Mirror Test: America at War in Iraq and Afghanistan AudioBook Free
A powerfully written firsthand profile of the human being costs of discord. J. Kael Weston put in seven years on the floor in Iraq and Afghanistan doing work for the US State Department in some of the very most dangerous frontline locations. Upon his go back home, while traveling the country to pay value to the lifeless and wounded, he asked himself: When will these wars end? How will they be appreciated and memorialized? What lessons can we study from them? These are questions without quick answers but perhaps ones that may lead to a distributed reckoning worthy of the sacrifices of those - soldiers and civilians likewise - whose lives have been evolved by greater than a decade and a half of war. Weston requires us from Twentynine Hands in California to Fallujah in Iraq, Khost and Helmand in Afghanistan, Maryland, Colorado, Wyoming, and NEW YORK as well as to out-of-the-way places in Iowa and Texas. We meet generals, corporals and captains, senators and ambassadors, NATO allies, Iraqi truck motorists, city councils, imams and mullahs, Afghan schoolteachers, madrassa and university students, previous Taliban fighters and ex-Guantánamo prison detainees, a torture sufferer, SEAL and Delta Make clubs, and many marines. The overall frame for the publication, from which the title is taken, centers on soldiers who have received grievous wounds to the face. There's a moment throughout their recovery when they need to look after their reconstructed performances for the first time. That is known as "the mirror test". From an intricate tapestry of voices and reports - Iraqi, Afghan, and American - Weston offers a larger mirror test for our country in its global role. An unflinching and deep study of the interplay between warfare and diplomacy, this can be an essential publication - a crucial take a look at America now, how it is looked at on the planet, and the way the country views itself.
