https://www.city-journal.org/war-in-afghanistan
And the Whole Mountain Burned, by Ray McPadden (Center Street, 288 pp., $26)
And the Whole Mountain Burned—a novel about our war in Afghanistan—tracks the adventures of Sergeant Nick Burch, Private Danny Shane, and their platoon on its hunt for “the Egyptian,” an antagonist as elusive as Moby Dick. In their quest, Burch and Shane encounter a soul-buying soldier, a local witch whose magic packs a powerful bite, and pagan cultists devoted to an orange rabbit. The characters speak in jargon (“mailbird,” “every swinging dick,” “drop your cocks and grab your socks”) that marks one as part of the military for readers and as, at least when indulged in to overuse, one trying to fit in to the point of caricature for those in uniform. Ultimately, they come across as Americans thrust into an alien environment.
The characters speak in often-profane military jargon—“mailbird,” “drop your cocks and grab your socks”—reflecting the real-life experience of the author, who served in the infantry from 2005 through 2010.
Afghanistan’s native folkways, weather, and terrain strike the novel’s American characters as dreary and inhospitable. “Jesus, this place is a drag,” Private Shane explains. “I wish we could fight in a place where the natives weren’t so uptight. We should start a war in Brazil.” Shane, the proud beau of a stripper girlfriend, fights a long way from home.
Imagining Afghani culture as American civilization in embryo is a dangerous illusion. An officer’s notion that the Americans would defeat the enemy by imposing our model of civilization seems as quixotic as the hunt for the Egyptian. The Afghans devote themselves to their civilization, the Americans to theirs—and never the twain shall meet.