Joshua Key: The story of an ordinary soldier

Buying a Christmas gift to my father is usually an ordeal. He prefers biographies, mostly about war and "great men". This year, I was lucky when strolling around in the local, crappy book shop - I bought The Deserter's tale: The story of an ordinary soldier who walked away from the war in Iraq by Joshua Key. My father read it and now I have read it, too. The book teels the story of a poor kid from Oklahoma who joins the army in order to solve his financial problems, is taken in by the recruiters' lies (he thinks he will not have to go abroad to fight) and is sent to Iraq. Being exposed to the cruelty against civilians shown by American soldiers in Iraq, he loses all his faith in the war being a mission to restore democracy and peace. Even though some parts of the book are seemingly the product of an attempt to create an alluring story (the story of a man from childhood onwards), it was a good book to read for someone who, like me, don't know much about the present reality in Iraq. Of course, I come across reports from Iraq in the news, but the soldier's point of view is rarely present there. In that way, Key's book is important.

He talks about the frustration of hunting down invisible terrorists. As a matter of fact, he never sees any 'terrorist'. The frustration of the soldiers is taken out on civilians, whom the soldiers are taught to perceive as 'the enemy', 'terrorists'. This part of the book, when he reports about horrible acts of cruelty, is very convincing. Towards the end of the book the tone is altered; he now draws general conclusions from his own experiences in Iraq. He reflects on the meagre excuses of 'I was only acting in accordance with orders'. Of course he is right that this is an excuse that will not convince anyone, but the way he says it, it comes out in a fairly preachy way that I consider entirely unnecessary in relation to what he has already said about the atrocities in Iraq. We have, as it were, already got the point. And his appeal to the Geneva convention left me a bit confused. On the one hand, he says that what they did was possible only when conscience was suffocated. On the other hand, he appeals to the Geneva book in the last part of the book almost if that would shed light on the graveness of the crimes committed by the soldies. (The Geneva convention has a function, who would want to dispute that, but I was unclear about the role it had in Key's book)

That said, Key's book should be taken seriously.

I am curious about the reception of the book in the US. Have any representatives of the US army commented on the book? Is Key's story explained away asan exception to the "humanistic mission" of the US army, in the same way as the Abu Ghraib scandal was said to be the result of the misbehaviour on the part of a few soldiers?