These 17 photos from ‘The Mirror Test’ capture the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in vivid detail
"Kael Weston's The Mirror Test is essential reading for anyone seeking to come to terms with our endless wars…. A riveting, on-the- ground look at American policy and its aftermath." – Phil Klay, author of Redeployment
John Kael Weston spent seven years on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan (2003-2010) as a State Department political advisor to Marine Corps generals. From Sadr City and Fallujah in Iraq to the Khost and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan, Weston was often the only non-military presence alongside our armed forces.
After returning home, he grappled with the aftermath of these wars. How, and when, will they end? How will they be remembered? And how do we memorialize the American, Iraqi and Afghan lives that have been lost and changed by more than a decade and a half of war, while reckoning with the unpopularity of the conflicts themselves?
In "The Mirror Test: America at War in Iraq and Afghanistan" (Knopf, May 24), Weston recounts his travels from Twentynine Palms in California to Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the American hometowns of Marines who fell during his watch. Along the way, he introduces American troops, Iraqi truck drivers, Afghan teachers, imams, mullahs and former Taliban fighters, all while grappling with the larger questions these wars pose.
Hailed as "the conscience of our wars" (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post), Weston weaves together these American, Iraqi and Afghan stories and offers them as a national mirror, asking us to take an unflinching look at these wars and where they leave America today. As he writes, "It's past time for this kind of shared reckoning … When we look into that mirror, as uncomfortable as it may be, let's not turn away."
U.S. KIA, Fallujah, 2006–2007. (Photo courtesy of J. Kael Weston)
See more about "The Mirror Test: America at War in Iraq and Afghanistan" here.
SHARE