Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War

by Phil Klay

Overview

From the National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment and Missionaries, an astonishing fever graph of the effects of twenty years of war in a brutally divided America.

When Phil Klay left the Marines a decade ago after serving as an officer in Iraq, he found himself a part of the community of veterans who have no choice but to grapple with the meaning of their wartime experiences—for themselves and for the country. American identity has always been bound up in war—from the revolutionary war of our founding, to the civil war that ended slavery, to the two world wars that launched America as a superpower. What did the current wars say about who we are as a country, and how should we respond as citizens?
 
Unlike in previous eras of war, relatively few Americans have had to do any real grappling with the endless, invisible conflicts of the post-9/11 world; in fact, increasingly few people are even aware they are still going on. It is as if these wars are a dark star with a strong gravitational force that draws a relatively small number of soldiers and their families into its orbit while remaining inconspicuous to most other Americans. In the meantime, the consequences of American military action abroad may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are very real indeed.
 
This chasm between the military and the civilian in American life, and the moral blind spot it has created, is one of the great themes of Uncertain Ground, Phil Klay’s powerful series of reckonings with some of our country’s thorniest concerns, written in essay form over the past ten years. In the name of what do we ask young Americans to kill, and to die? In the name of what does this country hang together? As we see at every turn in these pages, those two questions have a great deal to do with each another, and how we answer them will go a long way toward deciding where our troubled country goes from here.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593299241
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/17/2022
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	364,671
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Phil Klay is a veteran of the US Marine Corps and the author of Redeployment, which won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction, and Missionaries, which was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2020 by The Wall Street Journal. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. He currently teaches fiction at Fairfield University and is a board member for Arts in the Armed Forces.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Soldiers

Death and Memory 3

How We Mourned, Why We Fought 8

Left Behind 11

What We're Fighting for 35

Fear and Loathing in Mosul 42

We Have No Idea What We're Doing in Iraq. We Didn't Before We Killed Suleimani 54

War, Loss, and Unthinkable Youth 60

Citizens

Citizen-Soldier: Moral Risk and the Modern Military 65

The Good War 93

Duty and Pity 98

The Lesson of Eric Greitens, and the Navy Seals Who Tried to Warn Us 106

The Warrior at the Mall 116

The Soldiers We Leave Behind 124

A History of Violence 139

Writing

After War, a Failure of the Imagination 165

Fact and Fiction 169

Public Rage Won't Solve Any of Our Problems 175

Visions of War and Peace: Literature and Authority in World War 180

Faith

Tales of War and Redemption 187

Man of War 204

Can the Trauma of War Lead to Growth, Despite the Scars? 228

American Purpose After the Fall of Kabul 233

Acknowledgments 239

Index 241

Editorial Reviews

02/28/2022

Klay, a Marine Corps veteran and National Book Award winner (for the story collection Redeployment), makes his nonfiction debut with this incisive collection of previously published essays on the “Global War on Terror”: “a conflict that has lasted so long, and at such a low ebb that most Americans can pretend it isn’t happening.” In “We Have No Idea What We’re Doing in Iraq. We Didn’t Before We Killed Suleimani,” Klay forcefully critiques President Trump’s continuation of Obama’s “policy of airstrikes and deployments of Special Operations troops in support of local forces.” According to Klay, this tactic produced short-term military gains but undermined the stability of the government and contributed to the rise of ISIS and other insurgent groups. In one of the book’s most trenchant pieces, Klay reflects on the “moral dimension” of military service and profiles veterans whose horror at “the human cost of our wars overseas” has led them to public service and international aid work. Elsewhere, he eloquently describes his contempt for “performative rage” as a political device and calls for “civility... a style of argument that implicitly welcomes a response.” Enriched by the author’s military experiences and sharp turns of phrase (“We’re America. We’re good at violence”), this is an astute and often enraging survey of America’s forever wars. (May)

Publishers Weekly

04/01/2022

Klay, a former U.S. Marine and author of the acclaimed novel Redeployment, offers essays on war, violence, and literature in this new book. Written over the past 11 years, most of these pieces focus on the United States' involvement in the Iraq War, where Klay served as a public relations officer. Although he did not see combat in Iraq, he did observe first-hand the horrors of war. He writes with anger and sorrow about the casualties of American wars, the psychological damage incurred by soldiers, and the purposelessness of the 21st-century Iraq and Afghanistan Wars over the course of three U.S. presidential administrations. With care, Klay addresses questions of faith, guilt, and collective trauma, offering insights into military culture and the meaning of masculinity. Two pieces that are not directly connected to Iraq stand out: an assessment of the literature of war, from World War I to the present; and an essay on the evolution of firearms in the United States. Klay concludes with a powerful indictment of the catastrophic destruction caused by the United States since 9/11 and of the American public's lack of interest in Iraq and Afghanistan. VERDICT Klay has written an important and eye-opening essay collection that should be a must-read.—Thomas Karel

Library Journal

Uncertain Ground solidifies Mr. Klay’s place among the best of an increasing number of writers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and, while recounting their experiences in combat realistically and unheroically, raise profound questions about the nature of contemporary warfare.” —Wall Street Journal

“[The] longest, meatiest and most probing essays and articles presented here share the lasting power of Klay’s acclaimed fiction. They were published separately, in different places over a decade-plus span. But read together they amount to an interwoven, evolving and revealing examination of Klay’s central topic: What it means for a country always at war, that so few of its people do the fighting . . . It is engrossing and important, and I hope readers will start with the longest parts first.” —James Fallows, New York Times Book Review

“The keenness of his observations is unmatched . . . With this collection, Klay transcends his self-description as ‘a writer who was once a Marine and writes about war’ to become more of a philosopher. He uses war to pose urgent questions about political identity and personal faith that will endure long after the narratives of recent conflicts get revised and their terminology fades into history.” —Los Angeles Times

“With care, Klay addresses questions of faith, guilt, and collective trauma, offering insights into military culture and the meaning of masculinity . . . Klay has written an important and eye-opening essay collection that should be a must-read.” —Library Journal

“In his new collection of essays, Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War, Klay diligently examines American society in the two decades since 9/11, an event he calls ‘a somber ghost hanging over our national discourse.’ I think he succeeds admirably.” —Tom Rick, Washington Monthly

“Incisive collection . . . Enriched by the author’s military experiences and sharp turns of phrase (“We’re America. We’re good at violence”), this is an astute and often enraging survey of America’s forever wars.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“An introspective collection of essays . . . Klay’s reassuring voice offers truth, hope, and ways forward during a challenging, polarized period in America.” —Booklist

“Marine Corps veteran and acclaimed writer Klay delivers a closely observed set of essays on an age of endless war . . . Klay’s incisive, grunt’s-eye perspective is too little heard or heeded. His topics take on larger issues, but they almost always return to that central point of view—whether it be the monasticism of military life, the militarization of the culture, or citizens’ easy access to military-grade weapons. A compelling critique of civilian foibles by a skilled writer well versed in carrying out civilian wishes in the field.” —Kirkus

From the Publisher

2022-02-19
Marine Corps veteran and acclaimed writer Klay delivers a closely observed set of essays on an age of endless war.

America’s military adventures around the world, writes the author, take place “at such a low ebb that most Americans can pretend it isn’t happening.” When Americans are killed, some ears perk up. If it’s America’s allies—e.g., the interpreters who negotiated between English and Pashto speakers—not so much. Such people, along with immigrants who arrived in the U.S. and then served in the military only to be deported after their discharge, are the focus of several of the essays, speaking to the subtitle. Klay, the National Book Award winner for Redeployment, ranges widely. He is fascinated, for example, by the support among his comrades for Donald Trump, largely because he promised to keep them at home and far from the front line. It didn’t work out that way, but Trump was undeniably more open than Obama about his intentions. In 2015, Obama noted, inaccurately, that “we’ve ended two wars,” which was news to those on active duty. “No wonder our troops were having difficulty articulating why they were fighting,” writes Klay. “Their commander in chief couldn’t even bring himself to admit that we were still at war.” If your central mission is not to defeat a nebulous enemy but simply keep yourself alive, then “it’s not the Taliban or al-Qaeda or ISIS that’s trying to kill you, it’s America.” Klay’s incisive, grunt’s-eye perspective is too little heard or heeded. His topics take on larger issues, but they almost always return to that central point of view—whether it be the monasticism of military life (“Like a novice monk, I was given new clothing, new standards of dress, a new haircut, as well as a distinct role within a broader community”), the militarization of the culture, or citizens’ easy access to military-grade weapons.

A compelling critique of civilian foibles by a skilled writer well versed in carrying out civilian wishes in the field.

Kirkus Reviews