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I Lost My Love in Baghdad A Modern War Story Michael Hastings Books

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I Lost My Love in Baghdad A Modern War Story Michael Hastings Books

I knew Mike Hastings and considered him a friend, but I'm not giving this five stars out of a nepotistic star bumping scheme for my late friend.

I finally read this book after avoiding it and many other Iraq memoirs for the better part of the last decade. I served in Iraq in 2004-5 and then in 2006-7. When not there, I worked on Iraq policy in the Pentagon or State Department. For personal reasons I haven't had much of a desire to read about our great tragedy in Iraq, but last month I picked Mike's book up off of my shelf and began it.

First, Mike's details are spot on. His first initial experiences entering a Baghdad at war, his acclimatization to "normality" at war, and then his struggle with the dissonance between life in America and life at war are not just exacting and illustrative, but touching and sincere. To be short, his reporting of both the war and life at home during war, or America in exception to war, is excellent.

But, on top of outstanding war reporting, and what is lost, I believe, in so much of our discussion and understanding of war, is the personal story. War is above all else a human experience. The larger, macro examination and discussion of Iraq in its common form as geo-political, DC Beltway pundit banter is meaningless when compared with the millions upon millions of individual stories of men, women and children, most of them tales of suffering and grief, too many of them snuffed out and no longer continuing.

Mike's story is intimate, genuine, heartbreaking, and, as great writing does, transcends the immediate environment of the story to be understood as a universal truism that others can share in. While Mike's war reporting will explain and describe the events of that war to allow someone inexperienced with its madness, his personal story, of his love and relationship, will be readily identifiable by any of us who have loved and lost.


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I Lost My Love in Baghdad A Modern War Story Michael Hastings Books Reviews

Michael Hastings lost more than his love in Baghdad he lost his bearings, and with it, his credibility. His memoir is a self-serving effort to draw a parallel between his doomed love affair with his girlfriend, NDI aid worker Andi Parhamovich, and America’s military mission in Iraq.

Hastings is a competitive, no-holds barred, war-zone reporter in Irag. He has an eye for details that capture the human toll of high-intensity combat. But when his petite, pretty, and young girlfriend gets a job in Iraq - outside the heavily fortified Green Zone that Hastings calls home - her effervescent presence and easy access to sources challenges his macho, gung-ho standing. Hastings resolves this imbalance by going to war – with Andi. The last half of the book documents their deteriorating relationship through revealing emails, letters, and personal anecdotes. We don’t get Andi’s perspective – she died in a gruesome Sunni-backed attack – but we do know that she didn’t trust him because she hacked his email account.

I was disgusted by Hastings’ arrogant equivalency comparing his immature dating style with the commitment by and sacrifice of thousands of soldiers and their families (both American and Coalition Forces) and the Iraqi people to the Occupation. Parhamovich and Hastings’ battlefield romance had intrigue, secrets, fighting, backstabbing, mistrust, competing agendas, and tragic deaths (members of Andi’s security detail also died), that mirrored some of the self-inflicted chaos and contemptuous actions of the American-led war. Hastings, though, ruins his credibility when he leverages Parhamovich's ugly death to make himself the hero of the story. Hastings is guilty of the very actions he went to Iraq to report on hubris.
I remember seeing Michael Hastings interviewed in the last few years before his death. He was brilliant and angry. I knew he had reported from Iraq and saw the horrible tragedy of what we had wrought there, but I did not know at the time how personal his reaction was. He suffered an unimaginable loss, and journalism and the courage to tell the truth took a huge hit when he died. He was a loud, strident voice for the truth - very much missing in journalism these days.

This book is a history of 2005 and 2006 in Iraq and a love story. I highly recommend it.
I always appreciated Michael Hastings' perspective and knowledge about the politics of the military industrial complex and the human suffering of innocents of the Iraq and Afghan wars. He was a frequent contributer on cable news and in print. He was direct and no-holds barred, e.g. when he he revealed in his Rolling Stone piece Gen. Stanley McChrystal's opinions of the President and his administration. Because of Hastings' report, McChrystal was asked to resign. I had no idea of Hastings' his heartbreaking personal experience when he was assigned to cover Iraq for the first time for Newsweek. However, Hasting's recent tragic death, at the tender age of 33, moved me to read his books. His war reporting in this book was excellent, adding more to what I had known about the folly of how the US began that regrettable war. The other personal story is the one that stirred my heart. It makes all of his reporting that I had seen so frequently in his television appearances even more meaningful. This is one book I couldn't put down.
I've been trying to learn about the different factions fighting in Iraq as I've followed the news the past few days, had no idea this book would be so pertinent! War correspondent Michael Hastings documented the fighting in Iraq in 2007, describing situations that inevitably took us to today-- the end result of a cynical, criminal grab for power and American taxpayer dollars perpetrated by the Masters of War.

Hastings account of his romance with Andi Parhamovich rings true, their interactions and emotions are easy to identify with. Sadly, his Andi ended up in Iraq where it was fatal to be naive and idealistic. The entire book is excellent journalism but Hasting's description of his own actions and his journey home following Andi's death are classic anti war literature. The reader sees what the American public is not supposed to see.
I knew Mike Hastings and considered him a friend, but I'm not giving this five stars out of a nepotistic star bumping scheme for my late friend.

I finally read this book after avoiding it and many other Iraq memoirs for the better part of the last decade. I served in Iraq in 2004-5 and then in 2006-7. When not there, I worked on Iraq policy in the Pentagon or State Department. For personal reasons I haven't had much of a desire to read about our great tragedy in Iraq, but last month I picked Mike's book up off of my shelf and began it.

First, Mike's details are spot on. His first initial experiences entering a Baghdad at war, his acclimatization to "normality" at war, and then his struggle with the dissonance between life in America and life at war are not just exacting and illustrative, but touching and sincere. To be short, his reporting of both the war and life at home during war, or America in exception to war, is excellent.

But, on top of outstanding war reporting, and what is lost, I believe, in so much of our discussion and understanding of war, is the personal story. War is above all else a human experience. The larger, macro examination and discussion of Iraq in its common form as geo-political, DC Beltway pundit banter is meaningless when compared with the millions upon millions of individual stories of men, women and children, most of them tales of suffering and grief, too many of them snuffed out and no longer continuing.

Mike's story is intimate, genuine, heartbreaking, and, as great writing does, transcends the immediate environment of the story to be understood as a universal truism that others can share in. While Mike's war reporting will explain and describe the events of that war to allow someone inexperienced with its madness, his personal story, of his love and relationship, will be readily identifiable by any of us who have loved and lost.