Book Review: War is Boring

Most of the security blogosphere will be familiar with David Axe. He has his own group blog, War is Boring, and has contributed to Danger Room, World Politics Review, and several more-or-less mainstream media publications. Axe has long been a friend of Information Dissemination, as well as Lawyers, Guns and Money. In August, he published War is Boring, a graphic novel depicting his experiences in 2006-2008.

It's a good title for a blog, and a good title for a book. There's an expanding literature on the boredom of war. The idea that war is fundamentally a boring, uneventful endeavor punctuated by moments of raw terror has a very long history. However, this vision of war has understandably been difficult to portray, especially on the big screen. Probably the best portrayal of boredom that I can recall is Sam Mendes' film version of Jarhead, which chronicled the long wait and minimal action in the desert in 1990-1.

However, War is Boring is less about the various wars that David Axe has covered than it is about David Axe and the modern profession of war correspondent. Over the course of War is Boring, Axe visited Chad, East Timor, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, and (for good measure) Detroit and Washington D.C. We come to know a little bit about all of those places, but Axe focuses on the commonality more than the difference. For Axe, appropriately, the most important commonality is his own presence.

Without question, emotional detachment characterizes Axe's journey through the various war-zones. He clearly cares about the people he works with, but he doesn't seem to have a lot of involvement in the disputes that underlie the actual wars. To great extent this is admirable, as it puts a degree of distance between he and his subjects. However, this distance seems to be almost central to Axe's obsession with war. War is Boring isn't even really about Axe's obsession with war; it's about his obsession with what his obsession with war has wrought psychologically.

I first came to know David shortly after the period that this book covers. He had just returned from Chad, and I invited him to come to Lexington and participate in Patterson's conference on Africa. David gave a very grim appraisal of the state of conflict in Chad and Darfur, suggesting that it was very hard to know who the good guys and bad guys were, and that Western intervention efforts may have helped extend the life of the conflict. A student asked him "What would you do to save Darfur?" David seemed a bit surprised with the question, then finally responded "Don't save Darfur. Screw Darfur."

It's fair to say that the audience was surprised by this. Indeed, at least one member of the audience was quite irritated; the "screw Darfur" idea seemed oblivious to the suffering of refugees, and could be understood to imply a certain racist indifference to the fate of non-Europeans. This isn't how I read the comment, however; I understood it to be an argument along the lines of Edward Luttwak's "Give War a Chance," which argued that Western intervention tends to prolong wars by preventing victory. In the case of Chad and Darfur, I thought that Axe had an entirely reasonable point.

This is not to say that War is Boring doesn't carry a lot of insight into the profession of war correspondent. Title aside, Axe's book isn't just about the boredom of war. It's also about repetition, futility, and all of the soul-grinding nuisances that afflict those who remain dedicated to covering war. You get the sense from War is Boring that Axe doesn't have a very clear idea of why he covers war. Axe makes clear that the career he has selected isn't ideal for the maintenance of inter-personal relationships, both in terms of professional demands (lots of travel for not so much money), and because of the detachment.

War is Boring also serves to remind that what David Axe does is very, very different than what I do. I read, write, and teach, but have never been to a war zone. Now that I have kids, I'm considerably less likely to accept the kind of assignments that would take me into harms way. I must say, though that War is Boring doesn't make the profession of war correspondent look particularly attractive. Nevertheless, I highly recommend it.