Lawyers in the Desert

Drowning in the Desert: A JAG's Search for Justice in Iraq

Description

Several people are waiting to greet Captain Vivian Gembara when she returns home after a year-long tour of duty in Iraq--her grateful fiancS and two officers dispatched from headquarters to retrieve "the file." Certainly not the homecoming she expected, but such is life when you are in the business of soldiers behaving badly.

As a lawyer for the U.S. Army, Vivian counsels them, investigates them, and when necessary, prosecutes them. When an Iraqi teenagers body is found floating in the Tigris River and U.S. soldiers are believed to have been involved, she knows she has a case on her hands. What she doesn't realize is just how much that case will reveal about the Armys conduct at war.

Drowning in the Desert: A JAG's Search for Justice in Iraq is both a legal thriller and a searing account of the savagery that occurs when commanders place "the fight" above all else.

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-07-23
Summary: "Great memoir, light on the details of how the experience shaped the author's future"

Drowning in the Desert made me feel engaged, almost like I was a fly on the wall during the author's tour in Iraq. I enjoyed her style, level of detail, and meaningful commentary on what must have been a challenging, difficult period in her life. The one criticism I have is that there could have been more detail about the author in the epilogue, especially because the book came out 4 years after she left Iraq. There's plenty about the other characters, but what I really want to know is what did Captain Gembara do after the army and why? Did her JAG experience shape her next choices in life? What lessons did she apply to her own career? What were her cases like when she got back to Fort Carson? I had to check the author's website to see that she's now a journalist. Did her JAG experience make her want to quit being a lawyer? I was left wondering.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-04-29
Summary: "Honest and disturbing"

An excellent read. This book describes a young female JAG officer's year in Iraq as the legal officer assigned to an infantry brigade. It touches briefly on the more mundane aspects of her job: legal assistance to troops (wills and other legal advice) and handling of claims by Iraqis for injuries and property damage. But the primary focus is on two non-combat killings of two Iraqi men by soldiers of the brigade.
As a retired Army officer, I find the story depressing. I am disappointed at the failure of the Army to deliver Justice. Disappointed, but not surprised. It has been ever thus (remember the failure of top authorities to respond appropriately to the My Lai massacre and to the exploits of the Tiger Force in Vietnam?).
I have followed these and similar cases in the press, but this book provides a view from the inside. Although this view is limited to the perspective of a JAG officer at the bottom of the totem pole, it is a testament to this young woman's moral courage and understanding of what the Army should try to be.
The Army's record on similar matters in Iraq is not impressive; the Marine Corps's record on these matters is downright unsatisfactory. I fought in Vietnam and understand the pressures of combat. But none of those pressures justify the deliberate killing of noncombatants, even "suspected" insurgents. I hope someday to read a detailed history of all of the cases involving non-combat killings of Iraqis by US troops.
This book should be required reading for every officer prior to deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-03-30
Summary: "Unanticipated tales"

It read like a collection of short stories within a similar motif and had a very pleasantly nondescript tone of geopolitical opinion. I was immediately emotionally wrapped into the characters surrounding the author's time in Iraq, and often found it difficult to believe I was reading a non-fiction title due to the incredible situations that she conveys with great insight.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-03-12
Summary: "Thought provoking and profound"

The author's account of her experience in Iraq shows our military at its best and its worst. And the down-to-earth voice with which she tells the story enables the average reader to see the situation from the vantage point of someone on the ground. This is a truly compelling read that asks some basic but quite profound questions about what it means to be soldier.

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-02-03
Summary: "Gripping Story -- but Reads Like a Novel"

Vivian Gembara's "Drowning in the Desert: A JAG's Search for Justice in Iraq" is a gritty, disturbing, and real account of then-Captain Gembara's time in Iraq and her internecine battle with a renegade battalion. Gembara conducted two of the earliest courts-martial in Iraq and then became involved in investigations into the murders of Iraqis condoned and covered up by the battalion leadership.

Her story is gripping and very interesting, and although she is motivated by a search for justice, she doesn't seem to have a major political axe to grind: she just has the usual frustrations of being a tiny cog in a large Army and the normal frustrations and travails of being a staff officer (higher headquarters doesn't understand what's really going on and lower headquarters aren't responsive enough to what is really important). Her story clearly frustrated her as she never could find the justice she believed should have been served, and there is a sense of sadness reading this story.

As good as the story is, the book suffers from one major flaw: its style is like a novel, not a memoir. That is, the book is almost completely driven by dialogue and by the tiny details of the characters' actions and reactions. Also, many of the characters feel too developed, as if each person in the story had a role in a story and their actions and personality were written to that role. While this makes for easy, entertaining reading, the discerning reader knows that conversations and details can't be remembered years later and is left wondering how many of the details are true and how many arise from some literary license. Unfortunately, there is not even an author's note to try to explain how accurate this book is to the historical record and how much of it is simply "based on actual events."

Still, this book does show what life at a brigade is like in Iraq, even if it's just a tiny slice of that life during a short period in a tiny part of Iraq. While one shouldn't draw too many sweeping conclusions from this book, one can see the Army's inability to recognize and conduct a proper counterinsurgency in 2003 and 2004.

This is a very good book for anyone interested in the Iraq War or in military justice.