Baby Orange, a draft-dodging coward in love with violence and cruelty, upended military justice by pardoning Gallagher, a convicted war criminal. So instead of serving time for stabbing to death a handcuffed teen prisoner, he gets served cocktails at Mar-A-Lago........
In testimony, his fellow Seals described him as a toxic madman, willing to kill anybody at any time.......or in Baby Orange's mind, a fabulous watch-me-hug-the-flag symbol to display B.O.'s love of veterans......
After reading Matt Young's memoir of his Marine career and Iraq deployments, we've come to view Gallagher as a lethal side effect of our pointless, forever wars in the Middle East.......
Young makes full used of his incisive skills as a a creative writing student and instructor. As he remembers the young version of himself in harrowing detail, he describes a life forever warped and brutalized.......first by the unforgiving Spartan culture of Marine training and then by his ordeals in the endless desert warfare deployments.
Like many a college creative writing student, Young often tries too hard for cleverness and at times it renders his prose dense and obtuse. But you will experience both unspeakable horror and the darkest of humor roiling together in this book. Consider it a first hand account of what it's like to descend into the hell of our elective, volunteer wars and survive them, sanity still intact.
The author doesn't spare himself as he describes his own personal deterioration and the herculean effort of returning to acceptable, sane behavior after his discharge........and in the perpetual lunacy of 20 year wars started under false pretenses, the behavior of soldiers like Edward Gallagher is no longer an aberration....it's an inevitability.
What is an aberration...... the venal, soulless Commander-In-Chief celebrating Gallagher as some kind of hero.....for no other reason than to heap glory upon himself as a supposed lover of the military.
"Eat The Apple" provides a necessary reminder of the ongoing, non-stop horror show created by George W. Bush and his demonic string-puller, Dick Cheney........and with Baby Orange cheering on the worst part of it, the horror continues, unabated. 3 stars (***) for the book......and for the so-called 'Commander-In-Chief', as always.....minus Infinity.
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