Bringing the War Home: The War after the War

When combat soldiers come home from Iraq or Afghanistan, life is not just about survival any more. For some, it loses its meaning. That's especially true when there are disconnections, not just between war and the politicians who make it happen, but between the soldiers and those they come home to. To better understand the nature of war itself, Pulitzer-Prize winner David Finkel of the Washington Post was embedded for eight months with 800 Army soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas. His book, The Good Soldiers, recounts the experience of these young men and women deployed in a violent suburb of Baghdad, where 350,000 Iraqis lived. On this Memorial Day, we try to connect our listeners with the realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have gone on so long they've become background noise to most Americans.