Book Recommendation: Every Man in This Village is a Liar

In the United States, there are younger generations who have only lived in a world where our country is in conflict in the Middle East.  9/11 was long enough ago that there are 6th graders who don't remember it.  Many, probably most, Americans, are confused by or unaware of the specifics of why our country does what it does in the Middle East.  We don't like the wars.  We don't like that more money goes into them than goes into the education of our children.  We don't like having Americans die and not understanding why.  And there are thousands who have died in this way.

And yet, by comparison, this is nothing.

In the Middle East there are multiple generations who have been born into, grown up through, and died living directly in conflict.  Megan K Stack's "Every Man in This Village is a Liar" is an account of the various Arabian conflicts between 2001 and 2007.  But it is so much more than dry history or an explanation of what this and that leader did and why.  It gives that info, but more useful is the time spent with the common man.  Stack interviews the powerful and greedy, the intelligent but broken, and the hopeless and confused throughout the Arab nation bringing us insight into Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Stack does the best thing a war reporter can do; she humanizes things.  She reminds us that Muslims and Arabs are not evil, deserving of evil, or even really all that different from us on most levels.  She shows us their hopes, their pain, their lives as they live them despite every obstacle.  We see people in Egypt being prevented from going to voting polls by hired gunman.  We see the old and the handicapped who were left behind crawling out of a demolished village in Lebanon.  We see people give interviews but refuse to give names for fear of being disappeared by their own government.  Many have lost faith in their own governments and must rely on the hope that the outside world will help them.  In some cases the outside world tries.  In some cases, not.

Stack's book forces us to look in the mirror at ourselves as a nation.  At how many of the injustices in Arab lands are being done with weapons provided by America.  Sometimes by US-backed Israel.  Sometimes by the American military itself.  Both countries have bombed entire cities in hopes of taking out a relatively small group of insurgents.  Sometimes the weapons are used by people we supported a few years ago; we changed our minds about them, but they still have the weapons.
Or how about America's claim that it will give support to Arab nations that attempt to become democracies, but then it's failure to support fair democracy when the popular candidates happen to be Muslim idealists? 

Stack takes these confusing, distant conflicts and throws them right in our lap.  The stories are gritty.  They are heavy.  They are hard to stomach.  But they are necessary to hear if you care at all about human rights and America's position in the world.