Best Defense

Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

The Matt Mabe Story (II): a Pentagon official comments

I got this interesting note from a Pentagon official about the first post on this blog from Matt Mabe, who is heading back for a second tour in Afghanistan: The “long form email dispatch home” is fast becoming the signature dispatch of the war. Almost everyone I know (including me) has sent these home from ...

582975_090615_Mabe5.jpg
582975_090615_Mabe5.jpg

I got this interesting note from a Pentagon official about the first post on this blog from Matt Mabe, who is heading back for a second tour in Afghanistan:

The “long form email dispatch home” is fast becoming the signature dispatch of the war. Almost everyone I know (including me) has sent these home from Iraq or Afghanistan when they’ve been there, and I get them all the time from people who forward them. There’s something special about these personal missives. It’d be great if there were some kind of archive for them… they’ll make great material for the Rick Atkinsons and David Halberstams of the future when they write the major retrospective histories of these wars.”

I think he is right — this is the representative literary form of the post-9/11 wars.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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