The Immaculate Invasion - Hardcover

Shacochis, Bob

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670863041 ISBN 13: 9780670863044

Publisher: Viking, 1999

Synopsis

From the Pentagon's war room to the bitter infighting in the dangerously divided U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince and its on again/off again relationship with terrorists, Shacochis chronicles what the military calls OTW Operations -- other than war. Most enduring, from his eighteen months in the field in Haiti where he lived with a team of Special Forces commandos, Shacochis brings us the stories of soldiers, their exploits and frustrations, their inner lives as well as their heroic deeds, as they struggle to bring democracy to a country ravaged by tyranny. Not since Michael Herr's Dispatches has an American author of this stature written such a ground-eye view as intimate and telling as Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.

About this title

Review:

In The Immaculate Invasion, Bob Shacochis, winner of the 1985 American National Book Award for Easy in the Islands, returns to the Caribbean setting to tell the story of Operation Uphold Democracy, the United States government's official name for its 1994 occupation of Haiti. Focusing on the Clinton administration's policy makers and the soldiers who implemented their plans, Shacochis explores the capacity for altruistic action in the midst of a bloody pandemonium of human-rights outrages. While the American military's original strategy was to obliterate the murderous regime of General Cedras--executing a "hard entry" with "attitude and with a lot of ammunition"--they quickly found themselves caught up in a haphazard scheme for the transformation of the despot's thugs into a political party. Such cynical accommodationism confused the rules of engagement and restricted soldiers' ability to respond to atrocities. One officer, Captain Lawrence Rockwood, infuriated with by superiors' bureaucratic disregard of the concentration-camp-like conditions of Haiti's prisons, disobeyed orders and personally attempted to seize a jail in which dozens of prisoners were slowly dying. Shacochis follows Rockwood through his subsequent arrest and court martial, which he faces unrepentant: "I'm an American soldier", Rockwood insists, "not a member of the Waffen SS".

Blending Haitian history and culture with his accounts of living amongst a Special Forces team, Shacochis achieves an unsettling triumph of combat journalism that will earn The Immaculate Invasion comparisons to other modern classics, such as Michael Herr's Dispatches. Its focus on compassion urges a profound redirection of the purposes and application of American interventionism. --James Highfill

Review:

"Every war brings forth one perfect book . . . Now we have "The Immaculate Invasion", the masterpiece of the 1994 U.S. assault on and occupation of Haiti." --"Chicago Tribune""A bitter, funny, engrossing adventure between the mysteries and comedy of the American military machine and the infinite suffering of Haiti." --Herbert Gold, "San Francisco Chronicle""An unforgettable mixture of hard journalism and sharp commentary that captures much of the absurdity and futility of the 1994 American-led U.N. invasion of Haiti." --Kenneth Maxwell, "Foreign Affairs""An extraordinary book about an extraordinary event. . . I felt transported to Haiti. I could hear it. I could smell it. At moments I felt moved almost to tears, only to find myself, a page or two later, laughing out loud." --Tracy Kidder

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0670863041
• ISBN 13: 9780670863044
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220