Shadow War: A Poetic Chronicle of September 11 and Beyond, Vol. 3

Beginning on January 21, 2002, and concluding on April 18, 2002, Shadow War, Volume Three resumes Louis Daniel Brodsky's chronicle of America's war on terrorism. In forty-one poems, he records the aftershocks created by the September 11 devastations of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Significant events he portrays include the ongoing "cleanup" operations in Afghanistan and the search for the elusive Osama bin Laden; controversy over the detention of al-Qa'eda and Taliban forces in Camp X-Ray; preparations for bringing John Walker Lindh to trial for treason; and America's return to complacency, with its politicians resumption of partisan bickering.

Brodsky follows President Bush's shift in emphasis, away from Afghanistan and toward the next theater of war: the "Axis of Evil" -- Iran, North Korea, and, especially, Iraq, where our leaders hope to initiate a "regime change" within a short time. Yet, the focus remains in the Mideast, on the escalating attacks and retaliations raging between Palestinians and Israelis -- acts only fueling the Muslim world's hatred of the U.S. Many of the poems depict the increasingly frequent suicide bombings and their bloody aftermaths. This book culminates with Israel's full-scale incursion into the West Bank and Gaza, its sieges of Arafat's Ramallah compound and the Church of the Nativity, seized by Islamic militants.