Peter Beaumont drops by the Frontline Club tonight to discuss his latest book – The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict – and his life spent reporting from the frontlines of many wars. The Observer Foreign Affairs Editor has had a change of heart of late, see below, and it will be interesting to hear his thoughts on his profession, the risks involved and exactly how and why this change happened. We start at 7pm GMT/11am PST Tues, 12 May. If you can’t join us at the Club, please join us online on the Frontline Club live channel of Events page,

It is not always the big things. Last September, on the eve of an ordinary assignment, I woke up and realised I never wanted to see an airport again. I didn’t want the smell or the sight of them. The grey, boring moments spent waiting in departures lounges I felt had eaten up my life. I didn’t make it to Heathrow.

It was a crisis that had been building for over a year. In my last year reporting from Iraq, something had happened. Rather than seeking the most meaningful stories, I had slipped into chasing the most dangerous ones. And in the process I had become someone I didn’t want to be. Not someone who wrote about the consequences of war, but someone who had become part of its logic. link

Peter Beaumont, Observer journalist who has reported from war zones for twenty years, talks about his experiences on the Guardian website with Tracy McVeigh today. The newspaper runs an excerpt from his latest book, The Secret Life Of War today. Peter will be at the Frontline Club on May 12 to talk more about his life as a journalist on frontlines around the world. Most interesting in the article at The Guardian is the postscript,

It is not always the big things. Last September, on the eve of an ordinary assignment, I woke up and realised I never wanted to see an airport again. I didn’t want the smell or the sight of them. The grey, boring moments spent waiting in departures lounges I felt had eaten up my life. I didn’t make it to Heathrow.

It was a crisis that had been building for over a year. In my last year reporting from Iraq, something had happened. Rather than seeking the most meaningful stories, I had slipped into chasing the most dangerous ones. And in the process I had become someone I didn’t want to be. Not someone who wrote about the consequences of war, but someone who had become part of its logic.

When, on the last day of what would be my final trip in 2007, a car bomb exploded in front of the vehicle that I was in, it didn’t seem to matter. It was, I rationalised at first, an ordinary event in the country that is in conflict. Except that it did matter, in ways I could not then imagine. I dreamed about explosions. I jumped at slamming doors. I experienced periods of recklessness and of stultifying dissatisfaction. Two months later I found myself explaining why I never wanted to go back to Iraq again. And later still, why I had had enough of travelling.

The writing of The Secret Life of War was part of the crisis. In two-and-a-half years of working on it almost every day, I’d come to expect that when it was done, I would have written my last words about the conflict. But there was no sense of catharsis, no sense even of completion. Now at least I am happy with it for what it is, an attempt to deliver a personal, tentative and partial description of aspects of the experience of war.

But I am travelling again. This time I made it to Heathrow and Sarajevo. In January I covered the violent aftermath of the conflict in Gaza, and plan to return to finish a long-term project. I am not certain I understand fully what has changed. But I am no longer the person who came back from Iraq. Less confident and more careful, I have, I hope, reconnected with the person I once was – a person who cared about the victims more than the rituals of war.

I have realised too that everyone who is engulfed by war – willingly or not – loses something. For me that has been a connection to ordinary life, to my children and friends, and habits that, as I grow older, I have learned can never be repaired. In that knowledge, perhaps, there is a balance to be found. link

I really do not know what to say about this guy… Why don’t we all just give up and go home? Joe the plumber/war correspondent/all round idiot says War is no place for journalists. You’ve got to admit, this is probably the first, the last and the only time you’ll ever hear a “war correspondent” say these words. Watch his words, read them and weep for humanity,

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for’em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer-and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.
I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, “Well look at this atrocity,” well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it. link

This will be the last word you’ll hear in these parts of Joe the War Correspondent. The combined weight of Sarah Palin and Joe are too much for this blog. And for me…

Joe the Plumber, who shot to fame when he questioned President elect barrack Obama about his tax plans, is heading to Israel. Yes, Joe the plumber is embarking upon a new career as… a war correspondent with the conservative website pjtv.com. Don’t believe me, watch the video above and read on,

Dubbed “Joe the Plumber” by McCain’s campaign, Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher was held up as an example of an American worker who would be hurt economically by Obama’s election.
Wurzelbacher says he’ll spend 10 days covering the fighting and explaining why Israeli forces are mounting attacks against Hamas.
He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants “go over there and let their ‘Average Joes’ share their story.” link

What of the thousands killed in Mexico’s drug cartel battles or the fighting in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas?… Over the next 18 months in this new series of stories – ‘Forgotten Wars’ – The Times sends Loyd on assignment to report on some of today’s lesser known conflicts burning at the fringes of public awareness, as well as including archive material drawn from some of his past assignments. link

“I’m a war dog,” he says. “After seven straight years, you’re always hypervigilant, always on alert. You become conditioned to a state of being where everything is a threat and it’s hard to turn that off; that becomes your normal. There’s an old cliché about the legendary war correspondent who comes home to find he has no wife or many ex-wives, no kids or kids who won’t talk to him, who has no tapestry to his life. At some point you have to consciously reclaim your life.” link

Image of Michael Ware from CNN.

Richard Gere’s latest film stars the former gigolo as a war reporter – “the war-zone equivalent of ambulance chasers” – as Style Weekly has it,

Gere and Howard are soon turned into international journalism’s Starsky and Hutch, on the trail of a Serbian war criminal called The Fox. The movie’s entertainment value doesn’t end here, and neither do the performances of its stars. But the ensuing mix of fact and standard action is a disappointment, as if Mel Gibson and Danny Glover reunited for “Lethal Weapon 5: The Hunt for Bin Laden.” link