They are kind of a “twenty-first-century update on the mythic cowboy hero, the nameless stranger riding in to save the day, then heading off into the sunset,” Philipps writes.Ī book about Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, “American Sniper,” became an instant bestseller. The battle over Gallagher really became a battle over what the SEALs Teams stood for and what they would become, Philipps said.Īfter a SEAL team successfully killed Osama bin Laden, the SEALs special ops teams became kind of superheroes in American culture. Saplings of freedom planted in Afghanistan may be hard to completely uproot | Vince Bzdek Philipps book vividly describes what happened in the battle of Mosul that led the SEALs to turn on Eddie, and then concludes with a blow-by-blow account of the trial of Gallagher. Gallagher faced a court martial two years ago for war crimes brought to light by members of the SEALs team he led, Alpha platoon. “Alpha” boils down to the story of a clash between two SEALs: Gallagher, who bent the SEALs rules in ways he thought were important to win wars, and Craig Miller, who followed the rules to the letter. Instead I think it is a book about a bunch of good dudes who decided to do the right thing.” “If I had come to the story without that background, this would be a book about what a bad dude Eddie Gallagher is. Many of his classmates were off fighting wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. “I grew up in Springs during the Cold War, and half my classes were made up of the children of soldiers,” he said. Philipps grew up and still lives in Colorado Springs, and says the city really shaped how he approaches military reporting because the military is such a normal part of life in the Springs.
For the last five years he has written about the human impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the New York Times. Philipps is a former Gazette reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize here for his “Other than Honorable” stories about the treatment of injured American soldiers who were discharged without military benefits.
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