'Zulu Time" is US military jargon for Greenwich Mean Time. All US forces involved in the invasion of Iraq, though based in several different time zones, synchronised their watches and operated on Zulu Time.
It is a common military practice. Mark Little takes this obscure military phenomenon and uses it to describe the position in which the world finds itself in an era when the actions of the US military substantially shape the world in which the rest of us live. If Zulu Time had a beginning, he says, in was September 11th, 2001. But "the invasion of Iraq had re- moved the last trace of doubt: no matter where you lived or what language you spoke, in the age of the lone superpower you were on Zulu Time".
This is a war correspondent's book - the author spent the Iraq war reporting from northern Iraq - but it sets out to do more than the typical war-reporting memoir. Indeed Mark Little gives an honest and engaging critique of war reporting, based on his own experiences. The best professionally self-deprecating anecdote concerns a TV reporter who witnessed the shelling of a town called Qarahanjeer. He sent back a report centred on the fact that he had scrambled into a ditch, complete with film of our hero scrambling into the ditch.
This reviewer has some limited experience of seeing horror and gore overseas, and writing about it consciously trying to maximise the impact on the post-breakfast DART commuter. Little discusses this probably futile activity whereby "we seek out human suffering to convince our audiences back home that they should care". The outcome, he observes, is that these images and reports of human suffering lose their shock value and lose their power "to create the outrage that leads to action".
This middle section of the book gives us not only this discussion of war reporting but also an understanding of the plight of Iraq's Kurds, that most betrayed of peoples. It is preceded by the opening five chapters which examine Irish attitudes to the United States, an examination that is resumed and expanded in the concluding section of the book into a discussion of how the peoples rather than the governments of Europe and the US see each other.
In this there is a refreshing uncertainty, and none of the "I've been there so I know the truth" tone so beloved of many conflict veterans. As with other themes in the book, there are no hard conclusions. But it provokes thought and a questioning of our assumptions.
Little suggests that hatred of George W. Bush and the associated vision of the US may be the only political issue providing common purpose in a youth culture defined by affluence and the search for success. He attempts to show that the characterisation of the US as a country of oil-hungry, warmongering extremists - so ably facilitated by the presence of President Bush in the White House - is lazy and inadequate.
He also suggests we are becoming more and more like the American stereotype we profess to despise. We sneer at their fondness for gas-guzzling four-wheel drive sports utility vehicles (SUVs), their obesity problem, their contribution to global warming, while we behave in the same way.
His message about the US is that we should look beyond the simplicities of both Michael Moore and, say, Mark Steyn. We should also imagine for a moment that there is something else that defines America than "New York liberals, Washington neo-conservatives, midwest Republicans, war junkies, gun nuts, bible-thumpers, white rappers, Fox News, Homer Simpson, Michael Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carrie Bradshaw, Beyoncé Knowles, MTV Cribs, Prozac, the Atkins diet and Botox". Quite a list, really.
For those with political objections to the US, what defines that country at the moment is its response to terrorism and the Iraq war. Many of the 100,000 who marched against the war a year ago may indeed harbour a range of unfair cultural prejudices against the US, but these are mere back-ups to a political position.
Mark Little doesn't conclude that Irish opponents of Bush's America are motivated by a form of racism rather than politics, but such an inference is possible from this book. It is nevertheless an easy and thought-provoking read, providing few definite answers but a lively discussion of questions at the heart of current public and social debate.
Mark Brennock is Chief Political Correspondent of The Irish Times
Zulu Time: When Ireland Went to War By Mark Little
New Island, 297pp. NPG