Gary Brecher

File:War nerd logo.jpg

The War Nerd logo.

Gary Brecher is the author of The War Nerd, a twice-monthly column discussing current wars and other military conflicts, published in the the eXile. A collection of his columns will be published by Soft Skull Press in June 2008 (ISBN 0979663687).

Brecher analyzes military strategy, tactics, and contexts of ongoing and past conflicts. While Brecher lacks military experience or formal training in war, he has credited himself as self-educated out of a personal, life-long obsession with warfare. He has also described himself as a fat slob who spends approximately 8 hours a day on the internet searching for war news. Brecher describes himself as a "war nerd".

It is still strongly debated whether Brecher is real or simply a pseudonym of his writer.

Brecher the man

To date all evidence for or against Brecher's existence as a real person remains circumstantial and unverifiable. The only non-eXile source of these details is an email interview with Brecher conducted by Steve Sailer and published by United Press International. The image at the top of each War Nerd column supposedly representing Brecher is actually that of Roger Edvardsen of the Norwegian rhythm & blues band Ehem.[1]

Brecher claims to have been born in 1965 and to have attended community college after high school, dropping out before graduating. He claims to be employed as a data entry clerk in Fresno, California and deeply unsatisfied with his job. Around that time he met Mark Ames, editor of the Moscow-based, English language newspaper the eXile, who offered Brecher a column. He wrote in his first eXile column that life in Fresno is a "death sentence" and that he spends 15 hours a day in front of a computer ("6 or 7 hours entering civilian numbers for the paycheck and the rest surfing the war news"). The War Nerd has since established a large following of its own, and Brecher's work is a regular subject in the eXile's letters to editor.

No one outside of the eXile has proved any direct interaction with Gary Brecher. Brecher's reclusive nature and the lack of information about him have raised speculation (e.g. during his email interview with Sailer) that Brecher is a pseudonym for another eXile contributor. The use of invented characters is not unprecedented for the eXile.

A Buffalo Beast review of eXile editor John Dolan's novel "Pleasant Hell" states that "a faithful eXile reader [would] have to be as dense as young John Dolan not to realize you’re reading about the birth of 'Gary Brecher' - nome [sic] de guerre of the famed 'War Nerd'." In the memoir, Dolan writes of obsessively studying military history and Jane's manuals while binging on junk food in the basement of a UC Berkeley library building in the mid-seventies. In one War Nerd column, Brecher writes, "I used to spend every free hour, back before there was an internet, going over those big heavy reference books in the library: Jane's Tanks, Jane's Missile Systems, Jane's Combat Vehicles." Also, one should note that in an 2001 eXile article, "Cleanse the World", John Dolan openly admits being a 'war-nerd': "Oh, my poor naive war-nerd brothers, how could you ever have dreamed that Bush...".

War Nerd writings

Every two to five weeks, Brecher publishes his The War Nerd column in eXile. In each installment, Brecher offers his idiosyncratic analyses of armed conflict from a military, political, or rarely, social standpoint. In his first eXile column, Brecher declared that The War Nerd was to be "a column on how all the wars are going, kind of a war reviewer." He has acknowledged an aesthetic or perhaps even fetishistic pleasure in the study, observation, and intimate knowledge of armed conflict (again from his first column):

"American peace truly sucks (That's what I live in and work in: American peace. Fresno. Townhouses in a dry riverbed. Scrub acreage with fancy British names. America the hot and stupid)."

"That's why we need a war now and then. You can drain your dick at every bondage site on the web, but you can't really drain your head there, it takes something bigger like a decent war and some of those guncamera shots. I figure about one a year. Which is why this was already a good year."

Brecher describes himself as a Nationalist "who just wants America to kick ass." While typically enjoying war as a spectator, Brecher has been highly critical of the foreign policy of the Bush administration. One basis of his critique has been that Bush has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and possibly planned for war in Iran and North Korea, without publicly defining a sound strategy or acknowledging the ruthlessness required for victory.

Following publication of Brecher's article 'Victor Hanson: Portrait of an American Traitor', Hanson responded with an article accusing Brecher of being an anarchist, committing arson on his Fresno estate, and burning down a portion of Hanson's vineyard. In the September 9, 2005 of the eXile, the editors announced that the War Nerd would be suspended without pay for one issue as a result of these accusations. It is doubtful that this was a serious reprimand; more likely the eXile was simply mocking Hanson's outlandish accusations. Nonetheless, the subsequent issue of the eXile did not contain Brecher's regular column. Another similarly themed Brecher article, 'It’s All Greek to Victor Davis Hanson', appeared in the December 19, 2005 issue of the American Conservative.[2]

The editors of the eXile have announced in replies to readers' letters that Brecher is currently at work on his first book.[3][4] The first such announcement came in October of 2004.

On June 24, 2006, Newsday columnist James Pinkerton appeared on Fox News and referenced Gary Brecher's analysis of the alleged Haditha massacre, in which he took the view that, in any war, Haditha-like events are to a great degree unavoidable, as a position held by a distinct "minority" of commentators, but nevertheless "correct".[5] In that column, Brecher stated that massacres like Haditha were a staple of counter-insurgency warfare, but doubted that this particular instance would be of any use to the effort, characterising it as 'too little or too much'.

Brecher has summarized his view of modern warfare as follows:

1. Most wars are asymmetrical / irregular.
2. In these wars, the guerrillas / irregulars / insurgents do NOT aim for military victory.
3. You can NOT defeat these groups by killing lots of their members. In fact, they want you to do that.
4. Hi-tech weaponry is mostly useless in these wars.
5. "Hearts and Minds," meaning propaganda and morale, are more important than military superiority.
6. Most people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: "my gang yay, your gang boo!" It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics.[6]

See also

• Personages
  • Mark Ames
  • John Dolan
  • Denis Salnikov

• Other related
  • The eXile
  • Fresno, California
  • Moscow

External links

• Long audio interview of Brecher (at 1:16:45 into the podcast)
• Archive of Brecher's columns
• The Insurgency: Neighborhood Watch, an article of Brecher's appearing on AlterNet.
• It’s All Greek to Victor Davis Hanson, an article of Brecher's appearing on The American Conservative.