Critical review of Henry Mark Holzer's "Fake Warriors"

When I was held by the feds facing illegal charges I was given a copy of one of the most eye opening books I ever read, Henry Mark Holzer’s “FAKE WARRIORS.” When I read it it not only showed how others lie about their military service, it makes one question authority and corruption. Had this book been around when I was a teenager or before it would have helped me and my family better stand up to my stepdad, bob lukse, for we would have been able to put him on the spot about the bullshit war stories he told about himself and others. However, in reading the book I notice many flaws in methods Holzer uses, and in who Holzer calls a fake warrior. To begin with Holzer belittling “war stories” is wrong, as they do have an effect on people whether they served or not. While Holzer is right in encouraging people to ask for more details on many stories, he minimizes the effect they have. For instance, my stepdad would talk about his WWII Seabee service in Subic Bay, but not once would he talk about what he did during his service, which Holzer rightly calls a red flag. However, those war stories my stepdad told were able to make him friends with john chaffee and other politically connected veterans, which in hindsight should have been a red flag, however Holzer does not encourage such veterans to question fakes like my stepdad. Another red flag was how my stepdad would mostly avoid veterans groups like the American Legion, and how most veterans were unable to have a coherent conversation with him, how my stepdad never tried to get veteran license plates or a burial plot in a veterans cemetery or services from a VA Hospital, things which should have been considered red flags by Holzer in his book but are not, rather avoiding groups like the Legion are praised by Holzer. Those behaviors by my stepdad were actually praised by politically prominent veterans like chaffee and lenihan, when they should have reflected on their own corruption, yet Holzer does NOT go into exposing corrupt veterans. If anything I did not know about Holzer’s book because of his scabby choice of publisher, as xlibris was one of the publishers which rejected my first book in 2003/4, so I was avoiding anything from xlibris. As it was around that time I met Frank Lennon, who showed me how to sift fact from fiction in war stories, however Lennon did not have the same primal outrage about fake warriors such as my stepdad that Holzer and Captain McGrath have and which is evident in Holzer’s book. For instance Lennon was able to shoot down my stepdad’s story that my dad’s uncle was killed at Pearl Harbor, however it took another four years f research before I obtained correct info about that family member’s WWII service, info I would have obtained sooner had I made contact with Holzer and McGrath. Despite their work in exposing fake warriors they do show signs of being overzealous. Let me give two examples; 1. In the cover description they call the man in the picture a fake simply based on what was reported in the media, ignoring that that man could have been wearing those pins, patches, and surplus to honor a fallen veteran, and it is the fault of the media, not the man, for making assumptions. 2. In the story of Captain McGrath’s encounter with Colonel Connolly Holzer ignores that Connolly was a judo instructor at the Air Force academy and an Honorary Colonel who simply had a form of dementia, which was the real reason the feds decided not to prosecute Connolly. In viewing Holzer’s website I found another example of this overzealousness in his piece on dick blumenthal. The hard facts are that the media distorted statements made by blumenthal, and he has the support of veterans like Rob Simmons, who understand the nature of classified military operations. A major flaw in Holzer’s book is him mentioning that nothing is classified anymore, when in fact many military operations remain classified. Instead of asking the person for more details on their service to determine if there is truth in their statement, Holzer simply dismisses use of this statement as a sign of a fake warrior. And while Holzer uses stories from Vietnam and examples like Wilhelm Voight to illustrate the global impact military fakes have, he does nothing to help preserve the honor of foreign military operatives in his book. Another flaw is Holzer considering the unwillingness of people to talk about their war or military experience as a sign of a fake warrior, ignoring that many people in military service are traumatized by war and military experiences and unwilling to talk. In my stepdad’s case the fact that could not hold a coherent conversation with most people should have been taken as a sign, and Holzer would do well to see if many military fakes posses this same lack of lucidity and consider this rather than unwillingness to talk as criteria for being a fake warrior. In achieving the goal stated in the book of preventing misrepresentation of the military causing a catastrophe Holzer is a day late and a dollar short. As things are with my stepdad he is still alive at present, even though he helped cause the westerly shooting and the government fuckups in the fallout, still continuing to rip people off even in his 90’s. The fallout from that shooting helped escalate into a war with Iran, which america is losing as the recent incidents with the uss florida and the seizure of the tanker advantage sweet demonstrates, and which has snowballed into WWIII. One reason was that during my work at campuses like brown university, mit, and nyu involved educating Iranians in military and security affairs to make their mandatory service time easier when they returned to Iran, and to help reform the Iranian military from within while keeping Soltani Talab/Royalist connections. Had someone in government taken more positive action against my stepdad or had Holzer and McGrath made better decisions which would have put me in touch with them over a decade ago lots of lives would have been saved and america would not have been drawn into a losing global conflict.