iraq entered my life 25 years ago in the form of scud missiles arcing west. i was an american student in jerusalem, i lived on french hill in a shared apartment with friends, books, guitars and future ex-girlfriends.
back then, in my mind, the word iraq evoked a place. a place where saddam hussein ruled; where a war had been waged against Iran, a war against Kuwait, and a war against an impending UN global coalition. it was an old and interesting place, but none, as I understood it, directly connected to me. In January 1991, the UN deadline passed, the air war began, and Saddam tried to provoke Israel into joining the war against him, hoping he could break up the coalition. we spent our afternoons wearing gas masks anticipating a biological or chemical attack while listening to the radio for information. we learned the meaning (and later became practitioners) of dark humor.
You are reading: Best books on iraq war
25 years later, the word iraq no longer evokes any place. when I hear it in conversation, it indicates a problem, the problem, so to speak, that it is no longer a place.
If one allows it, one can allow the place or the problem to disappear. we are tired, and it no longer attracts attention. the story of iraq is over, we are sorry, because we only see repetition. but the story is not over. In any case, it is only the beginning.
these are books i have in mind about iraq and the middle east in general. I think they are good. perhaps essential.
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1. Sinan Antoon’s Corpse Washer (2010)According to Muslim tradition, the Corpse Washer prepares the bodies of the dead for burial. both Shias and Sunnis do, and the differences in practice are minor. This is a novel, originally written in Arabic, by an Iraqi writer living in New York who left the country in 1991. He translated it himself. no other book he has read brings us closer to the lives of the people there, breathing in a much-needed human dimension to understand life in iraq.
2. the iraq study group report (2006)ten years ago things were bad in iraq. There was a threat of civil war, insurgents were growing in strength, Syria’s stability was threatened, and Iran was playing fast and loose with their involvement. the iraq study group was established to carefully analyze the situation and form a strategy for us to engage. the bipartisan result was a solid job and, in hindsight, suggested probably the only reasonable way the situation could have been salvaged.
3. david abrams’ fobbit (2012)the world is there. and then there is the world that we would prefer the world to be. most of us spend too much time on the latter. And when it comes to the American public and its views on soldiers and military activity, it can feel like a permanent vacation. But in this wickedly funny novel, Abrams sees beyond the self-aggrandizing illusions and comforting fairy tales that lull us into the night.
4. Strategic Intelligence and Statecraft: Selected Essays Adda B Bozeman (1992)Bozeman was a key scholar in the development of intelligence studies in the United States. In 1976, he wrote an article published in Orbis (Vol 20, No 1) entitled War and the Clash of Ideas. In this piece, reproduced in a collection, Bozeman talks about how ideas form and sustain communities over time, as commitments to ways of life. but these compromises can collide. strategic intelligence becomes the discipline of knowing ourselves as a cultural system, seeing others on their own terms, and then creating means of engagement for positive effect. Unfortunately, this insight was misrepresented in a lesser book called War and the Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington.
5. the yellow birds by kevin powers (2012) this is the story of a soldier turned into fiction and told with remarkable expressive force and intensity. the yellow birds is a sincere and successful effort to witness and contribute to a literature of war that we need. it’s also a fast-paced story that draws us in and wraps us in its own sense of wonder.
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6. Baghdad in Flames: Iraqi Girls Blog by Riverbend (2005) This is not so much a book as it is a collection of blogs written by a young Iraqi girl using the username Riverbend. It begins, casually and consciously, with “I am a female, Iraqi, and 24 years old. I survived the war. That’s all you need to know.”Her witty and insightful writing is a corrective to our lopsided view of a world we know so little about.
7. Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (2006)War in the West has been, for a good 400 years, a bloody game of capture the flag. once we captured the other guy’s capital city, papers were exchanged and treaties were signed, and terms given and accepted. today, we are experiencing the end of the dominance of western military power and its system of rules. this excellent book exposed, for me, how unprepared we are as a cultural system to turn that corner.
8. No One Told Us We’re Defeated: Stories from the New Iraq by Rory McCarthy (2006)Published as a journalist in Iraq, McCarthy began collecting stories from ordinary people, stories that mostly began in 1991, during what they called the shaaban intifada, or “the separation”. Too many accounts of modern Iraq omit this full-blown civil war. McCarthy draws a line from those wounds to the next wars and beyond in stories that are revealing, shocking, human and faithfully portrayed. He gives us an intimate “outside-in” view of the world as a professional writer, which brilliantly complements Riverbend’s “Inside-Out” blog.
9. the chilcot reportno, it’s not a book. no, I haven’t read it all, and neither will you. But as the years go by, it will prove to be one of the most significant insights into the day-to-day workings of UK government, and indeed any democratic government. like the cuban missile crisis records and wikileaks, these volumes will be pored over by graduate students for decades, trying to understand the mess these folks got themselves into (2001 was not the beginning and they did not create it they); the mess they made; and the mess they left behind (some of which you can probably see from your window).
10. The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service by David Finkle (2009, 2013) Yes, that’s two books, but you’re the country that gave us a spinal tap, and so you should sympathize with bumping things up to 11. And together, these books do. the first is a gripping story of the iraq war from the perspective of american soldiers and, to me, illustrates how every high-level flaw in politics, imagination, and planning falls on the shoulders of those who can’t possibly fix them , but are ordered to. the second book tells a much less told but equally vivid story of those same people who return home, broken, and how our abandonment changes them and defines us.
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