They Will Have To Die Now by James Verini
Verini reports from Iraq and vicinity for National Geographic and other publications. He appears to be motivated by a feeling of responsibility (if not guilt) for America’s endless wars, and for not serving in our military. As he says, in the case of Iraq and the US, we are “bound together in a death embrace” (p. 173) Our histories are entwined. Yet we know so little about Iraq.
This particular book reports on his visits to the war against the Islamic State in Iraq, which culminated in the savage retaking of Mosul. Verini spent months in the field with Iraqi soldiers and civilians, at the front and in the recently liberated areas. There is nothing pleasant about what he experienced. It’s awful.
This book isn’t easy or nice to read, and it has a very limited perspective—on the ground, on the front lines. But it is a critically important that we all know this stuff, because it is our war.
I have been trying to keep aware of the nature and costs of the US wars (in my name if not by my own design). There is a trickle of documentary accounts of the American experience in these wars and after the wars. (e.g., this, this, this, this, this)
But Americans fight far from home, and the fortunate ones come home. And they come home to people who mostly have not been touched by the wars.
For Afghans and Iraqis (and Syrians and everyone else in the area), the war is on top of them, all-consuming and inescapable. No one is untouched, and by now, there isn’t really much left standing. This is orders of magnitude worse than whatever we have experienced.
In addition to witnessing the war and its effects, Verini also sketches some of the long, long history of Mesopotamia and Mosul in particular. This history is now part of our own, whether we like it or not.
“In this country vastly older than mine, this civilization that gave us civilization, Iraqis had long since learned what I was just coming to see: the histories of our two countries, of Iraq and America, were entwined.”( p. 173)
Our war has gone on too long, but it is only some thirty years old now. The current wars can be seen as the continuation of a millennia long history of wars, fighting about ideas and loyalties and empire. Many of the conflicts are so old that they aren’t even understood. (For example, no one really knows the origins and histories of the Kurds, yet they are here, and fighting.) In the perspective of Mesopotamian history, the idea of “The Caliphate” is both relatively new and pretty clearly understood.
Whatever Verini’s personal motives, he has the courage to get up close, embedded with Iraqis, not Americans. Unlike much of the reporting from the area that is either limited to official accounts (pentagon press releases and government statements) or focused on the pornographic violence (beheadings! sex slaves! suicide bombers!), Verini spent time and gets to know actual people caught up in the horrors.
And lo, as seems always to be the case, even in the throes of a horrible, horrible war, people are people. The Iraqis are beaten down by decades of repression, conflict, and violence. But Verini found surprising spirit here. And, he found love and forgiveness, even for an American who could very justly be held responsible for so much of the recent pain and loss.
“The most shaming and the most sublime part of this new understanding: no matter how much resentment they felt, Iraqis expressed their thoughts about America to me with a warmth and a curiosity and a clemency that only left me loving them more.” (pp. 173-4)
The story of Mosul is sad. But Mosul has been liberated (again). Flattenend, but liberated. However, history and the war grinds on and on.
Even while I was reading this book, events took another horrid lurch, when a shameless US President abandoned the Kurds, igniting a new surge of violence and suffering. Who knows what will result from this latest sickening twist? Almost certainly the Caliphate will rise again.
Why do I read this stuff? Because I have to know, we have to know.
We have to know what we have done, what we are doing, and maybe what we should be doing.
It’s hard, but there is no escape from history.
- James Verini, They Will Have To Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate, New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.
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