One Morning in Baghdad
One morning in October 2003, I was shaken out of bed by an explosion. I was in Baghdad, leading a platoon of Army Rangers as part of a special operations task force that was hunting down the famous “deck of cards”—the last of the Ba’ath Regime loyalists, and Saddam himself.
Because we did all of our work at night, I had only been sleeping for a few hours. When I first felt the explosion, I rolled out of bed, grabbed my M4 carbine, and ran out of the house we were living in on the southern tip of Baghdad’s so-called Green Zone. Improbably, my giant grizzly bear of a platoon sergeant remained asleep, snoring away in the cot next to mine.
When I got outside, I was initially blinded by the sunlight, but eventually I could see the al-Rashid Hotel, where visiting dignitaries often stayed, smoking in the distance. It had been struck by some kind of rocket. The only other person awake, meanwhile, was one of my Rangers, who was on the porch of our house with a cup of coffee in one hand and a Marlboro Red in the other. He looked me up and down. I was wearing my underwear, flip-flops, and carrying my carbine in one hand and my body armor in the other.
He took a drag from his cigarette and looked at me again, bemused.
“Good morning, sir. What the fuck are you doing?”
It was a good question.
* * *
The war in Iraq is, like all wars I suppose, a little like the film : All of the participants in the conflict have our own unique, flawed,: Treat any reflection on the war—including this one—with caution and skepticism. Unlike many others who served multiple deployments as either soldiers or diplomats, I only saw the war as a snapshot: I did one, short tour of duty in the war’s first year. Nonetheless, I believe that what I saw then pointed toward why the war would become so painful for Americans and Iraqis alike, and why American participants’ individual memories of our experiences in Iraq continue to shape our lives—and the decisions and biases of those of us Americans, and Iraqis, who have gone on to serve in government in more senior positions.
