‘God Is Not Here,’ by Bill Russell Edmonds
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All that said, Edmonds’s time in Iraq did give him an opportunity to capture an essential lesson about the war: Americans’ behavior toward ordinary Iraqis contributed actively to frictions, discontent, anger and ultimately a population that was less inclined to assist the United States-backed government than to aid the insurgency — or at least stay silent. As the violence grew, American soldiers became more aggressive, which, coupled with the protective measures they took and their general ignorance of Iraqi culture, created a highly dysfunctional atmosphere. Edmonds’s book is full of Iraqi voices expressing outrage at the Americans. As an adviser, he had to deal with almost daily invective. He concludes: “Our actions, our tactics and our one-on-one American and Iraqi interactions are causing a few civilians to turn insurgent and the majority to look away when the few insurgents act.”
Edmonds never names any of his superiors, nor indeed any American officers or officials, but his account indicates that advisers like him were poorly led and utterly without the cohesion that sustains troops in war zones. Ad hoc units like the Iraqi Assistance Group are not standard in the military for a very good reason. Edmonds might not have suffered as much had he been in a formal unit with a competent leader. When not with Saedi, he tells us, he spent most of his time not with comrades but alone in his room, watching movies or trying to keep a flawed relationship with his girlfriend alive through sporadic phone and email contact.
As the subtitle indicates, a core subject of the book is torture, yet it is never clearly and fully discussed, even in the two specific cases Edmonds describes. In one, he recounts Saedi kicking and hitting a detainee in the dank, smoky interrogation room; he otherwise portrays Saedi employing clever, if manipulative interrogation techniques and relying on informants to provide him with information. Edmonds agonizes over whether to report Saedi, knowing not only that it would rupture their relationship but that it might also lead to Saedi’s replacement with an even more abusive personality. We never find out if Edmonds does report him, and if so what happened.
The other case of alleged torture is even more troubling and even murkier. Six Iraqi prisoners whom Edmonds says he had some responsibility for were spirited away to the Kurdish autonomous region. He tracks them down and finds that all of them showed signs of recent and egregious torture, including lashes, bruises and cuts. He suspects Americans were involved, though he fails to provide any details or explanation. Edmonds reports his suspicions to a general, who urges him to “tell the truth.” Eventually, an investigation is conducted by the unit’s commander, but, Edmonds writes sarcastically, “of course, everyone is cleared.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/books/review/god-is-not-here-by-bill-russell-edmonds.html
