This is the Friends of History Debating Society, a footnote.

Germanicists and I spend our time looking 2,000 years ahead as far as we can see in the

Ukraine conflict.

But we also have memories of having these conversations through the Iraq War, thought by the United

States from March of 2003 until technically the withdrawal of a major forces in 2011.

But there are still elements of the US military deployed in parts of Iraq and certainly

across the border in Syria.

So the Iraq War is unending.

What is striking about it, to my observation now, there's a new book that I'm reading by

a young Iraqi correspondent, well I say he's young, he's in his 50s now, Gait Abdul Ahad,

a stranger in your own city travels in the Middle East's long war, is that the war's

not finished if you're an Iraqi national.

But most importantly what I learned, Germanicus, is how little good information we had during

the time of the war from the Iraqi point of view, especially because Iraq is understood

as a sectarian competition between the major sect of Shia and the major sect of Sunni in

the Arab world.

And much of this book speaks to the civil war that broke out following the departure of

Saddam Hussein between the sectarian Shia and the sectarian Sunni and how little the American

presence changed the conduct.

There were bigger weapons, there was more money, but the murder squads operated whether

they had 50 bullets or five bullets.

And the neighborhoods cleansed themselves of the opposition whether they had humvees

...