Why Didn't I Teach About the Iraq War?

This award-winning book focuses brilliantly on the daily experiences of Iraqis and US soldiers, but avoids the high-level policy debates

I've been thinking a lot about the Iraq war, and the fact that I hardly taught about it when I was an academic.

What happened that I all but avoided the most important war in US history since Vietnam? A bit of background

I began full-time, tenure-track teaching as a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University in 1999. Two years later, I became the Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Human Rights at McGill University, again in the sociology department. Given that the Iraq War began in 2003, you would think I would have started teaching about it as soon as it began.

After all, I taught relevant McGill undergraduate classes: "The Sociology of War Crimes" and "Sociology of State Violence." In 2006, I moved to the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa. This is Canada's best-known graduate training ground for international affairs. For many graduate students, it is a competitive stepping-stone to an entry-level position in Canada's diplomatic corps. I taught relevant courses there, including "Human Security." I stayed in Canada until 2011, when I moved to Mexico for a year's sabbatical at CIDE, a public university. In 2012, I began teaching at the University of Minnesota.

Throughout this time, I self-identified as a researcher on human rights, political violence, and conflict. But I Hardly Taught About the Iraq War.

The US-led invasion began in 2003 and quickly turned into a disaster. The US military "surge" under General Petraeus began in 2007, and conditions arguably improved. Later, the ISIS terror emerged from the wreckage.

And yet, throughout all those years, I assigned only two readings on the Iraq War. The first, a 2007 International Security article by Colin Kahl, claimed that US forces had been more respectful of international law than they were given credit for at the outset of the invasion. I used that article to discuss the application of international norms under battlefield conditions. Iraq itself was not the focus. The second, published by Burnham et al in the Lancet, documented the invasion and its aftermath's incredibly high civilian toll, chiefly because of the ensuing civil war and breakdown in law and order. I used that article to exemplify conflict-related research methods. Once again, the Iraq War was not front and centre. That was it. No lectures on the origins of the war, the way in which it unfolded, US and allied strategy, the breakdown of law and order, Iranian policy, the horrible Shi'ite-Sunni civil war, the internal fights within those two communities (eg, Al Qaeda versus the "Sunni Awakening), and so much more. Later, when ISIS arose as a force to be reckoned with, I didn't teach about that either.

This was the most important US ground war since Vietnam, with huge costs to American soldiers, the US economy, and, most importantly, to the Iraqi people. All of these costs were meticulously documented by the Brown University Costs of War Project, a remarkable research effort. Why didn't I assign their writing? My Belated Reading I started asking myself these questions a few weeks ago, when I read three books on the Iraq War. Books I should have read 15 years ago.

I began with Dexter Filkins' 2009 account of his wartime reporting, The Forever War. I continued with volumes by Thomas E. Ricks, including his early critique of the US invasion, Fiasco, and his more optimistic take a few years later, The Gamble.

Those are but three books in a vast library of journalistic, military, and academic writing that I should have been familiar with years ago. Filkins offers a series of gripping micro vignettes, and his work is notable for its reporting both inside and outside the US military bubble. He interviewed hundreds of ordinary people - Iraqis and US soldiers alike - and avoids, for the most part, getting bogged down in elite-level chatter.

Ricks, by contrast, embedded himself deep within that bubble, with privileged access to the ideas and infighting within - and between - US military and political factions. This reading made me ask, "Where were you when all this was happening? Why were you not reading and teaching about this most important of contemporary US wars?" After all, I was teaching in US or US-adjacent schools, and this was one of the most pressing American foreign policy issues.

Publishing I didn't do much research and writing on the Iraq War either. I wrote about security issues in academic journals that should have been preoccupied with the Iraq War - International Security, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, etc. I read those journals, but do not recall being struck by the quantity of Iraq-focused material. I haven't counted, but my impression is that a census of their published work from 2020-2025 would not reveal a commensurate Iraq emphasis.

Personally, my attention to Iraq was ... non-existent. Not in my teaching or my research. I wrote a few op eds about Iraq, but those were not based on serious research; that was just crashing the ongoing public debate without doing much homework.

To be clear, American and other newspapers and policy journals were filled with Iraq-related discussions. I was working in "research-focused" academia, however.

Faculty Meetings Surprisingly, Iraq rarely, if ever, came up, that I remember, in faculty meetings. I had many colleagues who studied security, human rights, and international relations more broadly. We did not discuss the Iraq war in our departmental meetings, even when the war was at its height. No one ever asked me whether I was teaching about Iraq in my classes, and no one ever said, "I hope your courses cover the Iraq War. It's such a central theme, our students should be exposed." Students And finally, my students never asked me about the Iraq war either. No one ever said, "Hey, can we have a few lectures and readings on the biggest war in US history? On the war that killed some 500,000 Iraqis, and beggared the US economy?"

My students did not serve in the military, for the most part, and I don't think I taught many, if any, who had fought in Iraq. If I did have Iraq veterans, they never spoke about it in class, perhaps because they sensed I wasn't sympathetic, or perhaps because they feared criticism from their fellow students. The academia I taught in at the time was liberal in its political orientation, and US military actions, no matter how important, were not a popular topic of discussion. There was no demand for teaching about Iraq, either from students or my colleagues, and I offered no supply. No demand and no supply meant that there was no market in my corner of liberal, international relations-oriented academia. Possible Explanations Why was there such a gaping hole? I'm sure it was driven in large part by my own interests, biases, and personal failings, but there may also have been larger forces at play. I was opposed to the war from the beginning, as were most of my colleagues. We believed the war had been promoted under false pretences, and were angered by the way it unfolded. That anger, I think, made me, and perhaps others, recoil from any engagement with the topic. This was especially true in Canada, where disdain for US wartime motivations was widespread from the very outset. Canadian forces fought in Afghanistan, but not (as best I know) in Iraq. More importantly, I think, the real debates on the Iraq War were going on within militaries and the applied policy communities. Rick's books are full of fascinating, high-level debates waged in the pages of security or policy-oriented journals. Many of those were published by militaries or think tanks, such as the US military journal, Parameters.

Unfortunately, those kinds of publications did not count for academic tenure. In the research-intensive academic institutions where I worked, publishing an article in Parameters would not help your promotion file. And since I often read articles in journals where I hoped to publish myself, I entirely missed the Parameters-type debates. Personal comfort was also an issue. The kinds of academics I rubbed shoulders with didn't talk much to the US, British, or allied militaries (with some notable exceptions), and if I'm honest, I - and perhaps others - tacitly disapproved of those who did. I suspected they had drunk too deeply from the guns-and-bombs Kool-Aid. In retrospect, this was arrogant. On the research front, few academics could physically visit Iraq, given the dangers, and were likely to do so only if embedded with the US, British, or other militaries. A few intrepid academics may have made their way around Iraq outside the military bubble, but there can't be many.

Filkins, after all, is a journalist, not an academic, and required a team of fixers, drivers, translators, and support personnel to do his reporting outside the wire. He was also willing to risk his life, which doesn't tend to be an academic characteristic. I spent 21 years in tenure-track academia, and only now, after my early retirement, have I taken the time to really read about the Iraq War. And only now do I realize how much I missed, how little I knew, and how important the debates were at the time.

And, more importantly, how little I taught my students about it. I should have known more about ongoing debates within the US, British, and other militaries about how to fight the Iraq insurgency, the importance of bringing a human security perspective to counterinsurgency, Iraq-related regional dynamics, the horrific civilian toll, the war's economic and health burdens on the population, and so much more.

I was opposed to the war from the outset, but that didn't excuse me from studying and teaching about the ways in which American, British, and other militaries were thinking about their role, tactics, and strategy. Iraq and Right-Wing Populism Here is another problem. For political scientists focused on American politics - not me - the Iraq war's blowback was crucial. I've read pieces suggesting the American public's disgust with the justification and/or the conduct of the Iraq War - how and why it was waged, and how much it cost the US from a human and economic perspective - were important factors in the rise of American right-wing populism and, ultimately, in Trump's victories. A Systemic Issue? If it were only me who botched all this, that would be one thing - I was just bad at my job. But I think it was, and perhaps still is, a more systemic problem.

International relations academics in top (liberal) research institutions are often uncomfortable with detailed, war-related debates over tactics and strategy. They are also wary of the data produced by military personnel and organizations. They are often uncomfortable talking with military people and taking their views seriously.

For many academics in my former milieu, military stuff is just too unpleasant, something to tacitly avoid. We don't want to be too close - physically, intellectually, or emotionally - to men and women with guns. To those whose job it is to destroy, wound, and kill when ordered.

Even though, in my case, I was a soldier long ago. I should have known better. ----- James Ron is a former social scientist, consultant, and author. Please check out his LinkedIn or ResearchGate accounts, or his research blog.