The Ragged Edge

At a time when the United States debates how deeply to involve itself in Iraq and Syria, Lt. Col. Michael Zacchea, USMC (ret.), holds a unique vantage point on our still-ongoing war that is shared by literally no one else, anywhere. Deployed to Iraq in March 2004 after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, his team’s mission was to build, train, and lead in combat the first Iraqi army battalion trained by the US military. Zacchea tells a deeply personal and powerful story of hopeful determination turned to hopeless desperation, of brotherhood and betrayal, and of cultural ignorance and misunderstanding, while shedding light on the dangerous pitfalls of training foreign troops to fight murderous insurgents. Unlike other combat Marines in Iraq at the time, Zacchea immersed himself in Iraq’s culture: learning its languages, eating its foods, observing its traditions—even being inducted into one of its Sunni tribes. The Ragged Edge is the first American military memoir out of Iraq or Syria that features complex Arab and Kurdish characters, and which intimately explores their culture and politics in a dispassionate way. Zacchea’s invaluable lessons about Americans working with Arabs and Kurds to fight insurgency and terrorism come precisely when such wartime collaboration is happening more than at any time in US history.