Savannah Book Festival: Margaret Coker finds the personal in decades-long U.S.-Iraq war

As the United States conflict in the Middle East shifts into a new chapter with the pullout of troops by President Joe Biden last year, there isn't a more prescient time to dive deeper into the nuances of the decades-long war. The recent shift makes a new book by journalist Margaret Coker, "The Spymaster of Baghdad: A True Story of Bravery, Family, and Patriotism in the Battle against ISIS," even more top of mind.

In the interview, Coker talks about how recent events may or may not have changed the landscape she covers both in her book and over many years as the Middle East bureau chief of The New York Times.

She also discusses using the book to cover geopolitical events like this one in a more personal light, and how the media's coverage of this war will be viewed in the history books.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Question: How much has changed, or how much has kind of shifted with the recent events in the Middle East with the Biden administration?

Margaret Coker: "Yeah. So, one of the unfortunate side effects of, of the 'war on terror' has been that a lot of it's been fought in Iraq's national boundaries. And so Iraqis have been on on the front lines of that war on terror for, gosh, almost 20 years now. For the Iraqis, that fight continues regardless of who's president of the United States and right now, the Iraqis have had a chance to really sort of build their own internal capacity to keep track of the extremist threats in their own national borders.

Q: I think what works well about your book is that it handles this whole conflict from a personal lens. This isn't talking heads on CNN or the BBC. The story comes from real people living it daily. Was that how you always wanted to approach this story?

Coker: "I am a military kid, both my parents are served, all of my uncle's serve, my brother in law's served... the military is our family profession. And so I grew up in this environment, where we watched movies about World War II almost every weekend and visited battlefields, and so I knew a lot about the great wars, the great patriotic wars of America's past. But you know, I've grown up in a time during the War on Terror. And it always struck me as I was overseas reporting from those battlefields that Americans really didn't understand who our allies are, and this is the war that we've been fighting longer than any other. So, yeah, I had a real intention to bring an Iraqi perspective sort of front and center, like make Iraqis main characters of their own modern history.

Q: You mention the great wars, such as World War II and those have such a specific mode that they're portrayed in the media. This war seems much messier. We want to pick a good guy and a bad guy, but those lines are blurred here.

Coker: "Yeah, and some of that is part of who's been able to write history so far for the War on Terror and it hasn't been the Iraqis or the Afghans by and large that are able to sort of punch through all of that white noise and get our attention as English speakers or even Americans. And, you know, I was in this really privileged position to to be able to tell stories from people that I've known for years and deeply admire and respect. And so, you know, breaking through that language barrier about how to how to help Americans understand and sympathize a little bit more about large groups of people who have been, I think, overlooked by by American media a whole lot, but also misunderstood because it's been a full court press since the September 11 attacks largely across America to go to war against an unknown enemy, and the unknown enemy has come to be the Muslim world in some cases. And that's just not true.

Q: It's probably much more refreshing for them to also be able to speak for themselves rather than being constrained to a talking head appearance on TV or just another quick news story about the broader conflict. This cuts to the personal clearly.

Q: You'll be speaking at the Savannah Book Festival. Have you had the chance to do many in-person events like this and are you looking forward to it?

Coker: "So as a first time book author, I had the unfortunate experience of publishing my book during COVID and so in-person events have been incredibly rare. I've done approximately two and those have been here in the Lowcountry. So the book has given me a great opportunity to meet my readers face-to-face. As part of my author talks, I'm going to be speaking to one of the local high schools, students at Jenkins High School, and then doing my open event on Saturday. So it's really, it's exciting that the weather, the season, the time, the place, to be able to have adults coming together to be able to look people in the eye and actually talking about books instead of over Zoom."