God is Not Here: A Soldier's Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of War - Hardcover

Edmonds, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Russell

3.93

109 ratings by Goodreads

9781605987743: God is Not Here: A Soldier's Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of War

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1605987743 ISBN 13: 9781605987743

Publisher: Pegasus Books, 2015

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God Is Not Here is a powerful and intimate look into torture and its effect on both the tortured and the torturer.

In May of 2005, the U.S. government finally acknowledged that the invasion of Iraq had spawned an insurgency. With that admission, training the Iraqi Forces suddenly became a strategic priority. Lt. Col. Bill Edmonds, then a Special Forces captain, was in the first group of "official" military advisors. He arrived in Mosul in the wake of Abu Ghraib, at the height of the insurgency, and in the midst of America’s rapidly failing war strategy.

Edmonds’ job was to advise an Iraqi intelligence officer―to assist and temper his interrogations―but not give orders. But he wanted to be more than a wallflower, so he immersed himself in the experience, even learning Arabic. In a makeshift basement prison, over countless nights and predawn hours, Edmonds came to empathize with Iraqi rules: do what’s necessary, do what works. After all, Americans and Iraqis were dying.

Edmonds wanted to make a difference. Yet the longer he submerged himself in the worst of humanity, the more conflicted and disillusioned he became, slowly losing faith in everything and everyone. In the end, he lost himself. He returned home with no visible wounds, but on the inside he was different. He tried to forget―to soldier on―but memories from war never just fade away...

In God Is Not Here, the weight of history is everywhere, but the focus is on a young man struggling to learn what is right when fighting wrong. Edmonds provides a disturbing and thought-provoking account of the morally ambiguous choices faced when living with and fighting within a foreign religion and culture, as well as the resulting psychological and spiritual impacts on a soldier.

Transcending the genre of the traditional war memoir, Edmonds’ eloquent recounting makes for one of the most insightful and moving books to emerge from America’s long war against terrorism.

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About the Author:

With more than twenty years of service, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Russell Edmonds is a decorated counterterrorism and counterinsurgency expert who has served in various positions throughout the Special Operations community and with other U.S. government agencies. Bill is a native of Southern California and currently lives in Germany with his wife and two daughters.

Thomas Ricks (foreword) is the three-time New York Times bestselling author of Making the Corps, Fiasco, and The Generals and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Bill Nash, M. D., CAPT., MC., USN. Ret. (introduction) was awarded the bronze star medal for his service in Iraq. He is Former director of Combat and Operational Stress Control programs for the U.S. Marine Corps, part of the National Center for PTSD and is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Nash has also co-edited a book on combat stress injuries.

George Lober (reading group discussion guide) is a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Prof. Lober has, over these last fourteen years and counting of war, taught, coached, and mentored countless Special Operation Forces Officers on ethics and morality before and after they deployed to war.

Review:

“As Edmonds' memoir shows, conscience remains a powerful force that cannot be denied. Compelling. Hopefully God Is Not Here will inspire debate within our military. Those readers who suffer deep moral wounds themselves will hear in this book the familiar, haunting echoes of their own thoughts and feelings. Through these echoes, they may realize, if they do not already: they are not alone.”
- Military Review

“Every war raises moral questions. Even the 'good wars.' But during America's ongoing anti-terrorist long wars, too few Americans have sense the weight of such questions, because so many are buffered from any real involvement in what their country is doing in their name. God is Not Here is all about the moral weight of what individuals do in the country's name. A powerful piece of work.”
- The Atlantic

“"War is rife with good people feeling shame or guilt for what they did. Scientists are calling it moral injury. Edmonds spent years writing as therapy to treat those wounds. This book is the result. 'By sheer force of will I revised myself. Now I am able to explain myself to myself.' Deep and profound.”
- Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY

“A wrenchingly honest account of a soldier''s inner conflicts in a morally ambiguous war. Working with an Iraqi officer interrogating Iraqi terror suspects, Bill Edmonds got what most U.S. soldiers did not: a view of the Iraq war through Iraqi and not American eyes. That perspective gives a painful but illuminating and necessary lesson on the true nature of America''s conflicts in our era.”
- Arnold R. Isaacs, author of 'Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia' and 'Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy'

“You know Bill Edmonds is on to something from the very beginning of the book, which I think is one of the best to come out of the Iraq war. There are lines that stay with me.”
- Thomas Ricks, 'New York Times' bestselling author, from the Foreword

“An intense wartime and post-war memoir. This blunt, taut account, based on Edmonds’s journals, addresses the profound ramifications Edmonds’s work in the war have had on his emotional well-being. The chapters effectively flash back and forth.”
- Publishers Weekly

“Captures an essential lesson about the war in Iraq. Searing and often brutal. As Edmonds' account so telling demonstrates, much more remains to be done.”
- The New York Times Book Review

“Heraclitus wrote that 'truth likes to hide.' God is Not Here is about bringing truth out of hiding, the agony of living with it, and finding the courage to tell it. Edmonds' wrenching chronicle of his deployment to hell―his infernal 'descent into a moral abyss'―is required reading for the nation that sent him there.”
- Robert Emmet Meagher, author of 'Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War'

“God Is Not Here is a courageous book by a thoughtful warrior whose personal story shows us the terrible moral and human costs of torture, not just to those who are tortured, but to the torturers.”
- Scott Cooper, National Security Outreach Director, Human Rights First

“While our country is deep in conversation about how to help veterans who return from combat with PTSD, a much less discussed topic is soldiers who return with moral injuries. God is Not Here is a courageous memoir that provides extraordinary insight into the challenges of adjusting to normal life after dealing with the moral complexity of combat. A valuable resource for understanding one of the many negative repercussions of torture―the effect it has on the welfare of our own soldiers.”
- Tony Camerino, former senior military interrogator, author of 'How to Break a Terrorist'

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