Michael Zacchea's Blog: The Ragged Edge

Posted on March 21, 2017 by Claire Hall

In his new book, “The Ragged Edge,” set for release on April 1, U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Michael Zacchea ’12 MBA shares the staggering hardships and unique challenges of the U.S. mission to build an Iraqi Army virtually from scratch.

In the wake of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Zacchea eagerly accepted his assignment as the first U.S. military adviser to build, train and lead the Iraqi Army.

But what Americans saw on television and read in the news in 2004 was often a distortion of what was occurring in Iraq, said Zacchea, now the director of the School of Business’ highly successful Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) and a tireless advocate for veterans.

His book offers a unique perspective on the fledgling soldiers of Iraq, the daunting challenges of the mission, and the U.S. intelligence void that ultimately contributed to our country’s ongoing military involvement and the war’s disappointing results. The book ranges from fascinating and insightful to brutal and horrifying.

Much of the violence that Zacchea witnessed or heard about was too gruesome to include, he said. What he learned in Iraq has made him a staunch opponent of torture, under any circumstances.

In “The Ragged Edge,” Zacchea explains the religious divide that threatened to splinter the new army and details the insurgent movement that ultimately gave rise to ISIS.

But Zacchea’s book is more than just an introspection of a challenging military operation. In “The Ragged Edge,” Zacchea, the recipient of two Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart and Iraq’s Order of the Lion of Babylon, describes the physical and psychological toll that war takes on a military leader. He also shares his powerful saga of personal bonds of friendship with Iraqis, the importance of investing the time to develop an understanding and appreciation of another culture, and an assassination plot that could have claimed his life.

The Ragged Edge, Michael Zacchea, Ted Kemp

A book signing is planned for 6 to 8 p.m. April 25 at the Graduate Business Learning Center in Hartford. Proceeds from books sold that evening will benefit the EBV. For more on the book, please visit www.theraggededgebook.com.

Below is from a recent interview with Zacchea:

Your mission with the Iraqi Army Fifth Battalion in 2004-05, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, has been described as like, “Trying to build an airplane in mid-flight.” How so?
I don’t think it was mission impossible, but there were many, many flaws. First, there were no ground assets—food, functioning toilets, equipment… we lacked many of the supplies that would be available to any military unit. We needed beds, boots, equipment, uniforms, radios and vehicles before we could even begin basic training, develop a cohesive, respectable, accomplished battalion, and prepare our strategy against the insurgents.

The food was not only badly cooked; it was tainted. Our cooks had never been taught to wash their hands before preparing food and on several occasions, many members of our battalion became very ill. There were soldiers who smeared human excrement on the walls as part of their worship practices. Our military unit included Zoroastrians that the Iraqis called “fire worshippers,” Yazidis, whom the Iraqis referred to as “devil worshippers” and various ethnic and religious groups, many of whom had a longstanding hatred toward each other.

On top of that, Iraqi soldiers were free to resign whenever they wished—we never knew how many military personnel we’d have on any given day. I think most Americans would be very surprised to learn of the challenges we faced.

From an intelligence standpoint, the U.S. had an abysmal lack of basic information about the Iraqis, their ethnicities, and their cultural divides, creating a potentially fatal lack of knowledge.

The Iraq War was more complex than any other because of the language, the religion, the propaganda, the culture and the brutal combat to which we were exposed. Some of these people in the Iraqi Army had fought U.S. forces—or against each other. It was a crazy situation. I’m not aware of any other advisory mission where they took ‘warring factions’ and tried to make an army out of them. Building an Iraqi Army was the strategic focus of the war, but at times it was incredibly complicated.

In addition to the danger of warfare, you personally were a wanted man by the Iraqi insurgents. In the book you wrote about your discovery of an assassination plot:
“The plotters had two goals: First, they wanted to steal a cache of weapons the battalion had captured in Fallujah. Second, the irhabi (terrorists) wanted me dead, along with as many of the other advisers as possible. The irhabi was offering the armory guards a cut from a bounty put up by the insurgency: $25,000 for [me] dead.”
“I said nothing. That was more money than some Iraqis make in a lifetime. I thought about the note that showed up at the gate back in September: ‘The infidel Zakkiyah will die like the other dogs.’
…Ten minutes stretched and I paced the room. Questions bounded through my mind like startled deer. How deep did this go? Which Iraqi officers could I tell? How would the advisers on my team react? And there was the simplest, worst question: Who could I really trust?”

Did you ever think you would leave Iraq alive?
The night of the ambush that was supposed to claim my life, the thing that saved me was the trusting relationship I had developed with the Iraqis. They watched out for me; they protected me. Absent that, I think it would have been a very different outcome.

We didn’t know if the attack was real or a rumor…or what was going to happen. It was getting late, and they were late, and then it happened. We didn’t know if the insurgents would go out blazing or how committed they were to doing this. It was very nerve-wracking, and it continues to have an effect on me today.

The type of combat you experienced in Fallujah was unlike any other, because it involved storming buildings without having any idea whom you’d find inside. You wrote:
“To clear a house was to throw oneself headlong into the worst kind of uncertainty…It was like roulette and the wheel spun once for every building in Fallujah. We fought in stairwells, in narrow hallways, in kitchens and gardens and bathrooms…The echoes of automatic fire hammered my head all day, all night, like a chisel chipping into my skull.”
“Some were guerilla fighters, trained to attack but not eager to die. The second group was from al-Qaeda. They were foreign zealots who wanted to die and to kill Americans along the way. We had no way of knowing it at the time, but it was these men who years later would form ISIS.”

How do you survive the strain of that constant life-or-death situation?
It was unbelievable. There would be a hole in the ceiling of a home, and our adversaries would drop grenades through it. It is amazing I survived. It was luck of the draw. One of our reinforcements, a U.S. Marine, was killed clearing a house in a firefight with insurgents. He got shot twice in the head. They dropped a grenade and he swept it under his body and saved all the others. We all experienced stuff like that and I can’t account for it. The experience of being in a house, I actually don’t remember much of that. Your brain shuts down. It’s almost impossible to describe. Experiencing it is truly sensory overload.

You’ve spoken about the importance of the Iraqi translators and how critical they were to the U.S. mission. Can you tell me more about that?
For an American imbedded with the Iraqis you cannot overstate the importance of our translators. Our lives depended on the translators’ ability to not only translate what we said, but to share our cultural understanding. If we didn’t have them, there is no doubt we would have wound up dead. Often they took this challenge at tremendous personal cost. Their families were threatened, traumatized, brutalized and even murdered.

When you see the destruction, the toll that this war has taken on Iraq, what do you think?
In the last decade, Iraqis would tell me we had done more damage than the Iran-Iraq war did, which had tremendous casualties, some half million people. But even then the society held together. The economy didn’t get destroyed. We’ve destroyed whatever Iraqi identity there was. There really is no such thing as Iraq at this point. Iraq is Baghdad, basically.

How long was “The Ragged Edge” book in the works?
I started writing it years ago, first in a New York University writer’s workshop, and, later, as part of a cognitive behavioral therapy. In 2008, I placed an ad on a writer’s website and chose Ted Kemp, now a senior editor at CNBC, as my co-author. I think when you’re experiencing an event, you don’t see all the things that are going on. Only later did we see the rise of ISIS, the fall of Fallujah. I wouldn’t have been able to write the story as soon as I got back. It is a complete story now. This is my story. This is my reality.

What is the lesson to be learned from your experience?
First, I think there are limits to our ability to promote democracy. Not everybody wants to be American or to have democratic elections. They have their own ideas, own values and unique understanding of the world and how the universe works. We can’t just go and tell them ‘This is how it is.’ At the same time, most people want some of the same things: a peaceful place to live, stability and the ability to give their kids a good life.

Another lesson I learned from the war is the importance of political vigilance. I told the mayor of Fallujah that thousands of people were dead because of his cowardice. We saw the Iraqis first election in January 2005, and I think about that versus how only one-third of Americans are willing to vote. They say things like, “Oh I didn’t go because it was raining.” Americans don’t risk their lives to vote. We often take that privilege for granted. People need to be politically involved.

Could you describe the process of writing The Ragged Edge? Had you both discussed the content of the book before you began working together?

Michael Zacchea: It took a long time to write. It came out of two sources, 1) the NYU Veterans Writers workshop which I attended in 2006–2007 and 2) cognitive behavioral therapy that I did in 2008–2009. I wrote the first notes about the book – my very first ideas – on hotel stationery one sleepless night. I still have those notes. When I finished the CBT, I had over 300 pages of hand-written material.

The writing was in fits and starts, and episodic. I was going through my own stuff. But we kept working on it. January 2014, when ISIS captured Fallujah, was a real turning point for me writing. That sort of threw gasoline on the fire, so to speak. We finished the manuscript 18 months later, in August 2015.

Ted Kemp: One of the first things Mike expressed to me when we first met was that it frustrated him—angered him, really—that Iraqis were never humanized in American books, American movies, you name it. So that was an early part of our mission. From the beginning, we knew we were creating a book about cultures colliding as much as we were writing about armed men clashing.

The reporting was as challenging as the writing. I interviewed dozens of guys about their experiences. I read through Mike’s journals and the 300 pages he had written as part of his therapeutic efforts. The trick was figuring out the chronology—which is necessary for figuring out causality—and then also placing a larger political and historical overlay on top of those personal narratives. Most people don’t talk about their experiences or write about them in a neat, orderly way. So for me it was like gathering up a million splinters and trying to reform them back into this one, whole story.

Mike had kept detailed notes and journals—he even had jotted down quotes from people, which blew my mind. The scene in The Ragged Edge where General Eaton gives his speech in the Green Zone, for example, all of that is verbatim. And then of course Mike’s therapeutic writing was indispensable. He had poured detail onto those pages, and they came straight from his heart. I told Mike right at the beginning, if this book is going to be a success, it’s going to have to expose your mind and your feelings.

Our actual writing process was one of perpetual back-and-forth. I would write something, and I was always going back to Mike: Is this right? Is that right? What were you feeling at that moment? What were you seeing or hearing or smelling at that moment? And even the writing process itself would jog Mike’s memories about things. Our goal was to make it personal, to make it intimate. Mike and I were perpetually filling out the details, the edges of the image, in our effort to make it a lived, psychological experience for the reader. We had to do that, and then it also had to be true.



What was the best part about writing this book?

MZ: This project was therapeutic for me. It was a confluence of my own therapy, and of geopolitical events as ISIS asserted itself in Iraq. Between writing out my experiences, many of which were not included in either the published body or the submitted manuscript, and the work Ted did in interviewing the people, and reviewing all the source material, I found it very very helpful to develop the whole picture. Relationships, themes, and plots that were not apparent to me when I was experiencing it became apparent, and explained a lot.

TK: It looked so impossible at the beginning. Slowly, I got command of this year that happened in Iraq from February 2004 to February 2005—a year for which I was not present and was learning about entirely second- and third-hand.

And then sometimes Mike would say to me, “Wow, yeah, that nails it.” Not always, or even most of the time, but sometimes, on the first go ’round. I got to where I trusted my judgment. That felt good.


Michael, you developed a friendship and a tight bond with Zayn al-Jibouri, the battalion’s logistics officer. Do you still keep in touch with Zayn?

I did keep in touch with Zayn until July 2014. I heard from him after the fall of Mosul, as we write in the final chapter. I have not been in contact with him since. I pray for his safety and for his family.



What is the biggest misconception people have about the US’s involvement in Iraq?

MZ: Oh Geez! There are still people who believe, who ask at every speaking engagement:

1) Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks – He wasn’t!

2) That Saddam Hussein had either weapons of mass destruction, or a program to produce WMD – He didn’t!

3) ISIS or Al Qaeda already existed in Iraq before we invaded – FALSE!

4) That either President Obama or Hillary Clinton founded or supported ISIS – FALSE!

5) Why was I helping the Iraqi Army, if they were the enemy – LONG STORY, READ THE BOOK!

6) President Obama pulled the US out of Iraq too soon. In 2008, Iraq was a sovereign government. US forces were in Iraq under legal authority of a Status of Forces agreement. The US pulled out of Iraq according to the timeline agreed to in the Status of Forces Agreement by the Bush administration in 2008.

TK: That it started a war that ended. Americans look at the Iraq War and the Syria War as two wars, but they’re one war. That war is ongoing. Aleppo is the latest extension of a war that began in 2003. There are not as many Americans on the ground as there used to be, but the salient truth is that it’s one war, and it includes more and more people all the time.



Michael is the first Western serviceman since Lawrence of Arabia to train a Middle Eastern army for combat. Were you both pretty familiar with T. E. Lawrence before writing the book? I noticed you included a quote from him at the beginning of the book.

MZ: I was extremely aware of Lawrence. I had read and studied him extensively during my career, going back to my days in college. I had read several times Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and was also very familiar with his earlier 27 Articles. While in Iraq, I re-read SPW. I also re-read it since I’ve been home.

While in Iraq, I also read, The Arab Mind by Pitai, Riding the Waves of Culture by Trompenaars, A Modern History of Iraq by Phebe Marr, A History of Iraq by Charles R. H. Tripp, Kanan Makiya’s Republic of Fear and Cruelty and Silence.

We also read The Village by Bing West, 1776 by David McCullough, and How We Won the War by Vo Nguyen Giap.

TK: Yes, definitely. I was already sort of in awe of Lawrence, who had this combination of fearless nonconformity and surpassing brilliance. Then Scott Anderson’s book Lawrence in Arabia came out in 2013, and I read it immediately. Anderson evoked very big themes and yielded insights about the very nature of the Middle East and the Western world, all through the intimate story of one guy. It reinforced this idea in my mind that Mike’s story did the same thing about the Iraq War. Before that, I was inspired in the same way by Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie, in which Sheehan found this one guy, John Paul Vann, whose personal story brought out all of these much larger truths about the Vietnam War, and about the Vietnamese people and about Americans. I read that book before I met Mike, and I read it again while I was working with Mike. Both of those books told history more effectively than straight history books do.



Michael, you recently wrote an op-ed on CNBC regarding President Trump’s executive order banning immigrants and refugees from several Middle Eastern countries. Obviously, The Ragged Edge is incredibly relevant to the new administration. If politicians were to pick up your book, what part of the book would you recommend to them and why?

MZ: Politicians have been inoculated from the consequences of the wars. Politicians have further inoculated the American people from the consequences of war by “outsourcing” fighting to third-country nationals.

The prevalence of private military contractors is a massive problem. This was part of the so-called Rumsfeld doctrine. Essentially, the Rumsfeld doctrine was the privatization and outsourcing of war for profit by a select group. The military has virtually no control or jurisdiction over contractors in country. Every federal agency is putting out different contracts all with different and uncoordinated statements of work. And as we pointed out, it leads to absurd situations like military personnel being guarded by private guards–and not guarded well.

The use of contractors is what led to the first and second battles of Fallujah. The use of contractors also led to the Al Nissor Square massacre, in which 17 Iraqis civilians were killed by 5 American mercenaries in September 2007. The Iraqi government was rightly outraged and demanded justice. As part of the negotiations for the SOFA, the Iraqi government insisted (nonnegotiable) that American troops be subject to Iraqi, that is, Sharia law as a condition for being in the country. The US Bush administration refused.

Finally, the book is incredibly relevant to both our domestic politics today and the ongoing war with ISIS. The Trump ban initially failed to acknowledge or understand the Iraqi Special Immigrant Visa program for Iraqis who risked everything, and often made incredible sacrifices, for the United States.

As I write today, American troops are in combat with ISIS in and around northern Iraq and Mosul. Those troops lives are literally dependent on interpreters. Interpreters who might be caught or even identified by ISIS run the risk of them and their entire families being executed in the most brutal fashion imaginable, by ISIS. Giving those Iraqi interpreters an opportunity to come to the United States is vital to our potential success against ISIS.

What do you hope readers will take away from reading The Ragged Edge?

MK: First, that everything the American public has been told about the Iraq war is by people and interests that want to reinforce a particular narrative about the war. These people and interests want the audience to believe–to buy into–a particular narrative about the war. Often, they want the audience to believe the narrative because they have a vested interest in it.

I believe that the American people deserve to know the good, the bad, and the ugly about the war. I believe that an informed electorate can make the best decision about the use of military force by the United States to achieve its geopolitical and strategic goals, and to make the best decision about allocation of national resources like taxpayer money to achieve its goals.

I believe, and have experienced, how generous and welcoming our nation is to Iraqis who supported the United States and to refugees of the war. Most Americans are not connected to either. I honestly believe that the more the American people know about the war, the less likely we are to repeat its mistakes.

TK: I want people to finish it and say, “Wow, I feel like I finally understand the Iraq War.” I hope the book gives readers a new grasp of a big part of their own era. And maybe they’ll begin to think in ways that are more broad than they’re accustomed to thinking. Americans of all political stripes could stand to think more often beyond their immediate, lived worlds. Our technology, our jobs, our entertainment, most of them reinforce myopia. We could stand to broaden our thinking, now more than ever.