It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, then-President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq called "the surge." "Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences...," Bush told a skeptical nation, and among those listening were soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 2-16 infantry battalion, who were about to head to a vicious area of Baghdad and who decided the difference would be them. They were young, optimistic, and invincible when they went headed into the war, and when they returned home fifteen months later, they were forever changed. What happened in those fifteen months? Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Finkel tells the story of the 2-16—a story not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.
Lecturer
2014—David Finkel
Writer, Washington Post and Center for a New American Security