Speakeasy with Aaron Glantz, author of The War Comes Home

In The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans, Aaron Glantz reports on the crisis of neglect soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan face. His first book, How America Lost Iraq, chronicled a devastating firsthand account of the Bush administration’s misguided policies in Iraq. Currently a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center, Gantz leads a panel discussion around The War Comes Home at the Carter Presidential Library Tues., Feb. 17 at 7 p.m.

__What changed during the few years you spent reporting from Iraq?
When I was there in April 2003, I had gone with a real bias against the war but I confronted people who were incredibly relieved that Saddam Hussein was finally gone. Then, over a period of years, I watched that good feeling dissipate. I watched the American soldiers go from being seen as the liberators to the occupiers. I saw the Iraqi people’s opinion of the Americans really diminish to the point where most people were actually supporting the insurgency.

When did you start reporting on veterans?

These American soldiers began coming to my speaking engagements. They were interested in what I had to say because they had not been able to get the side of the story that I had. Through that kind of exchange, I began to see that I had more in common with the veterans, whose opinions were all over the political map, than I necessarily did with people who had my same kind of liberal bent. I could talk to them about the war and we would be talking about the same war. We wouldn’t be coming at it from the perspective of “politics first,” we were first coming at it from the perspective of our experience.__