To Be a Friend Is Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind

The “searing” (The New Yorker), “must read” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) memoir of “one of the few genuine heroes of America’s war in Iraq” (Dexter Filkins).

In January 2005 Kirk Johnson, then twenty-four, arrived in Baghdad as USAID’s (US Agency for International Development) only Arabic-speaking American employee. Despite his opposition to the war, Johnson felt called to civic duty and wanted to help rebuild Iraq. Working as the USAID’s first reconstruction coordinator in Fallujah, he trave...