The mercy caravans are through there the medicine refugees flowing out. It makes the United States look very bad here. And much more like an occupation force than it did before.

War is just what we do. Yet, of course, the effects of it are repeatedly deeper, then deeper, then deeper.

I think in a sense this is a house that was built on a bad foundation. And the foundation was the Americans coming here and allowing the sacking, burning and plunder of Baghdad, for whatever reason.

If you're young and inexperienced you might accept what people tell you, that everything's going to be fine, it's okay. It's usually other young people saying that, who don't know any better. It's good to have a survival instinct because increasingly, especially in the whole Arab Spring sort of violence, you're mostly with young people who have not experienced what they're doing before.

If you can find a way to confound people's prejudices, restore the humanity of people, individuals, you restore them to life.

For me going to war offers me the ability to write about apparently very alien, sometimes hated or despised people, who've been objectified in a way that restores their humanity. Hopefully for my readers, that denies them the ability to objectify them. I think that's the point. If you can do that, that's a good thing.

I think it's deeply important for us to know, especially when we come from the outside, how "ordinary people" think and feel and what their expectations are and what their concerns are. Also what's in their imaginations, what's in their minds, even what their rumors are and what their gossip is.