America is once again at war. Helen Benedict is one of our most distinguished writers on the moral consequences of war. Her new novel, The Soldier’s House, is set in the aftermath of the Iraq war. But it could, equally, be about the aftermath of Afghanistan. Or even Iran. “The war turned me into a monster,” veterans tell Benedict, again and again. “How am I supposed to face my wife, my children, when I know I’m a monster?”
On George W. Bush, Benedict is unambiguous. “He was a war criminal,” she says. On the Iraq war, she is equally clear: America went in on lies and killed nearly a million Iraqis, used depleted uranium in violation of international law. Today, Trump is repeating the same catastrophic playbook in Iran.
In The Soldier’s House, Benedict shows how Iraq turned some American soldiers into monsters. “War is morally corrosive — especially a war where the soldiers can find no justification for what they’re doing,” Benedict says. That’s the unintended consequence of even the most morally clean war. Expect the same in Iran. If Trump’s half peace becomes a George W. Bush total war.
Five Takeaways
• He Was a War Criminal. Benedict’s verdict on Bush, stated flat. He went to war on lies. He killed near a million Iraqis. Used depleted uranium in violation of international law. The forgiveness of Bush is memory loss. He was not better than Trump. The bar is not high.
• The Other Half of the Story. For years, the Iraq war produced American writing about American soldiers. Nobody wrote about how the civilians felt. Benedict’s novel gives Naima equal weight as Jimmy. She pushes back against the demonization of Muslim refugees by creating characters who could be your friend, your sister, yourself.
• Why Fiction, Not Nonfiction. She had already written the nonfiction. But no matter how intimate the interviews, she couldn’t get inside the experience. People put up self-protective barriers. Fiction allows her to go where nonfiction cannot — to illustrate the interior experience of war from moment to moment.
• Moral Injury. A war without justification is maximally corrosive. The soldier can find no frame in which the violence makes sense. Veterans come home carrying that. “The war turned me into a monster. How am I supposed to face my wife, my children, when I know I’m a monster?” We bring the war home with us.
• The Afghan and Iraqi Interpreters. Trump’s abandonment of interpreters who risked their lives for the US military is both morally appalling and strategically stupid. Soldiers made promises: I will protect you. Now they are forced to break them. Nobody is going to trust America at all.
About the Guest
Helen Benedict is a Professor of Journalism at Columbia University and the author of The Soldier’s House (Akashic Books, April 2026), The Good Deed (Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist), and The Lonely Soldier.
References
The Soldier’s House by Helen Benedict (Akashic Books, April 2026)
The Lonely Soldier by Helen Benedict
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Chapters:
00:00:31 America is at war again
00:03:22 Pushing back against the glamorization of war
00:06:43 Bush: he was a war criminal
00:09:43 The other half: Iraqi civilians
00:13:54 Why fiction, not nonfiction?
00:15:48 Jimmy, Naima, and the child as bridge
00:20:27 Trump’s betrayal of interpreters
00:28:38 Hegseth: an overgrown child
00:31:29 Sexual assault in the military
00:34:12 Moral injury, hope, and the ending