Iraq

Iraq enters J.D. Vance’s account not as an abstract setting for war but as a place remembered through the practical duties, human encounters, and dangers of his Marine Corps service. Years later, those memories gave him grounds to reject a classmate’s blanket accusation that American soldiers mistreated Iraqi civilians for sport.

Service and Responsibilities

During his service in Iraq, Vance received repeated instruction in how to show respect for Iraqi culture. The guidance included not showing the soles of one’s feet and, when addressing a woman in traditional Muslim dress, speaking first to a male relative. His account presents these rules as part of the work of serving in a society whose customs differed from his own.

Marines also provided security for Iraqi poll workers. Vance recalled that they explained the importance of the workers’ mission without pressing their own political views on them. In this memory, military service involved not only protection but also restraint: the workers’ civic task was theirs, and the Marines’ role was to support it.

Encounters and Dangers

Vance remembered meeting a young Iraqi who could not speak English yet knew every word of 50 Cent’s In Da Club. He rapped the song while Vance and the young man’s friends laughed along. The moment offered a particular, shared point of connection across a language barrier, distinct from the political arguments that later framed Vance’s recollections of the war.

The same memories carried the cost of service. Vance thought of Marines who had survived an IED attack in the Al-Qaim region of Iraq. Their experience made a college student’s claim that soldiers killed civilians for sport seem especially detached from the range of people and opinions Vance had known in the Marine Corps.

Memory and Narrative Significance

In an undergraduate foreign-policy seminar, a classmate argued that soldiers who fought in Iraq were less intelligent than students who went directly to college, and that soldiers’ conduct toward Iraqi civilians demonstrated their lack of judgment. Vance’s response was shaped by concrete recollections of cultural instruction, the protection of poll workers, a friendly exchange with an Iraqi youth, and the danger faced by his fellow Marines. He emphasized that his Marine Corps friends held varied political views, including strong criticism of the war, but had not made the classmate’s sweeping accusation.

Iraq therefore functions in Vance’s account as both a place of service and a test of how war is discussed from a distance. His memories do not claim to describe every soldier’s conduct or every Iraqi experience; instead, they challenge the classmate’s generalization by setting it against the specific responsibilities, relationships, and risks Vance witnessed.