MOSUL FRONT, Iraq—The old peshmerga general smiled at the sound of the U.S. fighter jets. “That’s the sound of God,” he said.
Gen. Omar Hama Ali Farag held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, scanning Islamic State positions about a mile away, across the Great Zab River in the direction of Mosul.
“There are two Daesh fighters hiding beneath a tree in front of the white house,” Farag told me, using a pejorative Arabic acronym for the Islamist terrorist army also known as ISIS.
He handed me the binoculars. “Have a look.”
And there they were. Clear as day and in the flesh.
The black-clad foot soldiers of the terrorist army responsible for so much death and destruction across the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, Europe, and even back home in the United States. Disciples of the same twisted group that had brutally killed the American journalist James Foley, a friend of mine who had graduated a few classes ahead of me at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
I couldn’t help it. A smile spread over my face as the sound of U.S. fighter jets roared overhead. As a former Air Force pilot, I was acquiring a unique education in the awesome ground level effects of my former profession.
The sun was setting behind a line of hills in the direction the general and I were looking. Some of Farag’s soldiers, about a dozen of them, were on the roof of the fortified compound with us.
Small in stature with a trimmed salt and pepper moustache and wearing a black and white turban, Farag paced back and forth among his men with his hands clasped behind his back. At times he had a fatherly air. In other moments, which coincided with the thumps of airstrikes, his eyes narrowed and his face transformed into a remorseless expression I have seen only among soldiers.