Joby Warrick speaks at WCC about Pulitzer Prize-winning book
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on March 14, 2017 9:02 AM
Full Size
News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Joby Warrick, national security reporter for the Washington Post, speaks about his book Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS during an arts and humanities programs in Moffatt Auditotium at Wayne Community College Monday night. The son of a pastor, Warrick spent his early years in Grantham.
Joby Warrick has amassed an impressive professional resume -- winning a Pulitzer for a series he wrote as a reporter for the News and Observer, rising to national security reporter for the Washington Post and scoring a second Pulitzer in 2016 for his book, "Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS."
But on Monday night, kicking off the spring speaker series for the Wayne Community College Foundation Arts and Humanities program, he was addressing his hometown.
It was a coup for WCC to secure the sought after speaker, said Kay Cooke, director of the arts and humanities program.
In addition to drawing a capacity crowd in Moffatt Auditorium, he spoke to a class of students earlier in the afternoon, leading a "wonderful question and answer" segment, Mrs. Cooke said. He was also kind and gracious, she said, to impart his own experiences having attended a community college.
Warrick hails from the hamlet of Grantham, in the southeastern part of the county. Several relatives turned out for a reception prior to the program, including his mother, Barbara, who now lives in Pennsylvania and traveled in with her son for the occasion. Warrick's father, the Rev. Eugene Warrick, whose career in the ministry included a pastorate at Falling Creek Baptist Church, passed away in 2015.
John Stiles, himself a military hero, introduced Warrick, praising the journalist for his "clarity and enthusiasm" of the facts depicted in his second book.
"It's a riveting read," he said, hinting that there may be more in store.
He told the audience that actor Bradley Cooper is currently working on a mini series based on the book.
Warrick shied away from self-promotion, though, kicking off his remarks with a nod to his roots.
"I'm a Goldsboro native," he told the crowd.
And despite having been a pastor's kid "who hasn't had an address here since 1962," home remained where his family always returned to visit grandparents -- Dr. and Mrs. Luby Warrick, the patriarch delivering many babies over the years, he said.
Despite now living in the northeast, whenever he tells others he is from Goldsboro, most are familiar with the city, he said, offering up three reasons for that -- Seymour Johnson, Wilber's Barbecue and the thermo nuclear bomb that landed in a swamp in Faro in 1961.
Warrick was six months old at the time of the near-miss catastrophe that, if detonated, could have wiped out the entire area.
But that incident is in stark contrast to the threat of terrorists today -- which destroy a way of life.
Warrick has devoted more than a decade reporting on and researching ISIS, the outgrowth of the Islamic State of Iraq.
He spent the bulk of his 45-minute sharing some of the history of the ferocious and barbaric group whose leaders have primarily been vicious youth with prison backgrounds -- termed "jihadi university" because the imprisonment is used as a training ground to recruit and develop its members.
Its founder, Al-Zarqawi, at one time sidled up to Bin Laden, but was rejected for being "more barbaric and extreme" than Bin Laden, Warrick said.
Zarqawi was killed in 2006. But others have since taken up the mantle, including copycats and loners who patterned themselves after the group.
The political climate in the U.S. has also been impacted by ISIS, said Warrick.
And while he does not consider himself political, he addressed the president's effort to prohibit certain countries from traveling into America.
"It might make you feel better, but it won't necessarily have the affect that you want," he told the audience. "You might be disappointed about how it goes because the problem we have in this country is not with people coming here to commit acts of terrorism. That hasn't really happened since 9/11.
"What does happen is kids who are in this country already becoming radicalized through various means."
Just as young people in other countries are being recruited for the cause, the same could be going on in this country, Warrick cautioned, describing it as the difference between a sledge hammer approach and that of a scalpel.
"You can actually egg these kids on because ISIS is already whispering in their ears, saying to them, 'Your government hates Muslims, here's your proof -- they're banning people like you, they don't like you, you should stand with us,'" he said.
He singled out former President George W. Bush for his handling of the situation after 9/11.
Bush took a more careful approach, Warrick said, visiting a Mosque in Washington and attempting not to provoke and make things worse.
"He stood with people there and said that people who carried out (those) acts were not true Muslims and then he launched a very tough system intended to screen out the terrorists from gaining access to the country," he said.
It's a "tall order" to eradicate ISIS but Warrick tried to end on a high note, suggesting that there are reasons to feel hopeful about the plight moving forward.
Iraqi allies have managed to drive ISIS out of Mosul, the capital of Iraq, he said, and troops there are making more inroads in taking back their own country.