Everywhere I turn these days, I see a new memoir of being a soldier. It's the fresh hot publishing product - the personal story of a young American who joined the Marines, joined the National Guard, joined the Army, and went to the Gulf.
Only to discover - shock, horror, disbelief - that War Sucks. That military life is - gasp - dehumanizing in the extreme. That military training goes against every principle and ethic of human society. That people subjected to military training, and the numbing, brutalizing drudgery of war tend to lose parts of their mind and grip on reality. Not to mention their ability to see and feel other human beings.
What bugs me about all these memoirs is that they present the obvious as if it was new information. As if anyone with half a brain cell didn't
know that in order to train people to kill you have to break their capacity to think and choose for themselves and connect to other human beings.
All the jacket covers carry the same trite blurb:
Raw. Real. Unflinching.
And build up to the ultimate clincher:
She saw death up close! He saw a fellow soldier shot!! Raw and real is what Iraqis live with every day. What people around the world live with under US bombardment or military occupation.
1 Comments:
But isn't there some value in the rising awareness in the U.S.? And isn't it interesting that in the Viet Nam war it was the media/tv that brought the nation to this awareness, and now it's the soldiers writing books? For one thing it shows how badly the media is doing its job.
What a nation we are, we tend to choose denial, avoid personal communication that is real and deep when we can, espouse ethics and morals we don't know how to embody, and feel righteous indignation at anyone who doesn't think we are the 'good-hearted people of America'. I haven't read any of these soldier stories, and I definitely agree it's disgusting that we can't seem to envision the pain the U.S. inflicts on other countries-while we worry about our "boys & girls" in the military. As always, I agree with you, and by now you know who this anonymous writer is, but I also give thanks for anything that helps my people to see. And, they are my people, disconnecting from that, as a political/radical U.S. citizen, isn't an option if I want to hold responsibility for change. And I do.
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