Couple of things I wrote
In July 2003:
In 1970, when I arrived at my unit, Company A, 4th Battalion/503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade, in what was then the Republic of Vietnam, I was charged up for a fight. I believed that if we didn’t stop the communists in Vietnam, we’d eventually be fighting this global conspiracy in the streets of Hot Springs, Arkansas. I’d been toughened by Basic Training, Infantry Training and Parachute Training, taught how to use my weapons and equipment, and I was confident in my ability to vanquish the skinny unter-menschen. So I was dismayed when one of my new colleagues–a veteran who’d been there ten months–told me, “We are losing this war.” Full comment
In November 2003 (thinking now of Haditha):
I changed over there in Vietnam and they were not nice changes either. I started getting pulled into something–something that craved other peole’s pain. Just to make sure I wasn’t regarded as a “fucking missionary” or a possible rat, I learned how to fit myself into that group that was untouchable, people too crazy to fuck with, people who desired the rush of omnipotence that comes with setting someone’s house on fire just for the pure hell of it, or who could kill anyone, man, woman, or child, with hardly a second thought. People who had the power of life and death–because they could.
The anger helps. It’s easy to hate everyone you can’t trust because of your circumstances, and to rage about what you’ve seen, what has happened to you, and what you have done and can’t take back.
It was all an act for me, a cover-up for deeper fears I couldn’t name, and the reason I know that is that we had to dehumanize our victims before we did the things we did. We knew deep down that what we were doing was wrong. So they became dinks or gooks, just like Iraqis are now being transformed into ragheads or hajjis. People had to be reduced to “niggers” here before they could be lynched. No difference. We convinced ourselves we had to kill them to survive, even when that wasn’t true, but something inside us told us that so long as they were human beings, with the same intrinsic value we had as human beings, we were not allowed to burn their homes and barns, kill their animals, and sometimes even kill them. So we used these words, these new names, to reduce them, to strip them of their essential humanity, and then we could do things like adjust artillery fire onto the cries of a baby.
Full comment
Robin Hering:
This is the same as putting a bull in an arena, or a cock in a pit, to fight. Sending youth into hell. Survival.
And the disconnect is not unlike that of an armchair patriot who doesn’t give a thought to what’s happening in Iraq - and doesn’t want to see any pictures because it offends his/her sensibilities - and thinks this is all a good idea “because we were attacked”.
The reason “heats and minds” weren’t won in Iraq, if indeed that ever was the plan, and I guess I doubt it was, is because we sent soldiers into combat with the notion that “Saddam” (and by extension, all Iraqis) had something to do with 9-11, “attacked us”. Even today, the polls of soldiers show that they believe there is a link.
The political strategy to generate support for this war, lost the war.
30 May 2006, 12:36 amYolanda Carrington:
There are more than a couple of things that I need to write myself, and I have a space to write them now, but it is really damn hard. Thank you for reposting these writings again, Stan.
I’ve never come closer to war than almost being recruited into the Army reserves, but I was feeling every word of what you wrote to the young veterans out there. I know nothing about the battlefield, or basic training, but I do know about finding out the awful truth, of realizing that everything you’ve ever learned in your life was a lie. This awakening happened to me for the first time when I was twelve years old, when it dawned on me that I was expected to exist only for the benefit of others. My sole purpose in life was to make other folks look good, feel good, make them money, make them lunch and dinner, and have their babies. I haven’t been the same since.
But finding The Truth is nothing like how church folks describe it, like you’ll suddenly have great happiness and family harmony and inner peace. Finding out the truth about the world and the people around you is an enormous shock to the senses. It hurts. It’s depressing, and humiliating, and demoralizing, and nonsensical, and crazy, and alienating, and more often than not, you will find yourself all alone. You will be a stranger to everyone and everything that you thought you knew before.
Nobody likes finding out that they were chumped.
Nobody.
Once you do find out The Truth, you have several choices of action from there. There are three that I usually identify. One, you can ignore the truth and live out the lie like you’ve done all along. Two, you can use the knowledge that you’ve gained to strengthen yourself personally and help others out there like you, and then eventually destroy the systems that lie to us and hurt us. Three, you can give in to your pain and pine away in despair. It’s much easier, much much easier, to accomplish number three.
My dream in life is to accomplish goal number two, but I have to fight every day not to fall into despair. I’ve survived a lot at an early age. Not as much as many folks of course, even folks with the same exact background as mine. I won’t even pretend to know what it is to survive armed combat, especially an imperialist occupation.
But I’m also not here to compare oppressions, because that is not productive or helpful for you or me. What I want to do is let everyone who has awakened from the nightmare of The Lie know this: You not alone. I’m with you. Billions of people are awakening from the same nightmare, and they are with you. Know that, and hold on to that.
Thank you again Stan.
30 May 2006, 1:11 amYolanda
Mike Yossarian:
People not famiilar with this blog won’t get this. They can’t know yet what Stan means to us. We of that time have been carrying it around. Now Stan has brought us a place where we can let it down, and then he shows us how to pick it up again, but in a new way. Stan says it for us. In ways we never could. We can’t write. We can’t express it. But Stan does. God bless you, my man. God bless you. Mike
30 May 2006, 3:16 amTimothy R. Anderson:
The Easiest Thing Is Not Done.
While the members of the “Stay The Course ” choir
are choooosing which piece of a carved up
Murtha bird they want most to devour, I think
the level-headed among us should be reminded of
something :
Private security guards, in their THOUSANDS ,
are roaming around, on the ground, in Iraq
doing evil, evil, evil stuff and those private security guards are not investigated.
They are not investigated. They are not reassign-
ed. They don’t get a cut in pay. Whatever the
private security guards get up to, it seeeeems
like the accountability factor does NOT enter into it.
This is the utmost hypocrisy. Blaming the
conventional military servicemembers would have
some weight, I suppose, if ANY ANY ANY
ANY ANY comparable standard existed
for the private security guards.
Private security guards including the employees
of Blackwater USA ( http://www.blackwaterusa.com ),
Erinys, K.B.R. , etc. etc. etc.
Yes I will name names.
I name Paul Rieckhoff as a young man
with important things to say …… his words
are now available in book-form …. the title of the book is ” Chasing Ghosts ”
…… Paul Rieckhoff will be on MSNBC ’s
” Scarborough Country ” today ( Tuesday )
Timothy R. Anderson
30 May 2006, 6:31 pmhttp://www.warisaracket.org
Gus Abraham:
One thing we’re trying to figure out over this side of the Atlantic is - is Haditha the tipping point? Any thoughts? http://www.1820.org.uk
5 June 2006, 9:06 amStan:
No idea. There is no doubt that it will expand into a major and polarizing scandal.
Eyes are beginning to fix on the election now. I have my issues with this, but it seems pretty inevitable. I don’t think this lame duck administration has the slightest intention of leaving Iraq. That much is pretty clear.
The thinking on the election is that if the Democrats can win back control of the House of Representatives, and thereby the chairs of key committees, then they can establish Congressional investigations that have subpeona authority. The cumulative impact of the Republican scandals, it is believed, will set the Dems up for a 2008 election sweep. Some think it could lead to impeachment.
5 June 2006, 10:32 amKim Alphandary:
i’ve yet to read one of your books, i realy want to, but i cannot understate just exactly how much i have loved your writing, your analysis, etc.
all your brilliance and lovely humor — i cannot help but stop and wonder about you, the human being, the man who witnessed war crimes or more than likely was a participant ? ? ?
i apologize if asking this question is unfair/wrong.
chao, kim
11 June 2006, 3:09 am