« You wouldn’t get this from any other guy | Main | Going it alone »
The cost of war
By Ned | March 27, 2008
Rolling Stone has a superb article this month that examines the daily life of one Iraq vet with PTSD. It’s really moving stuff.
Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller spends much of his time sitting on the floor of the run-down trailer he keeps as a residence behind his father’s house in the tiny coal-mining town of Jonancy, Kentucky (population 297). This is his favorite spot in the trailer, where he reclines against an easy chair whose upholstery has turned a dingy nicotine brown. From here, Miller can anticipate any possible threat, keep an eye on all avenues of approach an enemy might take. As cigarette butts overflow in the ashtray and empty beer bottles collect around him, he silently cycles through procedures the Marine Corps drilled into his head: defend, reinforce, attack, withdraw, delay. He knows it’s only seven steps to the front door, but he worries whether his truck has enough gas to make an escape. He wishes someone had told him that “there may come a time when all that shit you learned, you might not be able to turn it off.”
Miller isn’t superhuman. He’s not the platonic ideal of a Patriot or whatever. He’s not a metaphor or an abstraction. He’s a human being and, from the article, he seems like a good guy. Kind of like a lot of the other countless young people whose lives have been chewed up and spat out by this war.
My point is this: trying to iconize American soldiers is just another way - well-intentioned or otherwise - of dehumanizing them and making their suffering seem more distant and abstract. So with all the talk of “the troops” as this faceless yet flawless entity, articles like this are important. Let’s remember who we’re talking about.
Topics: Iraq |