What OEF/OIF vets are best using mass media to reach society?

by: Ilona Meagher

Fri Jan 16, 2009 at 19:06:19 PM EST

Anyway, Brandon asked:

What are the 10 best blog posts (or book passages) written by Iraq or Afghanistan veterans?  I can think of a couple by Alex Horton, another by Kate, and a couple by Ben at 2 Dinar off the top of my head.  What am I missing?  (Political persuasion, of course, is irrelevant here.)

His question actually falls right in with research I'm' just getting underway for my NIU Honors Capstone this semester (of course, it's on veterans issues). Since I've only just begun, I have a handful of quotes that I can share that I think would qualify for both what I'm doing and what Brandon was seeking.

As for my paper, I'm specifically looking into how OEF/OIF veterans (like Brandon, for example via his excellent book The War I Always Wanted and his blogging, etc.) are using all the new media communications technology (available to your generation for the first time...it didn't even exist during the Gulf War) to communicate directly with society.

The communication, of course, also is a lot more immediate and intimate with us, so we are really seeing changes taking place in quick order compared to the past. What I love about this topic is that you guys and gals don't have to appeal to us via the media any more.

You use the media yourself, you are the media.  

So, my research isn't focused on OEF/OIF vets speaking out against war, per se (the anti-war movement has already been researched ad naseum); but rather about greater reflections on humanity, meaning, purpose, love, hate, violence -- all of the things that we all as humans grapple and deal with through the course of our lives. The only difference is that veterans' understanding of these things is forged deeper and more violently by serving in combat and being pushed to that extreme in life.

GI Kate's post totally shows that. Any others?

A couple of quotes that I think stand out that I'll toss into the mix...

First up, from OIF veteran John Crawford, Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq (great writing) --

The world hears war stories told by reporters and retired generals who keep extensive notebooks and journals. They carry pens as they walk, whereas I carried a machine gun. War stories are told to those that have not experienced the worst in man. And to the listener's ears they can sound like glory and heroism. People mutter phrases like, 'I don't know how you did it.' And 'I could never have done that.' And they look at you wondering how you have changed, wondering if you have forever lost the moral dilemma associated with taking another person's life.

War stories end when the battle is over or when the soldier comes home. In real life, there are no moments amid smoldering hilltops for tranquil introspection. When the war is over, you pick up your gear, walk down the hill and back into the world.

OIF vet Tyler E. Boudreau, Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine (the entire book is worthy of quoting, imho):

They say war is hell. But I say it ain't. War is the foyer to hell. The journey home from war is the threshold between a killing order and a peaceful chaos, between the rational and the distorted. Those few hours on the plane are the last of a crystalline euphoria a soldier will know before he steps across the river for good. It was in the passage through Anchorage that I believed I was coming home.

But just like war ain't hell, home ain't a point on the map -- it's a point of view; it's an attitude, and the origin of all my points had broken from the mainland. I had no anchorage anymore. My attitude was like a cooked egg -- permanently altered. My basis was adrift. I had completed the unmaking of myself. I just didn't know it yet. From the very instant my foot touched the American tarmac, I began my descent.

Brandon Friedman, in The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War (who explains the dichotomy of war superbly):

[Since surviving the bomb that landed on his platoon and returning home from war feeling as though everything he's lived since the war is a dream, not real]... I hold on too tight. I am too controlling, too serious. There is an urgency and desperation in everything I do. I am trying to do as much as I can in this extended spit-second before that bomb bursts. I wish this moment would last forever.

Killing is wrong, war is miserable. I miss being soldier. I cannot reconcile these things.

[He goes on to tell of a phone call with a battle buddy about a year after returning from Iraq. His buddy had hated the deployment, was bitter over the whole ordeal.]

And then, in his Boston accent, he added, "Yeah, it was miserable...ya know...prob'ly the wust period of my life. I wouldn't eva do that shit again in a million yea's." I agreed.

Then he paused. "But you know...we did have a pretty good time, didn't we?"

A lot of people can't understand a contradiction like that. But we can. We are enlightened.

These are just a few examples. I'm also looking at bloggers and other communication media formats being used by our returning vets.

Do you guys know of any others that I need to add to my research list?

Thank you!