DavesDigest

As I reflect on the posts that I have made this semester I have learned several things about war that I was not particularly aware of.  I read a lot of posts by soldiers who have been stationed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq who talk about there everyday lives during war.  I learned about the challenges of being away from family and friends.  In addition, I learned about coping with the realities of war and the psychological effects.  War also affects people that are not directly involved and at times it can be very depressing for families and relatives who have a soldier off fighting in war.   

I also learned about the cost of war.  The cost of war can be monetary and it can be people.  I learned that the cost of losing a life is more devastating to people who are directly involved.  However, there are people that overlook the death count and only focus on the monetary cost of war.  Exploring different literary works of war and viewing soldiers stories about there experiences overseas has made be appreciate what they do for our country.  I think that most importantly I was able to learn about some of the realities of war and expand my personal viewpoints.  Overall, I learned about the impacts of human conflict and how people directly and indirectly can be affected.             

The edublog experience has been challenging at times but overall I liked the experience.  I do not consider myself technologically advanced but I do enjoy exploring new areas of communicating while using technology.  Edublog was difficult for me to get the hang of at first but once I became familiar with all of the accessories I felt comfortable.  However, I would have liked to modify my theme from time to time and make some changes to my dashboard.  The one challenge that I encounter most often with Edublog was when I would write my blogs and post them there would always be some errors with paragraph spacing and/or font styles.  I would draft my post in Microsoft Word and then copy my text and paste it into edublogs writing program.  Typically when I would post by blog there would be errors with paragraph spacing and font style.  Overall, I think it was a good experience but I would not recommend edublogs for students in the future. 

This class gave me the opportunity to explore war in the context of different literary styles and express my thoughts using Edublogs and RSS technology.  As I will probably never use edublogs in the future, I expect to continue using Google Reader.  Google Reader is a very useful tool for finding articles on the web.  I use Google Reader to access all of my world wide news sources and now I have linked to some sports sources that I enjoy reading.  I have made recommendations to others and they have thanked me for introducing them to Google Reader and RSS technology.  It is a very useful tool and I plan on continuing to expand on my RSS feeds in my Google Reader account. 

  Here are the links to my comments made on fellow classmates posts.

http://tumac.edublogs.org/2008/03/12/a-picture-is-worth-1000-words/

http://ullreyg.edublogs.org/2008/02/03/on-death-and-dying/

http://wancourp.uniblogs.org/2008/02/05/rhetoric-to-reality/

http://tranln.edublogs.org/2008/02/05/the-only-thing-that-is-different-in-war-is-that-different-people-die-the-theme-still-remains/

http://kerijaynes.uniblogs.org/2008/03/19/the-american-public-indifference-concerning-todays-soldiers/

http://alpersa.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/strategies-of-war-has-it-changed/

http://thirdsquad.uniblogs.org/2008/04/11/stories/

http://thirdsquad.uniblogs.org/2008/02/23/carry-on/#comment-9

http://kerijaynes.uniblogs.org/2008/03/26/describing-realities-through-literature/

http://derekvp.uniblogs.org/2008/04/06/unfinished-business/

Imagine fighting a war that you didn’t believe in.  Imagine being misled by your President about fighting for something that didn’t even exist.  Iraq was a country that supposedly held nuclear weapons.  They still haven’t found nuclear weapons and yet the U.S. is still fighting a war.  What about the Vietnam War?  Why did the U.S. have to intervene in Vietnam?  Did the U.S. overreact to the threat of communist expansion?  How many soldiers believed that fighting for communist expansion was necessary?  Does the U.S. mislead its citizens and soldiers to only increase its global hegemony?  I ask these questions because I feel it is necessary to explore the events and reasoning that lead up to war.    

After reading some different war related literary pieces such as The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and Fallen Angles by Walter Dean Myers I envision how hard it would be to fight a war that you didn’t believe in.  O’Brien told stories about dealing with the impact of guilt and realities of war.  He also talked about his personal beliefs of fighting in the Vietnam War.  O’Brien tells his audience that he didn’t believe in the war.  He writes,

“I was drafted to fight in a war I hated.  Young, yes, and politically naïve, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong.  Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons.  I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law.  The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war?  A war of national liberation or simple aggression?  Who started it, and when, and why?” 

O’Brien doesn’t believe in the war and doesn’t know what lead up to it.  He struggles on deciding whether or not to flee to Canada.  O’Brien conscience tells him to run and although he does, he comes back and is eventually a soldier in Vietnam.  But why did he decide to go?  Was it just because he felt embarrassed about not going and then pressured for the sake of his reputation?  The reasons are unclear, but O’Brien goes and fights in Vietnam even though he doesn’t believe in it and know why he his there.

As I searched for something interesting in my Google reader account I was fulfilled when I located an interesting article, website, and video that examines the what lead up to the Iraq War.  The article, “Unique Film and Website Expose Bush’s Rush to War in Iraq as Conflict Enters 6th Year” was very interesting as it lead me to the website http://www.leadingtowar.com/.  After exploring the website I located a video that chronologically looks at the path to the War in Iraq.

 “LEADING TO WAR, praised by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “a staggering film,” highlights how Bush officials presented claims of imminent danger to rush the United States to war. This calculated strategy included warnings of nuclear peril and terrorists with biological weapons. Without narration or commentary, the film documents the rhetoric that roused the American people to support a military invasion, despite worldwide opposition. The film includes footage from press conferences, interviews and speeches.” 

The video significantly changed my perceptions on how the U.S. got involved in the Iraq War and how the Bush Administration pushed the American public to believe that Iraq housed nuclear weapons.  This makes me wonder why are we fighting this war in Iraq and how do the U.S. soldiers view the war.  There are many soldiers that say that they are doing good things over in Iraq and Afghanistan. But are there strategies that the U.S. government is using to persuade soldiers and citizens?  I think that after taking a look at the website and video you will have a different perception about what led the U.S. to the Iraq War.  

Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried

Leading To War 2008

http://www.leadingtowar.com 

I can’t imagine killing somebody.  The blood.  The smell.  The guilt.  What would be worse? The reality of killing someone or the guilt ridden feeling that may stay with you forever? Maybe I wouldn’t feel guilty about killing someone. Maybe I would feel guilty about something else.  I might feel guilty of simply surviving enemy fire when one of my comrades didn’t.  Maybe I would feel guilty for the death of comrade. Guilt would be something that would stick me forever, just like it appears to have with the soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried.

Whether it is story truth or happening truth, Tim O’Brien in the chapter “The Man I Killed,” writes about how he killed a man.  O’Brien stares at the man he killed.  He describes the body to his readers and all the physical characteristics of the gun shot.  O’Brien looks to his fellow comrade Kiowa for support.

            “Think it over,” Kiowa said.  Then later he said, “Tim, it’s a war.  The guy wasn’t Heidi-he had a weapon, right?  It’s a tough thing, for sure, but you got to cut out that staring.”  Then he said, “Maybe you better lie down a minute.”  Then after a long empty time he said, “Take it slow.  Just go wherever the spirit takes you.”

O’Brien feels extremely guilty for killing the man. It sticks with him for the remainder of the war and for the remainder of his life.  I can’t imagine killing someone.  I think that it would be so hard to do but more so, harder to cope with after the fact.  It would be hard to escape guilt.  Guilt reappears throughout O’Brien’s book.  Kiowa later dies and soldiers like Norman Bowker feel like it was his fault.  O’Brien introduces survivor’s guilt when Kiowa dies.  O’Brien writes, “The truth,” Bowker would’ve sad, “is I let the guy go.”  When a fellow soldier is killed in action the soldiers in the squad sometimes feel that simply being alive is enough justification for guilt.  It was a challenge that many soldiers had to face in the Vietnam War where so many U.S. troops lost their lives.

Throughout his book O’Brien writes about guilt.  Guilt appears again when he his separated from his comrades and when Jimmy Cross feels guilty over the death of Kiowa.  Cross feels that it is his fault and writes a litter to Kiowa’s father.  Cross feels responsible for Kiowa’s death and says “my own fault” as he and his squad search for Kiowa’s body.  I can’t imagine dealing with the loss of a fellow comrade, especially if you speculated on how you could have prevented it.   

In Born on the Fourth of July, Ron Kovich has to deal with guilt after killing innocent woman andchildren, which haunts him even after he travels back to the states.   He also shot and killed a fellow soldier after a chaotic and confusing altercation with some Vietnamese soldiers.  He struggles to make it back home.  Struggling with guilt has appeared in several of the war stories that we have covered in class and seems to be most challenging when there is death.  Guilt seems to be an inescapable element of war, which impacts so many soldiers.  

The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien

Film: Born on The Fourth of July

We have discussed the psychological effects of war on people not directly involved like families and friends, but what about the soldiers?  How do the soldiers deal with the psychological effects?  Could we all agree that the psychological effects of war on a soldier would be more difficult to handle then someone who is not directly involved?  In Coping with Cliques, an unidentified soldier discusses his observations of how soldiers develop a way of “coping with the distance.”

The unidentified soldier speaks about several categories of soldiers.  There are the “PT Studs” who are the muscle bound marines that spend their time coping with the distance by working out.  The soldier states that the PT Studs have the time to “[s]hape their bodies into an Arnold-like state of physical perfection.” The soldier also identifies a clique of soldiers who are the Halo/Call of Duty/Unreal Tournament Super Virtual Soldiers who “spend their deployed time training their brains into becoming one with their warrior avatar.”  The soldier states that he is part of the “nerdy” crowd who spend time reading and surfing the web communicating with people all across the world.  The central theme of the post seems to be that becoming part of a group is a coping mechanism for soldiers. 

The unidentified soldier writes that the soldiers that are unable to find a method for spending their free time are usually the ones who have the problems.  These problems may affect their day-to-day lives and have serious psychological impacts in the future.  Soldiers who find their way of coping with the impacts of war may have a better chance of dealing with the psychological effects.  In The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien, soldiers such as Kiowa and Ted Lavender look to different ways of coping with the impacts of war.  Kiowa spends his time reading the bible and mentoring his platoon members.  Ted Lavender on the other hand, uses drugs and tranquilizers as a means of handling the challenges of the Vietnam War.

Although you could argue that the two wars have many differences, a soldier is a soldier and there are always going to be challenges.  In Coping Cliques, the unidentified soldier mentions that no matter what the group members are always happy and giving high fives almost every morning.  Soldiers have far different challenges than their family members and friends.  Finding a way of coping with those challenges sounds like the only way to get through tough times and it appears that there are soldiers that find happiness in an unpleasant environment.  The soldier states that taking things one day at a time actually works.  Taking things one day at a time sounds easier than it probably is.  I mean think about how hard it would be to not think about tomorrow, your family, or you friends.  A soldier’s lifestyle must be so mentally challenging.  The soldiers who are able to find happiness and wake up each morning with a positive attitude must have some special talent for coping with the distance. 

The Sandbox

The Doc in The Box

4/8/08