Riverbend Blog

The Riverbend blog really opened my eyes to how different things were from the way I expected in Iraq during the war. When we had a former marine guest speaker, I also realized that in many ways reality was different from my expectations. What really struck me about the blog was the feeling of community between Iraqi civilians, even though there were so many differences among them about what should be done politically. All of the chaos and hardship brought the civilians together, and it actually made it seem like the civilians were able to cope with everything better even than American soldiers were. I think this is because they had that internal support for each other, which, from the literature we've gone through in the course, didn't really seem like the case for soldiers. Soldiers are taken out of the social environment they grew up in or were familiar with, and are put into a more rigid hierarchy in which they are expected to meet certain ideals of masculinity and even hide a lot of their humanity. On top of the exceptionally awful things they have to witness, soldiers may also be less able to handle emotional and physical distress because they are expected not to show it or talk about it. This problem would continue when American soldiers return to civilian life, being further isolated from others by their experience of war. On another note, the girl from the blog also had an entertaining habit of calling American media out on inconsistencies and things that they were flat out wrong on. I'm not sure how old she was, but she had a really good grasp of many political and social situations, and was very informative on many subjects other than the war. She especially seemed to know a lot about America. I'd love to go through the rest of her blog, and I plan to show it to others to read as well.

Riverbend

I thought it was interesting how she included information about Iraqi culture along with war. In several of the other novels and war pieces that we read throughout the year people had a lack of understanding about other’s cultures or did not focus on the culture at all. She includes snippets of both the war and Iraq in general, which gives people a fuller understanding on the war. Looking at the war from this perspective was new and rewarding. I also like the last post title “Ten Years On” because of the look on the war so many years later. She discussed what Iraqis had learned ten years after Baghdad’s fall. This blog has such a unique perspective because it starts while she is in Iraq with her family and ends in reflection ten years later. What surprises me about this blog is that she wrote the blog over the course of ten years and remained anonymous the entire time. It makes readers wonder why she chose to stay anonymous over all that time. Was it because she was more comfortable with that or that if her name were to get out there would be a backlash where she lives? A lot of blog posts contain parts that speak out against the things that the Iraqi government were doing and the things that were happening in order to go with the U.S. Even after her entries were collected for a published book, she never revealed her identity. It’s interesting to think about because it gives you more insight into what kind of environment and mindset she lives in. 

Baghdad Burning

This blog, called Baghdad Burning, was written in the early 2000s by an anonymous Iraqi woman under the pseudonym "Riverbend" and details her experiences living in the center of the conflict in Baghdad. It is particularly informative, well written, and extensive. Perhaps most importantly, however, is the fact that the blog could easily have been written by any average American citizen. The language and tone are very casual and yet poignant, showcasing a sameness rarely advertised between America and the Middle East. Perhaps the best post to highlight this is her “The Promise and the Threat” post from Thursday, August 28, 2003. This post deals with the myth and the reality of life in Iraq. Riverbend notes that Iraq is often portrayed as a primitive society where citizens “lived in little beige tents set up on the sides of little dirt roads” and “the men and boys would ride to school on their camels, donkeys and goats.” The customs are portrayed as outdated and simple. This is far from the reality, she states, as many Iraqis owned technology such as computers and VCRs and that Iraq is home to “sophisticated bridges, recreational centers, clubs, restaurants, shops, universities, schools” and “fast cars.” Riverbend herself was a computer programmer before the occupation of Iraq by the United States. She goes on to tell the story of how Iraqi engineers were forced to rebuild their country after the Gulf War and were forced to learn how to rebuild things initially built by foreign companies. They were also forced to deal with a shortage of materials usually imported from abroad as well as dodge a blockade intended to destroy all remaining infrastructure after the war. The reconstruction of the country was a vast undertaking that should not be overlooked, as the Iraqi engineers accomplished it all and what’s more, they also were able to add artistic touches to their work.

Riverbend's Blog

Out of the several blogs that I read, I thought they were very interesting. It was such an easy and interesting read. It was nice to read her perspective on life on Iraq. Riverbend gave her true perspective on how The Iraq war has impacted her life and the lives of whom she knew and also the impact of the country itself. In the blog "The Promise and the Threat" I liked how she points out a myth that many people have about life in Iraq and gives her viewpoint on the truth. I have to be completely honest I was one of those people who believed in the myth that people in Iraq lived uncivilized during the Iraq war. During the beginnings of the Iraq war I was quite young so I really didn't keep up with politics and war stuff, so I was very ill informed. I never really knew what the war was about and why we were there in the first place. Riverbend points out that the myth about Iraqis are outrageous and that they live normally as we do in America. But she does say that because of the war there has to be a lot of rebuilding and reconstructing of all the damage. I feel like I never really sit back and take a moment to realize how hard it must be for Iraqis to have American invading their home and personal space and making a mess of their country.
I thought it was cool that Riverbend kept her identity anonymous. I really like just reading her perspective of things as time passed on in the Iraq war. Many things changed and how and what she wrote also changed. Knowing that Riverbend is a female Muslim was also cool to know. I like the blog "We've Only Just Begun..." Because it talks about how woman were affected by this war. I think her blogs do a really good job of giving a plain and simple but powerful viewpoint of the impact of the Iraq war.

Riverbend

I enjoyed reading the Baghdad Burning blog posts. It is rare to read the experiences of a person on the other side of the war. In one of the posts, that author mentions that the invasion into Iraq was uncalled for since Iraq had no involvement with Al-Qaeda. She also stated that they pitied Americans for the lives lost in the Twin Tower attacks, and were also enraged at the fact that Muslim fundamentalists had orchestrated the attack.  The author concludes her post by asking: “How does the death of 3,000 Americans and the fall of two towers justify the horrors in Iraq when not one of the people involved with the attack was Iraqi?” This question is the million dollar question that no one seems to be able to answer. We never received a concrete answer for our continued involvement oversees. I never agreed with the U.S. entering the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars, and reading this post makes it clear that the other side is as amazed and confused at the actions of the United States. Upon reading her other blog posts, I began to imagine how my life would be different if I was in her shoes. I can’t imagine having to constantly be watchful of suspicious activity every time I went outside. Also, having to deal with the changes in the streets must be difficult. The streets were so damaged that they were no longer identified by name, instead the areas were identified by craters where the missiles exploded or by where certain people were killed. Another point the author made, was the difficulty acquiring certain items such as gas or electricity after the war began. This blog really points out the changes in the author’s life when the war started in her home country. I’m surprised I had not heard of this blog prior to hearing about it in class.

Riverbend

The Riverbend blog was very interesting to me because it gave a perspective that I have never heard before. Being in elementary school during the beginning of the Iraq War, I never was too involved in the news of everything that was going on, nor did I pay attention to all of the politics of the situation. Partly due to a lack of interest in politics, I have never before really looked into the beginning of the Iraq War. It’s interesting to me to read so much about it now from an Iraqi perspective and have her be so much better informed than I, not only about Iraq, but about the politics and such in the United States as well. One part of the blog that stood out to me is from the post titled “My New Talent” from August, 2003.  Riverbend is talking to her brother about their 13 year old neighbor smoking and says, “He’s only 13.” He brother responds, “Is anyone only 13 anymore?” and Riverbend concludes that nobody is young anymore. It occurred to me how fortunate I was growing up to have the option to be ill-informed about the war. Although news about the war was constantly onTV and in the papers, I was able to continue my young meanderings and ignore the news and watch PBS Kids or play with my toys instead. It’s obvious that children in Baghdad did not have this same luxury. Riverbend says, “The silence was shattered a few moments later by the sound of bullets in the distance,” and shortly later says that she can tell if the gunfire is, as she puts it, “‘them’ or ‘us’”. The war is so intrusive to Riverbend’s daily life that she now can distinguish between shots from different guns just based on sound and says that it’s a skill that many people, young and old, have also acquired. The presence of the war is impossible to ignore or escape.

Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty shows a completely different style of combat than all the other stories we have read. There is less brutal force and more strategy and intelligence used.  Zero Dark Thirty is about the war on terrorism and the search for Osama Bin Laden. Specifically, the CIA did this search. The most common attack method by this terrorist is random bombings. Each new plan to bomb a specific thing/person comes from Osama Bin Laden, making him the main target. Unlike previous wars, the technology has completely changed and grown. Without this new technology the terrorist would not be able to preform most of their treacherous acts. Osama Bin Laden was clever, cunning, and power. HE used many different sly tactics to control the operations as well as hide from the CIA. Thanks to new technology, in the end the U.S. was able to discover his whereabouts. Unfortunately, the CIA used methods to reach Osama, which were not morally the best. They tortured people and mistakenly shoot the wrong people at times. How far is too far in using torture methods? Would the CIA not have reached their goals without them? I don’t know.

Zero Dark Thirty

Compared to the other books and movie that we have discussed in class thus far, Zero Dark Thirty shows how war has changed in the age of terrorism. The previous wars that we have touched based on took place at a time where warfare technology and equipment was not as advanced as in the Iraq war. Zero Dark Thirty is about a CIA agent trying to find terrorist bin Laden. The movie portrays new and different tactics to find terrorists or enemies that could be helping to plot other attacks like 9/11. It took me by surprise in the beginning with the torture scenes. The brutal interrogation tactics in Zero Dark Thirty was a game changer to extract new information from different suspects that could possibly give news to where bin Laden could be. I think that interrogations were a major component in this age of terrorism. I feel like in past wars, like the Vietnam War, interrogations were not used. If someone assumed you were the enemy you were kind of killed on spot and not questioned. I think that torturing people during interrogation as seen in the movie should never be done to any human being, but I can understand the other side of the argument. The authorities like the CIA need to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the safety of the U.S. and its citizens. Suicide bombing has also become popular during this war. I just can’t wrap my mind around this concept. It baffles me to think of why would someone inflict this upon themselves and others. I think as time goes on both side of any war are always advancing in new ways to change up the warfare game. 

Zero Dark Thirty

 I'm almost boring myself with how many times I say that the United States is fighting its first, full-scale war against a non-uniformed combatant, but the significance of that remark is under stated. The Global War on Terrorism employed a completely new style of warfare called counterinsurgency, which the Field Manual for was not written until 2006. General David Petraeus  actually helped write it (for me, the fact that a living general actually helped write a war doctrine which was then used to govern the majority of the war is fascinating- usually they're all dead and they torture me with facts about their life by showing up in my military science tests). It's very fitting that after having written the FM for COIN, Gen. Petraeus was appointed director of the CIA. After all, the COIN FM was used by that branch also given their expertise in small, concentrated operations and specialties (like the collection of information through means of coercion). With respect to the war on terrorism, I heard it best said that "where the broad sword fails, the dagger may succeed."
When our enemies hide behind women, children, and the elderly, when their camouflage is the attire of a delivery boy, a building employee, a shop keeper...knowing who to shoot and who not to is 90% of the war.

Zero Dark Thirty

In Kathryn Bieglow’s Zero Dark Thirty, war is portrayed in a much different fashion than the other stories that we have covered. The other stories we have looked at focused mainly on the actual combat. Zero Dark Thirty, however, is set behind the scenes. Instead of the battlefield, the film is set mainly in offices. It follows Maya, a young CIA operative, throughout her decade long manhunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. The film focuses on peeling back the layers of mystery surrounding Bin Laden until he is finally located and killed. It shows the technical aspect of war – the planning, the guesswork, and the sleuthing needed to take down the most important figures. Every move that the characters make is calculated and planned to extract information, conceal their movements, and inch that much closer to finding Bin Laden. The decade of hunting is punctuated by Al Qaeda-orchestrated terrorist attacks, including some that kill a few of Maya’s friends. This sets the tone of desperation surrounding the mission. The longer Bin Laden goes unfound, the more terrorist attacks he is able to orchestrate. The conflict here is not between two armies, but between the CIA, Bin Laden, and the clock. Bin Laden is shown to have taken very serious and ingenious methods towards concealing his location. This only makes unraveling the mystery that much harder for the CIA. War is portrayed not as brazen conflict, but rather a complex, tense operation of investigation. Part of this investigation includes interrogation, including torturing detainees for information regarding Bin Laden. These methods are banned midway through the search, which forces the CIA to utilize different methods for hunting down Bin Laden, further complicating the mission. War is portrayed almost like a complicated surgery, with Bin Laden as the hidden tumor that is causing all the problems. 

War on Terror

War has changed since America entered the age of war on terror. War is no longer fought with large armies penned against one another, but instead militaries combat terrorism with drone aircrafts that can be controlled on safe ground. In “Zero Dark Thirty,” viewers see that information on terrorist groups, like Al Qaeda, is gathered by torturing suspected accomplices in hopes that they will to give up pertinent information. Torture is a huge part of the modern war on terror. Waterboarding has always been a tactic used to torture prisoners of war; however, now we militia has expanded their tactics to blasting music, personal threats, intense bodily harm, and psychological warfare as forms of torture.

Some terrorist attacks today are carried out with suicide bombings targeted to harm innocent civilians as well as soldiers. America responds to these attacks sometimes with drones controlled on the ground, taking away the man-to-man contact traditionally associated with war. While this tactic may seem likely to lead to less useless deaths, many more innocent civilians can also be harmed during these attacks. Terrorist attacks are much more personal and emotional on a nation than the previous wars off the home territory and over more economic or abstract ideas.  However, the response of torture is the least humane. The torture tactics take on the idea that whatever means are necessary to extract the information is acceptable. Many people in America that are for torture take on the view that killing one to save many is acceptable. These tactics can be incredibly damaging to individuals who may in fact not hold any useful information related to the terrorist attack. Laws and regulations on these torture form loosened greatly after the 9/11 attack as America in particular took on the more pro-torture attitude. Although torture tactics and targeted attacks on suspicious areas can result in useless deaths, it can sometimes be successful as seen in the film. However, this kind of hit or miss brutality is simply a different destructive nature than the destruction seen in previous wars. Instead of focusing on sending men out against one another to the death, governments and military torture and target certain suspicious people and areas. While both have their faults, it is hard to ever say which is the most effective or “better” route. 

Zero Dark Thirty

The way that war was portrayed in Zero Dark Thirty was completely different than in Apocalypse Now and any of the other works that we have studied. They did not portray the enemy as lesser than them, quite contrary to that actually, they were extremely intelligent and developed. They had to use many forces to get to Bin Laden and he had covered every possible way of being caught that he could. Also, the way that the war itself was portrayed was completely different. They showed it to be a lot more purposeful and not just going in and invading without a direct target. War itself has changed not only because of technology but since we are not at war with a definite country, instead a particular group of people, it is crucial to be make informed decisions when making attacks to not give a reason to start a larger war. Another major difference is the amount of information that is needed to defeat the enemy has a completely different base than in past wars; it is not enough to just know the land and have good attack techniques but they need to be able to track people's every move for extended periods of times. They have to be able to see what they purchase and consume, who they talk to, where they go and how, the layout of where they live and basically anything else that can be any indication on how and who to attack. Also, the fact that a woman was the one who was basically calling the shots is completely different than anything else that we have studied. War has always basically been an unspoken boys club but now this portrays an America that is finally allowing gender boundaries to be erased because the woman doesn't just loose her mind at the first encounter with war like the prior woman brought up in stories.

Zero Dark Thirty

In many ways, war today isn't too different from what people usually imagine when they think of the Cold War-- espionage, intelligence operatives, interrogating prisoners, CIA agents working in the field to find military targets. War in the world of terrorism has become a completely different animal from traditional warfare. It isn't about standing armies going toe to toe with each other on a battlefield anymore. In Zero Dark Thirty, the entire first two hours of the movie goes without seeing any soldiers fighting. All of that time, around a decade, is spent trying to find one person. Since the movie spans such a long time, the viewers get to see how intelligence gathering changes as the political world changes. Within the first fifteen minutes of the film is a striking torture scene. What we see the most throughout the film is CIA agents struggling to get a hold of Osama Bin Laden--or even just people working for him. This isn't a war of military mights clashing against each other like it was in the past. It is a war of intelligence, on foreign land, and in densely populated areas. One interesting thing about the change in information gathering methods depicted in the film is that, since it is shown mostly following one CIA agent, the viewer is given a real sense of the frustration involved with having their methods being restricted, even if those methods were terrible and unethical. In the end, they are forced to go on what equates to a hunch of Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts and send a covert team, "canaries," to see whether he was really there or not. What's striking about this mission (in comparison to what we've seen of war previously in the course) is how precise and thorough the team is. They have stealth helicopters, silenced rifles, night-vision goggles, the works. It really shows just how much the U.S. has put into being efficient with warfare, for better or worse.

War on Terrorism

I was expecting Zero Dark Thirty to have a lot more torture scenes, but I’m glad it did not have as many. War has changed in the age of terrorism in the way we deal with terrorists and other captured individuals. In Zero Dark Thirty we see a bit of individuals being detained in different CIA locations where they are being interrogated for information. Although in the film not all the individuals are tortured, the individual that was tortured received one of the techniques known as water-boarding, which makes it seem as if the individual was drowning. In this war, we have heard a lot more about intense interrogations in which officials turn to torture. In the United Nations convention of 1984, the UN committees declared that torture/severe pain or suffering intentionally inflicted upon a person by a public official to gain information or to intimidate was to be banned and prevented. The UN also declared that it is prohibited to extradite an individual to a state where they believe they will be torture. Although the UN declared these laws in 1984, the U.S. currently is breaking article 3 in which it is prohibited to extradite individuals to a place knowing that they will probably tortured there. The U.S. government has several “prisons” for terrorists, but the most controversial one is Guantanamo Bay. Currently the U.S. still has Guantanamo Bay, a detention camp for detainees from the war on terrorism, is still open. The UN issued a report on Guantanamo Bay stating that the conditions of the prisoners went against the human rights act on torture established in 1984. The UN committee interviewed previous detainees, saw pictures, and their injuries from the torture tactics experienced while at Guantanamo Bay when creating their report. Torture and interrogation is a difficult subject. Personally, I do not agree with the tactics used for torture because no human should have to endure those awful conditions; however, others may argue that torture is needed to get useful information that will help us “win” the war on terrorism.

War on Terrorism

Modern acts of terrorism have changed warfare in a plenitude of ways. Terrorism, as the name implies, are aggressive acts carried out by terrorist groups to instill fear and terror into its enemies. Terrorism is a form of unconventional warfare, thus using conventional methods of warfare (such as sending out a massive army to find and fight terrorists) to counteract it may be ineffective. When we talk about modern day terrorism, Al-Qaeda and its suicide bombings inevitably comes to our minds. Unfortunately, terrorism affects innocent civilians more so than soldiers. After watching Zero Dark Thirty, I was quite astonished about the ingenious methods that the Al-Qaeda employs to make its operations covert. It’s very surprising that in this day and age, its high ranking leaders uses couriers rather than any forms of technological communication to communicate with one another. This complicates the CIA’s job because their methods of communication leaves little to no traces of online activity to be tracked, and was frankly one of the many reasons why it took many years to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. For this reason, the CIA must use other tactics to bring down terrorist groups, such as the use of torture / interrogation, moles, or bribes to infiltrate the terrorist organization. For example, early in the movie we see the CIA’s extensive use of torture and interrogation to make the detainees disclose information. Although it is unfortunate to see torture in any way, shape, or form, it’s one of the only ways to coerce the enemy to spill their knowledge. But sometimes torture is fruitless, as we have seen in the movie when the detainees are extremely devoted to their cause and refuse to give out data or instead fabricate information. Finally, terrorism has made many countries, such as America, lean towards the defensive side of war. This is why America has been ever more so relying on drones rather than soldiers to directly take out terrorist organizations. 

Yusef and Turner

One difference that I noticed between Turner and Yusef's writings is that Yusef is very reflective and in the past while Turner writes about the present moment. In "Facing it" Yusef talks about what the current situation reminds him of his experiences in Vietnam, and in "Camouflaging the Chimera" he talks about what they had to do at war. On the other hand, Turner writes in the moment, as if it we were sitting behind a glass window watching the scene as he narrates. He also gives the perspective of many different people  in his stories so that we get to see the actual scene and not only what either the soldiers or the civilians see. He also includes a lot of cultural aspects to really represent the native people. This is different from most o f the other works that we have read or watched because they usually only give the perspective of the soldiers and make the natives seam completely alien to themselves. He does a really good job avoiding having a single story. A similarity that I noticed in Turner's writings to a lot of the other works is how he uses vulgarity and crudeness at times when talking about the war which just further illustrates how truly relevant it is to war. One last difference that I noticed between Turner and Yusef's writing is that Tuner is a lot more descriptive. Yusef really describes the general situation of what was happening in the scene or in his memories while Turner really goes into detail with all of his stories. Turner really sets the scene for you and gives you a lot of description of situation; he describes in "R&R" a thought or memory to be hidden in the "deep in the landscape of the brain"  which gives you extreme detail and you can almost feel what his words describe. This is very different from Yusef that is quite vague in his descriptions. 

Turner and Komunyakaa

Both Turner and Komunyakaa use very metaphorical imagery in their poems. For me, this made the poems more deep and complex. For example, in “2000 lbs.” when Turner is describing the suicide bomber, he writes, “he is everywhere, he is of all things,/ his touch is the air taken in, the blast/ and wave, the electricity of shock,/ his is the sound the heart makes quick/ in the panic’s rush...” To me, this speaks to how the bombing has not only an immense physical impact, but also causes psychological or emotional destruction as Turner speaks of the feelings of shock and panic and a fast heartbeat. Similarly, in “Camouflaging the Chimera” Komunyakaa uses heavy, emotionally loaded imagery. He writes, “We weren’t there. The river ran/ through our bones. Small animals took refuge/ against our bodies; we held our breath,/ ready to spring the L-shaped/ ambush, as a world revolved/ under each man’s eyelid”. These lines relay the confusion or uncertainty that can be caused by the darkness of night. To me it seems that the pressure or anxiety is so great that each man is almost beside himself before the ambush in silence with tons of stuff going through their minds. Komunyakaa also describes the utter stillness in a very interesting way. By saying they weren’t there, that the river ran through them, and that they held their breath, I gather that they move so little that even nature does not notice them and their bodies don’t even move up and down from breathing. Both poets speak of things in a way that gives what could just be a simple statement much more meaning.

"First Engagement" & "The Range"

“First Engagement” underscores the demoralizing and abhorrent consequences of fighting a guerrilla war. In World War II, the War of Independence, and most historic military engagements, the combatants have been members of a standing army or militia, uniformed, identifiable, somewhat trained. As was the case in the Persian Gulf Wars, however the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been fought in the streets of major cities, in government quarters, and in the homes of ordinary citizens. To the end of the poem, Martin describes the scene following the gunfire. Our narrator loses his footing and falls, which would be embarrassing especially for a soldier since he’s holding a firearm and his comrades are probably staring at him saying “Really?” But a soldier’s embarrassment goes much farther, much deeper, and evolves into pure shame when a citizen falls out of the truck bleeding to death, his son shot in the arm, the only vehicle is family probably has is destroyed, and all because he was dragging rebar behind his van to fix his home. 

There is no justification, no consolation for the soldiers responsible. And it’s not their fault. They’re trained to eliminate targets before they are themselves eliminated. Although they don’t have to suffer trench foot, or halt a Semitic genocide, they have to live with the fact that they don’t know who they’re fighting. Conventional rules of engagement are gone, the Geneva Convention is suspended, your allies are as confused as you are, your superiors have no clear definition of victory, and your countrymen don’t support you. I can’t quite decide which is worse. Personally, I would rather have fought WWII.

“The Range” is interesting because we see the author’s disassociation with what he’s doing. The cut and dry tone of the poem gives an impression that our soldier is turning into a machine more or less, especially toward the end where he says “I never speak, but only fire, study the range for the next one- hold my breath, tap the trigger, take them down, one by one like it was all the world needed done.” That very last sentence left me with the obvious question, what else does our author think the world need’s to be done? Perhaps it was the question he thought he should have asked himself while at training, maybe it’s the question we’re supposed to ask. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it or just missing the mark completely. 

Hugh Martin

Stick Soldiers greatly differentiates the people in the home country with the soldiers. Children at home do not understand the severity of war and death but simply hold it as a side note in their lives since that is what everyone talks about. However, it is coupled with Christmas toys and feasts that take away from the significance behind those colored stick soldiers. This relates to The Things They Carried as death and responsibility become more divided. Stick soldiers hold guns and RPGs but they are just stick soldiers that are not associated with the death those machines will ultimately cause. The children and people at home are even more unassociated, which shows how isolated soldiers are while at war. This isolation can change a man and his mentality as seen in The Things They Carried and Slaughterhouse-Five. These depictions of American soldiers throwing grenades at Iraqis and the Iraqi soldiers shooting at American Humvees display the “us-versus-them” mentality that Sanders in The Things They Carried developed. With the Iraqi children, however, it is more clearly seen as the American soldiers’ deaths are, “what the children want for Christmas, or what they just want.”

             In “Full Moon, M2 Machine Gun” it goes into the last night before the men in the Carolinas leave for war. The soldiers and their families are trying to have hope that things will get better; however, the soon-to-be soldiers already know that it is unlikely. They can only think about Saddam’s sons and their “misshapen faces / on the TV screens” as they wait in line for their immunizations. This poem differs from many of the novels that we have studied because it goes into the detail about the mindset and fears of soldiers before they depart for war. They know that nothing good lies ahead, yet they still try to hold onto some hope. The boys do not know what awaits them except for the images that flashed across the TV screen. The broken up lines and stanzas display the soldiers broken up thoughts and unsureness, something a soldier in combat doesn’t have the opportunity for if he wants to live. The soldiers also know that they cannot escape their fate as everything around them stands “defiant” and unmoving. They know that their fates are sealed but still have not undergone the full mentality change seen in so many of the other novels that we have read.

Hugh Martin

     In the first section of Stick Soldiers, Hugh Martin's first poem "Spring in Jalula" is used to set the tone of his future stories of life in Iraq. Instead of saying life was hopeless there, he provides different examples of hopelessness through his descriptions of what he saw. In this poem and others, the title gives of the opposite idea of what the poem is actually about. Naturally, when one thinks of Spring, thoughts of growth, freshness, and joy come to mind. However, the poem is about the opposite in Iraq; the environment is basically described as a extremely polluted, miserable desert, and there is also the depressing mention of a child that desperately needs food and bombs being found everywhere. In a season that is supposed to be re-birth and growth, there is only destruction on top of destruction.
     I found "Four-Letter Word" to be a unique poem because it gave a new insight on what a soldier feels when people constantly ask about a war he/she is about to go to. It shows the anxiety build-up involving the push from normal life to war life and gives the soldier's perspective of hearing a well-meaning voice of a loved one remind them of the danger zone they are about to enter. He creates a relatable feeling because most people who are anxious or sensitive about a topic will not want to here that particular word, and it is only more stressful to repeatedly here the word.    
     One major difference about Hugh Martin and the other authors is that he is writing from more recent memories; he writes about a war that is still breathing. The other authors had experiences with a war decades in the past. Martin experiencing a recent war has a different effect on the audience. Because the Iraqi war has happened in our lifetime, we have our own awareness of the war. Also, his descriptions tend to be more vivid and understandable because time has not altered the events.

Hugh Martin's Stick Soldiers

In his book Stick Soldiers, poet and war veteran Hugh Martin brings a solemn vividness to war in Iraq. One of the poems that particularly stood out to me was the titular “Stick Soldiers.” At Christmas, the soldiers are given cards drawn by American schoolchildren. The cards are cheerful, colored in crayon, and depict common Christmas iconography. Martin mentions one, however, that is decidedly less jubilant: a crude crayon drawing of an American soldier hurling a bomb at three “Irakis.” This image particularly affects me because this war occurred when I was around the ages of the schoolchildren Martin is writing about. I remember hearing about the war as a child, not understanding anything except for pointed hostility towards “Irakis.” Of course, I emulated this hostility that surrounded me with absolutely no grasp on what it all really meant. I obliviously spouted hateful comments about America’s supposed foes, and at one point in time I distinctly remember wondering why President Bush didn’t just nuke the country into oblivion. Looking back on that time today, I am horrified that a child could be taught to blindly hate like that, just from growing up in a wartime society. What terrifies me even more is that I know I was not the only child to pick up on this mindless animosity, and I also know that not all of those children eventually grew out of it. Martin shows that this wartime molding of children is not a purely American phenomenon, as he talks about finding chalk pictures drawn by Iraqi children of an American soldier with an RPG aimed at his head. This, Martin says, is what the Iraqi children wanted for Christmas.

Another poem that stood out to me was the “First Engagement” poem. In this poem, some American soldiers shoot down a strange looking vehicle only to find that its occupants were not actually threats. Martin showcases the fear that the soldiers felt in the hostile environment: “All you know: an hour ago, three mortars fell from the sky for you, this vehicle with sparks is for you.” Fear can make a man do strange and terrible things, particularly in war, and this poem beautifully illustrates one such occasion. 

Hugh Martin's Stick Soldiers and the Four-Letter Word

War has obviously changed over the years. War has changed along with society and technology and politics. Hugh Martin's writing is different from that of the writers we've previously read from because his experience is much different from theirs. In Martin's time in the army, there is now rigorous basic training designed from the ground up to prepare people for war; dying is part of the training. The internet and compact computer technology let anyone google the many ways that soldiers have died in the middle east--it lets soldiers watch porn, even. All of this information is available to anyone, and yet there is still a disconnect between soldiers and civilians back home. Society has become convinced that there simply is no understanding war without being in it. Without the draft, there is no motivation to be interested and knowledgeable about the war. So politicians let it go on, and sometimes even the soldiers don't know what they're fighting for other than "The Global War on Terrorism."  Another thing that has changed is the type of war that is being fought. War has gone from standing in place shooting at each other, to trench warfare, to jungles and mines, and now-- urban sprawl, enemies that blend in with civilians, and suicide bombers. And this unclear knowledge of the enemy, this idea that soldiers and civilians are having a similar traumatic experience is what shows through in Martin's writing. Soldiers may still be unable to relate to the people back home (or rather, the people back home still won't try to understand what soldiers experience), but now there is this bond of shared experience between American soldiers and civilians in the middle east. Because nobody knows who the suicide bomber is going to be or when they're going to come, and everyone is just as horrified as the next person. 

Stick Soldiers

I enjoyed reading “The Stick Soldiers” because of the way it incorporated the perspective of the American children and Iraqi children’s drawings. The way Hugh Martin describes the Iraqi drawing is pretty impactful: “…an RPG aimed toward the Humvee, the waving soldier’s head—what the children want for Christmas, or what they just want” (18).  This poem looks at the experience of war through the eyes of the Iraqi children, which few poets focus on in their poems.  I also enjoyed reading the poem “Four-Letter Word.” The constant repetition in this poem works well with the theme of going to Iraq. I had started reading the poem silently, but because of the constant repetition it was easier to read out loud. When I read the poem out loud the poem seemed to flow. “Four-Letter Word” shows the reader the way Martin felt prior to leaving to Iraq. Everywhere he turned people were constantly bombarding him with questions and comments about his future trip to Iraq. The quote at the beginning of the poem: “I don’t want to hear that fuckin’ four letter word,” reflects how Martin might have felt after constantly hearing the four letter word, Iraq. Martin’s representation and experience of war differ from other works we have read because Martin not only reflects on his experiences during war, but he also looks at the people that surround him. In the poems we were assigned to read, we see the experiences of Martin, his fellow soldiers, and civilians that cross paths with the soldiers. We see the way Martin interacts with soldiers during their training as well as when they reach Iraq. The civilians are portrayed through the children that draw pictures and run errands as well as the townspeople, who provided food for the soldiers at one point. Overall, we see Martin writing about all his experiences not just combat and its psychological repercussions.

Riverbend's Perspective

Riverbend’s perspective on the war did not surprise me. If anything she added proof to my thoughts on the war. Personally I have always viewed the reasons for this war to be ultimately idiotic. Puppets run both governments, the Americans and the Iraqis. The leaders of a country are supposed to be just and do what is best for their people. This is obviously not true in Iraq; maybe even in America. In fact, I feel as if there is no place that I can run away to that won’t have a corrupt government in the future. I feel sorry for Riverbend, and all the things her as well as everyone else living there, has to go through. I knew the American troops were not behaving properly in Iraq but I did not know it was to such a horrible extent. I don’t want to believe that American soldiers raid people’s houses and even kill the innocent. I know most of them are just following orders, yet those giving the orders out shouldn’t be committing such violent crimes.  I had no idea that the UN building there was bombed either. I decided to do some further research and look into it. CNN reports said that a lot of bodies were burned beyond recognition, and DNA tests had to be done in order to identify who they were. Just picturing this scene in my mind makes me feel nauseous. This sort of thing including, assassinations, kidnappings, and tortures aren’t uncommon there. I enjoyed Riverbend’s blog, as sad as it made me feel inside. I think it was wise of her to keep her identity a secret. Her newfound “Talent” surprised me a lot as well. I knew that different kinds of shootings and attacks where very common but I had no idea that people would get so accustomed to it that they would be able to identify what kind of weapon was fired and how far away it was just by hearing it. Crazy. I hope to never gain that kind of talent.