Highbrow Magazine - Iraq war https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/iraq-war en The Overlooked, Under-Reported Stories of 2017 https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/8690-overlooked-under-reported-stories <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 12/25/2017 - 13:22</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1breakingnews.jpg?itok=jtSLe81C"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1breakingnews.jpg?itok=jtSLe81C" width="480" height="270" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>This is an excerpt from an article originally published in BillMoyers.com. Read the rest </strong><a href="http://billmoyers.com/story/overlooked-reported-ignored-stories-2017/"><strong>here</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>This time every year, BillMoyers.com asks reporters, editors and bloggers which key story they feel the mainstream media failed to cover adequately over the last 12 months. See what they had to say.</p> <p> </p> <p> <strong>Donald Trump’s Conflicts of Interest--Ben Adler</strong></p> <p>The most overlooked story this year continues to be Trump’s conflicts of interest and the lack of legal mechanisms to protect the executive branch of the federal government from corruption. In 2016, the press — with the exception of Kurt Eichenwald at Newsweek — ignored the vast web of global business interests and questionable connections that Trump and his company had and how they might conflict with American foreign policy interests. We completely failed to note that Trump was constitutionally ineligible to serve if he did not fully divest from his business, as he would be in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. Since the election, outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters and The New Yorker have covered various conflicts of interest for Trump, his family members and his unpaid advisers such as Carl Icahn and Jared Kushner.</p> <p>                             </p> <p>But TV, the most popular medium from which Americans get their news, remains relentlessly focused on the sexier topics of the day. That’s often just what Trump tweeted. Sometimes, as when he’s tweeting provocations to North Korea, that’s an important news story. Other times, as when we’re being distracted by the president’s insults to the appearance of a talk show host, it’s not. In any case, the complicated connections between the personal financial interests of Trump, his White House staffers, family and associates and the policies being promulgated at the White House remains under-illuminated. As Public Citizen recently noted, but few journalists picked up on, even standard Republican deregulation of labor and the environment raises new ethical questions when Trump’s own business stands to profit from it.</p> <p> </p> <p>Moreover, we have discovered, too late, that many of the safeguards rely upon public officials’ voluntary compliance. Trump violated norms, but no laws, by not releasing his tax returns. His staffers and cabinet appointees may have broken laws by promoting Trump brands and campaigning on behalf of elected officials, but no one in the Trump administration seems interested in enforcing those laws. The press should be not only examining these problems, but their potential solutions.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>— Ben Adler, New York-based journalist</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Everything That Wasn’t a Trump Tweet--Dahlia Lithwick</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>In my view, the most under-reported story of the year was everything. I mean, quite literally, everything that wasn’t a Trump tweet. We didn’t do a good enough job covering DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), refugees after the first travel ban, the oral arguments of the third travel ban, the creeping encroachments on reproductive freedoms in the states and systematic voter suppression.</p> <p> </p> <p>We surely didn’t do a good job on Trump’s efforts to stack the judicial branch with unqualified bloggers, who by experience and temperament had no business even being before the judiciary committee. We episodically covered the opioid epidemic, the ways big think tanks have infiltrated government, the treatment of veterans… I could go on and on.</p> <p> </p> <p>But here’s the thing: Scolding one another for missing the real story for the “distractions” is its own form of blaming and shaming. Attacks in the media are destabilizing enough without constant criticisms that we are all missing the real story. Everything is the real story, up to and including presidential tweets, which like it or not are official acts. My gift to myself and to you as readers is the fact that there is no monolithic “mainstream media” that is ignoring the important issues by design. It is simply true that the Bannon Chaos Machine works best when absolutely every story is the 25th most important story of the day, and everyone is wasting energy scolding others for their lack of focus. We need not play into this.</p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/14largetrumphat.jpg" style="height:522px; width:731px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>We can operate from a “yes, and” lens, acknowledging that the media misses a lot of big stories precisely because it’s covering a lot of other big stories. I could wish that we were less obsessed with individual journalists and their brands. But boy, do we owe a debt of thanks to the “yes, and” journalists who uncovered Roy Moore’s predation and the conflicts of interest in the Trump family. This year I say yes, and let’s cover all of it better and deeper. And let’s thank journalists for the work they do, and use our own voices to amplify the stories that cannot break through. I am not going down the shame-framing road this year. It’s all important to somebody. I am grateful it’s getting done at all.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>— Dahlia Lithwick, writer and podcast host, Slate</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>US Airstrikes in Iraq--Danielle Ivory</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>In a year packed with excellent, important and outrage-inducing reporting, a deep story about airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq did not get nearly enough attention.</p> <p> </p> <p>In The Uncounted, Azmat Zahra and Anand Gopal visited 150 US airstrike sites in Iraq, providing the first systematic, ground-based sample of airstrikes there since the latest military action began in 2014.</p> <p> </p> <p>They found that the civilian death rate was 31 times higher than the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State has previously claimed — making this, possibly, the least-transparent war in recent American history. They also found that civilians who survived the strikes were repeatedly classified as being ISIS sympathizers, with no clear path to clear their names.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>— Danielle Ivory, business reporter, The New York Times</strong></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>The Whereabouts of Our Military Personnel--Tom Engelhardt</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>Excuse me if, year after year, I’ve started to sound like a broken record, but when it comes to the missing stories of 2017, the one I always focus on — the one that was similarly AWOL in 2016, 2015 and so on — concerns America’s wars. Yes, they’re in the news as a kind of low-level hum in the background of our media lives. Afghanistan (yawn…), another more than 3,000 (or is it 4,000?) troops have been dispatched to join the 8,400 (or is it 12,000?) who were there as the Obama years ended (and don’t even think about the 26,000 private contractors working for the US in that country). Syria — yep, 500 American troops still fighting there (or rather maybe it’s actually 2,000). And OK, across the Middle East and increasingly Africa, great cities are in ruins, the foundations of multiple societies wrecked and failed states a dime a dozen, but no point in making too big a deal out of it.</p> <p> </p> <p>And what about those 44,000 American troops reportedly stationed somewhere in the imperium but who knows where because the Pentagon claims it just can’t account for them? (And perhaps that’s not so surprising for a place that has never been capable of successfully auditing itself.) Or how about those 70,000 US Special Operations forces, that semisecret military that’s larger than the armies of a surprising number of countries and whose troops are deployed to more lands yearly (149 in 2017, according to Nick Turse of TomDispatch) than any great power has ever sent its forces to. And of course there’s the rising beat of Trump-era drone strikes, air strikes (hey, shades of Vietnam, the last B-52s have been let loose in Afghanistan!), special ops raids, dead civilians… and so on.</p> <p> </p> <p>And yes, if you’re a news jockey or a war jockey and you’re searching oh-so-carefully, day by day, it’s all there somewhere (hence the links above), but war — permanent war across a vast swath of the planet, now in its 17th year and increasingly thought of by the US military as “generational” (i.e. forever) — well, no. It’s not really a story. It’s never put together in a truly meaningful way in the mainstream. It’s just not really there. Not there there. Not where any passing Trump tweet is in the news; not where the latest ISIS-inspired doofus who hit a subway stop in my hometown with a suicide bomb that didn’t quite work is; not where the president’s denunciations of NLF players who take a knee regularly are. </p> <p> </p> <p>War on our distant battlefields is the oh-so-distant backdrop for our oh-so-immediate lives. It’s not what any of the media outlets now assigning battalions of reporters to swarm every presidential hiccup or burp find worthy of significant attention. Only problem is: Our wars are changing this planet and our own lives in ways hard to make tweetable but oh-so-consequential in the long run. Our wars need to be covered, as our president might say, bigly. (Or was it “big league”?) Once again, in 2017, they were largely missing in action.</p> <p> </p> <p>— <strong>Tom Engelhardt, editor, TomDispatch</strong></p> <p> </p> <p> <strong>This is an excerpt from an article originally published in BillMoyers.com. Read the rest </strong><a href="http://billmoyers.com/story/overlooked-reported-ignored-stories-2017/"><strong>here</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/donald-trump" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Donald Trump</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/news-media" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">news media</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/2017-news-stories" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">2017 news stories</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/russian-hacking" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">russian hacking</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/afghanistan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Afghanistan</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/daca" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">daca</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">BillMoyers.com Staff</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Google Images; Wikipedia Commons</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 25 Dec 2017 18:22:45 +0000 tara 7870 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/8690-overlooked-under-reported-stories#comments Why ‘American Sniper’ Applauds the Soldier But Condemns the War https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4983-why-american-sniper-applauds-soldier-condemns-war <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/film-tv" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Film &amp; TV</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 05/04/2015 - 10:53</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1americansniper.jpg?itok=VVokBqqv"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1americansniper.jpg?itok=VVokBqqv" width="480" height="270" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>A handful of protests last month against university showings of “American Sniper,” director Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-nominated portrait of Iraq War veteran Chris Kyle, are just another reminder that it has become a lightning rod in a polarized society. Regrettably, voices on both sides of the aisle have used the film – which resurrects deep wounds from the George W. Bush era and resonates with the current debate about American engagement in the Middle East – to reinforce barriers. But as with many controversies today, the truth about “American Sniper” may reside somewhere in the middle. </p> <p> </p> <p>The film profiles the military and civilian life of Chris Kyle, a former Navy SEAL, whom many describe as the deadliest sniper in American history. Kyle survived four tours in Iraq and went on to write a best-selling memoir. He was killed in 2013 when a fellow veteran Kyle was trying to help with PTSD fatally shot him and a friend, Chad Littlefield, at a Texas gun range. Kyle left behind a wife and two children. </p> <p> </p> <p>As with perspectives on the war and the Bush presidency, reactions to the film have varied. In one corner sit the diehard patriots who applaud this tribute to a great American hero and refuse to apologize for his efforts to keep America safe and free. Some at <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/01/20/chris-kyles-friends-react-liberal-hollywood-attacking-american-sniper/">Fox News</a> agree. Others condemn it as racist propaganda that ignores the truth about America’s occupation. A particularly scathing piece in <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-sniper-is-almost-too-dumb-to-criticize-20150121"><em>Rolling Stone</em> </a>comes to mind. Perhaps the only common ground between its proponents and critics is that they are fixated on grounding “American Sniper” in the nation’s politics and culture wars. </p> <p> </p> <p>Regrettably, these Americans refuse to see the film for what it is. To be sure, “American Sniper” is a personal narrative about a tough-as-nails soldier’s harrowing experiences. But it is just as much about the widespread and immeasurable costs of his obsession with a futile, unjust war that has no end in sight.</p> <p> </p> <p>The film depicts the immense courage members of the US military possess, as well as the profound personal sacrifices they make in pursuit of what they believe to be a noble goal. And it gives voice to veterans dealing with PTSD and the broken homes they leave behind. At the same time, this intimate look at an American soldier in the midst of an unwinnable conflict – one who is singularly focused on protecting his brothers-in-arms to the detriment of everything sacred in his life – sends a cautionary message. Indeed, it often seems that the only way out of the panic-inducing quagmire is by death or disfigurement. </p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2americansniper.jpg" style="height:416px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>In this way, “American Sniper” applauds the soldier but condemns the war. And director Eastwood eschews hammering a message that fits comfortably into the agendas of Americans on the right or left. The film is at once pro-warrior and anti-war. Eastwood himself has <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/17/clint-eastwood-american-sniper-anti-war_n_6884966.html">described it</a> in a similar fashion. </p> <p> </p> <p>For instance, much has been made about the way the film supposedly links 9/11 to the Iraq War. It is true that Eastwood depicts Chris Kyle’s justification for the war with the familiar televised image of planes hitting the World Trade Center. This post-9/11 call to arms undoubtedly strikes a chord with many Americans who were motivated by the same events. Yet, while the film portrays this viewpoint – after all, this version of Kyle’s story is based on the veteran’s memoir – Eastwood does not try to make a case for it. There are no speeches from Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld suggesting links between 9/11 and Iraq or scenes of a president rallying the masses against the bad guys and those harboring terrorists. And there is no anti-American al Qaeda rhetoric to justify the invasion and calm consciences.</p> <p> </p> <p>Rather, Eastwood’s approach highlights the glib rush to judgment that brought America to war. Chris Kyle’s emotional reaction to 9/11 and his unwavering conviction about the Iraq War underscores its hollow premises. His act of hubris is particularly tragic when juxtaposed against the ensuing horror that Kyle, his family, fellow soldiers and Iraqi civilians endure. And the film makes no attempt to hide these sacrifices.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3georgewbush%20%28WhitehouseDOTgov%29_0.jpg" style="height:372px; width:550px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>This brief but seminal moment becomes a dividing line between Kyle’s domestic sphere, illustrated by his budding romance and growing family, and the gruesome world that he encounters in combat. It magnifies the despondency that accompanies the unraveling of the lives of a father, his wife and two small children (not to mention the lives of countless innocent Iraqis). In this way, we see Kyle’s actions for what they truly are -- heroic and well intentioned, yet entirely misplaced and misinformed acts that come at a great cost to humanity.  </p> <p> </p> <p>In the end, Eastwood’s intentionally cautious treatment of the topics in "American Sniper" begs the question: can’t we all agree that Chris Kyle is exactly the type of courageous and infallible warrior we want fighting for America, while at the same time acknowledge that the Iraq War was a profound mistake with dire consequences for everyone involved? Difficult as it may be for either camp to make concessions, this approach may be the only way to make sense of the Bush era and its aftermath. In “American Sniper,” director Clint Eastwood skillfully and subtly nudges us in that direction. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Annie Castellani is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine. <em>Follow Castellani on Twitter: @TheSustainCapit</em></strong>    </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-sniper" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american sniper</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/george-w-bush-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">george w bush</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/dick-cheney" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">dick cheney</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/donald-rumsfeld" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">donald rumsfeld</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/afghanistan-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">afghanistan war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/9-11" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">9-11</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Annie Castellani</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 04 May 2015 14:53:10 +0000 tara 5967 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4983-why-american-sniper-applauds-soldier-condemns-war#comments For Freelance Journalists, Growing Opportunity and Risk https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4267-freelance-journalists-growing-opportunity-and-risk <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/media" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Media</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 09/05/2014 - 14:36</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1freelancer.jpg?itok=Y_um2KRt"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1freelancer.jpg?itok=Y_um2KRt" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2014/08/for-freelancers-growing-opportunity-and-risk.php">New America Media</a>: </strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Commentary</strong></p> <p><br /> <strong><em>Editor’s note:</em></strong><em> The recent beheading of freelance journalist James Foley (pictured above) by militants from the Islamic State highlights the growing dangers that freelance reporters covering conflict zones face. NAM Editor Andrew Lam writes the paring back by media of foreign correspondents in these regions has opened up new opportunities – and increased dangers – for freelancers like Foley and Steven Sotloff, who disappeared while covering the conflict in Syria in 2012. On Wednesday, Sotloff’s mother released a video pleading with the head of ISIS for his release. </em><br /> <br /> Among journalists, there’s a well-known reality: in conflict zones, you have a better chance of surviving if you are a reporter sponsored by a large news outfit than if you are working as a freelancer. </p> <p><br /> <br /> A case in point: Ian Stewart, a staff reporter for the Associated Press who wrote “<em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ambushed-War-Reporters-Life-Line/dp/1565123808">Ambushed, A War Reporter’s Life On the Line</a></em>,” was shot in the head in 1999 while reporting in Sierra Leone. The bullet lodged in his brain, but the AP arranged for a Swiss air ambulance that took him to London where he was promptly saved. </p> <p><br /> <br /> “Freelancers were basically not considered within the jurisdiction of the company’s responsibility,” he once told me. Stewart, who saved the bullet as a souvenir, noted that a freelancer under similar circumstances most likely wouldn’t have been given the same protections. </p> <p><br /> <br /> Another veteran reporter, a friend, who covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the AP told me there’s a world of difference in one’s experience as a journalist, depending on whether or not he or she is sponsored by a major news organization. My friend said the infrastructure, insurance, and logistics on the ground were all figured out before she parachuted in. </p> <p><br /> <br /> “You plan ahead,” she said. “You have it figured out with your company what steps would be taken in a potential hostage situation.” Journalists working for major institutions like the <em>L.A. Times</em> and the <em>New York</em><em> Times</em> all had bodyguards, armored vehicles, and bulletproof vests when they worked in war zones. </p> <p><br /> <br /> Kidnapped in Syria, James Foley, a freelancer for the <em>GlobalPost</em> and other news outlets, was rescued, only to be kidnapped a second time in November 2012. Foley was taken to Iraq and beheaded by militants from The Islamic State [ISIS] last week. If the United States failed to meet ISIS’ demands to stop bombing its positions in Iraq, Steven Sotloff, another kidnapped freelance journalist, may meet the same fate. (A video of his mother appealing to Sotloff’s captors was released as of this writing.)</p> <p><br /> <br /> Freelancers who find themselves in trouble depend on the kindness of the organizations that buy their work. In Foley’s case, <em>GlobalPost </em><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11047532/GlobalPost-attempted-to-rescue-murdered-journalist-James-Foley-from-IS-captors.html">claimed it spent millions</a> in an attempt to rescue him, including hiring a security firm and investigating his whereabouts.</p> <p><br /> <br /> But in general, a freelancer is more vulnerable, often traveling without bodyguards and contingency plans. There’s a viral photo of Foley carrying his camera and sound recorder and other equipment that reminds viewers of how freelancers need to take advantage of the full multimedia spectrum – reporting, photojournalism, sound recording – in order to make a living. Foley’s situation would be in stark contrast to say a CNN star reporter like Anderson Cooper, who -- were he to visit Syria -- would necessitate protection, bodyguards, and an entourage. </p> <p><br /> <br /> “I remember a buddy of mine who was a freelance stringer for the AP in Kabul in ’93 or ’94 when he was shot in the foot and was losing blood at a critical rate. [The A.P. headquarters in] New York refused to foot the bill to airlift him out, or compel the U.N. or other aid groups to help him,” Stewart told me some years ago during an interview. “It was only because of the help of the local bureau chief in Pakistan that he got out and received care.”</p> <p><br /> <br /> In an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/aug/21/james-foley-freelance-journalists-exploited-media-outlets">article for the Guardian</a>, Martin Chulov called Foley’s situation one of exploitation. “Stripped down, pared-back journalism has created opportunities for those who dare, but it has also allowed outlets to hide behind flaky bottom lines as a means of abdicating responsibility,” he wrote.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2iraq%20%28wiki%29_0.jpg" style="height:414px; width:625px" /><br />  </p> <p>Yet, if from one perspective freelancers are exploited, from another the opportunities for the freelancer are abundant. With major news organizations closing their foreign bureaus and letting go of so many seasoned journalists, the demand for frontline coverage is great. According to a <a href="http://ajrarchive.org/article.asp?id=4997">2011 study</a> from the <em>American Journalism Review</em>, the number of correspondents employed overseas by newspapers and wire services decreased to 234 from 307, and that included contract writers such as freelancers.</p> <p><br /> <br /> It is why young and risk-taking journalists covering hotspots are finding their work on the front pages of major newspapers at an unprecedented level. There are plenty of buyers for your frontline coverage if you are good and available. </p> <p><br /> <br /> Shane Bauer, a young journalist who wrote for New America Media as well as <em>Mother Jones</em>, the <em>L.A. Times</em>, Democracy Now, and others, was one of them. He was kidnapped in Iraq near the border with Iran with his girlfriend, Sarah Shourd, and friend, Joshua Fattal, in 2009 when he was 28. </p> <p><br /> <br /> The seduction of being a freelancer is great for those who dare, indeed. If you can work for more than one agency, a free agent with multiple talents – video, writing, radio reporting – your work can span across the multimedia spectrum, unrestricted.</p> <p><br /> <br /> But it comes with high risks. Here’s a piece of advice that should be heeded from a journalist who worked for a major news wire in the United States who declined to share his name and who spent some years reporting in Afghanistan: “You need to work out a plan in advance with the media company about how to handle the potential hostage situation.” Don’t be naïve, he said, “prepare for the worst-case scenarios.”</p> <p><br /> <br /> Freelancers are organizing, however. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, freelance journalists formed an organization called <a href="http://cpj.org/blog/2013/06/in-revolt-freelancers-establish-frontline-freelanc.php">Frontline Freelance Register</a> to support the physical and mental well-being of freelance journalists” and to obtain “both hostile environment training and insurance when on dangerous assignments.” </p> <p><br /> <br /> As for news institutions that have benefitted greatly from these daring and passionate journalists who bear witness to the most troubling historical moments of our time, often at a great price, it’s time to step up by taking more responsibility to minimize their risks.</p> <p><br /> <br /> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><br /> <em><strong>Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and author of the "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Dreams-Reflections-Vietnamese-Diaspora/dp/1597140201/ref=pd_sim_b_5">Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora</a>," and "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/East-Eats-West-Writing-Hemispheres/dp/1597141380">East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres</a>." His latest book is "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Paradise-Lost-Andrew-Lam/dp/1597092681/ref=pd_sim_b_3">Birds of Paradise Lost</a>," a short story collection, was published in 2013 and won a Pen/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2014.</strong></em></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2014/08/for-freelancers-growing-opportunity-and-risk.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/james-foley" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">james foley</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/beheadings" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">beheadings</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/isis" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">isis</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/freelance-journalists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">freelance journalists</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/overseas" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">overseas</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-correspondent" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war correspondent</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 05 Sep 2014 18:36:00 +0000 tara 5152 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4267-freelance-journalists-growing-opportunity-and-risk#comments Iraq Replaces Vietnam as a Metaphor for Tragedy https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4098-iraq-replaces-vietnam-metaphor-tragedy <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Thu, 06/26/2014 - 12:39</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnamiraq.jpg?itok=hAtePaPx"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnamiraq.jpg?itok=hAtePaPx" width="480" height="437" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner New America Media:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>A few years ago in a New York subway train I witnessed a scene that will always serve for me as an important marker of sort. A man in ruffled clothes walked up and down the aisle and panhandled in a loud voice. "Can you help a Vietnam Vet? I've got issues and I've been out of work. Folks, can you help?" All of a sudden a young man, who had been watching him, stood up and exploded: "You f'***g liar. You're too young to fight in NAM. Want to know issues? I've got issues. I just came back from Iraq."</p> <p> </p> <p>There was a collective hush, and some people fled to another car.</p> <p> </p> <p>For almost three decades after U.S. helicopters flew over a smoke-filled Saigon, Vietnam served as a vault of tragic metaphors for every American to use. In movies, in literature, someone who went to 'Nam was someone who came back a wreck, a traumatized soul who has seen or committed too many horrors to ever return to normal life. In politics, Vietnam was a hard-learned lesson that continued to influence U.S. foreign policies. It was an unhealed wound, the cause of post-traumatic stress, the stuff bad dreams were made of.</p> <p> </p> <p>Then came Iraq. Many comparisons have been made about the two wars. But what Iraq may have finally done is not so much remind us of Vietnam as ultimately usurp it from our national psyche.</p> <p> </p> <p>Fighting the Vietnam War brought a multitude of symbols and icons to the American mind. A new set has been acquired with the war in Iraq. One can almost imagine one era being replaced by another in the way that two kids might trade cards: "I'll take My Lai for your Haditha"; "I'll take 'Hearts and Minds' for 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'"; "Let's have Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh for Muqtada al-Sadr and Osama Bin Ladin"; "I'll take Tiger Cage for Abu Graib"; and "Let's have your Gulf of Tonkin for my WMD."</p> <p> </p> <p>Two-and-a-half years after the U.S. pulled out of Iraq the country has crumbled into a bona-fide failed state, with Baghdad under siege by ISIS (jihadist militants from the Islamic State), who are having a run of Iraq, and some analysts now worry that ISIS will commit mass genocide against Iraq's Shi'a population if Baghdad falls.</p> <p> </p> <p>The war in Iraq started with Operation Shock and Awe but ended in a fizzle and, some would argue, in an epic exercise in human futility. Here are some facts: Iraq claimed 4,487 American lives, and left 32,226 Americans wounded, according to Pentagon statistics. According to Iraqbodycount.org, the number of Iraqis who died from violence ranges between 103,000 and 114,000 during the U.S. occupation. Though Congressional Research Service has estimated the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom at around $806 billion dollars, President Obama has said that the cost of the war is over $1 trillion.</p> <p> </p> <p>Yet, for a long time, Vietnam functioned as a benchmark for spectacular American failure, it remained a deep, searing wound. It took some time after the war's end before movies were made and books sold on the topic. There was a willful repression of America's only military defeat, followed by a flourish of Vietnam novels and movies. Together they constructed a mythic reality around the nation's experience in Vietnam that challenged our old notion of manifest destiny and examined our loss of innocence.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>In the 1980s, conservatives began to claim that the Vietnam Syndrome -- which they saw as an undesirable pacifism on the part of the American public and the U.S. government -- has been "kicked." Most famous of them all was George Bush Sr., who declared in 1991 after victory in the Persian Gulf War that "the ghosts of Vietnam had been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert."</p> <p> </p> <p>But Bush Sr. spoke too soon. The glory of winning did not translate into a second presidential term, and Vietnam continued to haunt our national psyche. When President Clinton withdrew troops from Somalia after 18 soldiers were killed in Mogadishu in 1993, diplomat Richard Holbrooke called it the new "Vietmalia syndrome."</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumIraqWar_0.jpg" style="height:279px; width:500px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>What we are learning now with the enormous failure of Iraq -- the lies and deception from the George W. Bush White House, the images of Iraqis wailing beside their dead loved ones, the shattered homes, bloody sidewalks, tortured prisoners, body parts in market stalls, burnt-out cars, roadside bombs, downed helicopters and horribly maimed American soldiers, the 2 million refugees, the unending sectarian violence -- is that tragedy cannot simply be overcome with some military victory, but with another tragedy of equal if not greater proportion.</p> <p> </p> <p>In another generation, when a future U.S. president sends troops to occupy some intransigent country on a dubious objective, American pundits will most likely ask this familiar question made new: "Will it be another Iraq?"</p> <p> </p> <p>Indeed, the unfinished violence in Iraq is showing us that the so-called Vietnam Syndrome cannot be "kicked," as it were, by winning but by losing, as it forces us to face our collective grief and guilt anew. For all the horrors committed in the name of democracy, and all the soul-searching Americans did after the Vietnam War, we failed to alter the bellicose nature of our nation. And, as if a reflection of our collective amnesia, the only obvious winner is the ever-growing military industrial complex.</p> <p> </p> <p>Going back into Iraq is an option unimaginable to the American public, and suicidal for any sitting president. But what will we do if the war between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims engulfs the Middle East? How do we reconcile with the lives imperiled by our direct intervention? What moral obligations do we have toward other nations that went up in flame due to our own meddling?</p> <p> </p> <p>Carl Jung, who made great inroads into man's collective psyche, once noted that, "It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished."</p> <p> </p> <p>That observation can be applied to the fate of nations as well. For a country unable to confront and reconcile with its own heart of darkness is a country fated to repeat acts of barbarism. A war is waged, then there follows a period of reckoning. But then, like clockwork, amnesia settles in. And another war, and along with it, new tragedies, would begin.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><em>Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and author of the "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His latest book is "Birds of Paradise Lost," a short story collection, was published in 2013 and won a Pen/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2014 and a finalist for the California Book Award and shortlisted for theWilliam Saroyan International Prize for Writing.</em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war in iraq</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/us-foreign-policy-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">us foreign policy</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/us-soldiers-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">us soldiers</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 26 Jun 2014 16:39:56 +0000 tara 4901 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4098-iraq-replaces-vietnam-metaphor-tragedy#comments A Sunni-Shi’a War in the Middle East? Not Likely https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4083-sunni-shi-war-middle-east-not-likely <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 06/20/2014 - 08:59</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1muslimmap.jpg?itok=R2oOpC9D"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1muslimmap.jpg?itok=R2oOpC9D" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2014/06/will-there-be-a-sunni-shia-war-in-the-middle-east-not-likely.php">New America Media</a></strong>:</p> <p> </p> <p>The success of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in capturing large territories in Syria and Northern Iraq, and now threatening Baghdad, has raised once again the specter of a Sunni-Shi’a war in the Middle East. Such a scenario is possible, but unlikely. That’s because Sunni and Shi’a believers throughout the world are divided into many factions living under different social conditions and with different religious, social and political agendas. These differences greatly reduce the possibility of the emergence of a coalition of either group into a single bloc opposing the other.</p> <p> </p> <p>ISIS belongs to a small faction of Sunni Islam committed to extremist fundamentalist religious convictions that they seek to impose on other Muslims. In this they have common cause with the Salafi movement (salaf means “ancestors,” referring to the original founders of Islam).</p> <p> </p> <p>The Taliban of Pakistan and Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda also spring from the Salafi movement. The Salfis view Shi’ism as heresy. They believe that Shi’a believers are “polytheists” because of their reverence for Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad and his descendants. Salafi preachers have authorized the killing of Shi’a Muslims as a religious duty. Salafi adherents are found throughout the Arabian Peninsula and also in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.</p> <p> </p> <p>ISIS has roots dating back to 2000 and has evolved to the point that it is functioning as a quasi-government at present with an organized leadership and judicial, financial and military systems. They are actively hegemonic, hoping to establish an Islamic Caliphate, hearkening to medieval times, governed exclusively by their own narrow interpretation of Shari’a Law.</p> <p> </p> <p>Meanwhile, Shi’ism also exists in many forms. The form known as “Twelver Shism” has been the State religion in Iran since the 18th Century, and is practiced in other nations where believers are a plurality or a majority. Although Americans have been led to believe that Shi’a Muslims are also fundamentalists, in fact Shi’ism is far more flexible in its belief system than fundamentalist Sunnis. Besides the “Twelvers” there are Zayyidis in Yemen, Alawis in Syria (the religion of the Assad regime) and Isma’ilis living in many locations throughout the world.</p> <p> </p> <p>Twelver Shi’ism is organized into differing philosophical camps headed by Grand Ayatollahs. Shi’a believers attach themselves to one of these religious leaders from whom they seek guidance on religious matters. There are currently 66 living Grand Ayatollahs living mostly in Iran and Iraq, but also in Afghanistan, Bahrain and Kuwait, each with his own individual view of proper conduct and religious philosophy. A coalition of thought for this diverse body of clerics is highly unlikely.</p> <p> </p> <p>The Islamic Republic of Iran was founded by the followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni with the controversial doctrine that the most knowledgeable Grand Ayatollah should be the ultimate authority in government and social life. However, many other Grand Ayatollahs disagreed with Ayatollah Khomeini’s view of governance. A number were arrested and stripped of their religious credentials because of their opposition. One of the chief oppositionists to the Khomeinist view of government is Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani of Najaf, the most revered Grand Ayatollah of Iraq.</p> <p> </p> <p>Shi’ites have been under siege everywhere else in the world outside of Iran. Shi’ites in Lebanon were attacked by Israel seeking to cripple Sunni Muslim Palestinians living in refugee camps there. The Alawite regime in Syria holds power, but has been continually attacked by the Sunni majority in that country. The Zayyidis in Yemen and Saudi Arabia have been attacked by the Sunni governments in both nations. The Bahraini majority Shi’ites have been under siege by the ruling Sunni Al-Khalifa family. Hazara “Twelver” Shi’ites have been persecuted and murdered in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Shi’a in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia have been prevented from carrying out religious observances and have been economically disadvantaged. The religious rights of Shi’ites have been curtailed in various parts of Southeast Asia.</p> <p> </p> <p>Now, although Shi’a Muslims are a plurality, perhaps a majority in Iraq, they are under attack by ISIS.</p> <p> </p> <p>Iran, meanwhile, has striven to help Shi’a communities when they have been under attack. Iran was instrumental in the formation of Hezbollah in Lebanon when the Shi’a community was first attacked by Israeli forces in 1980. However, Iran no longer has any effective influence on Hezbollah’s actions. Iran also continues to provide aid to the Assad regime in Syria. It has sheltered Hazara refugees from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran has been wary of providing direct aid to other Shi’a communities, such as those in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, despite the fact that ruling powers in those countries have accused them of doing so.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/ayatollahshit.jpg" style="height:468px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>The current crisis in Iraq, though, is not likely to lead to more widespread conflict. ISIS is frightening even for the conservative government of Saudi Arabia and the more liberal government of Jordan. ISIS is well funded, largely because it has commandeered oil fields in Iraq and it robbed the Iraqi Central Bank in Mosul. It continues to receive funding from Salafi “businessmen” in the Gulf States. But support for ISIS will eventually run out, since for many other Arab nations, the ISIS Salafi agenda is far too extreme.</p> <p> </p> <p>And if Iran does enter into confrontation with ISIS, it is not likely to engineer the disparate Shi’a communities in the Middle East into anything resembling a bloc. On practical grounds such an effort would fail, and savvy Iranians know this. Iraqi Shi’a don’t like or agree with Iran’s Islamic Republic governmental structure. Hezbollah in Lebanon has set its own course at home, and is not likely to be under Iranian control. Iran seeks better relations with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, even as the leaders of those nations denigrate Tehran. Even within Iran there will be many factions that will not support any kind of cultivation of a Grand Shi’a Alliance for military or political gain.</p> <p> </p> <p>The United States is now considering making common cause with Iran, something that critics see as a dangerous move that would support “Iranian hegemony.” But this criticism is largely speculation, based on lack of information about Iran and the rest of the Shi’a world.</p> <p> </p> <p>If it is possible for the government of Iraq to repel and contain ISIS with Iran’s help, the United States should definitely support such an action. There need be no real fear at this time that either the Shi’a or Sunni forces will evolve into a kind of World War III in the Middle East.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2assad.jpg" style="height:625px; width:377px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>If Iran itself is attacked, however, all bets are off. Iran fought an eight-year war with Saddam Hussein when it was attacked in 1980. No matter what nationality, if Sunni Muslims make common cause with any group that attacks Iran, they will be met with enormous ferocity.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><em>William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology, University of Minnesota. He has conducted research in the Middle East for more than 40 years.</em></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2014/06/will-there-be-a-sunni-shia-war-in-the-middle-east-not-likely.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/sunni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sunni</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/shia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">shia</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/shiite" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">shiite</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ayatollahs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ayatollahs</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iran" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iran</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saudi-arabia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">saudi arabia</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/isis" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">isis</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/united-states-foreign-policy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">united states foreign policy</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war in iraq</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/middle-east" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Middle East</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/islam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Islam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/muslims" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Muslims</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">William O. Beeman</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media; Wikipedia Commons</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 20 Jun 2014 12:59:44 +0000 tara 4878 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4083-sunni-shi-war-middle-east-not-likely#comments Reading 21st Century American War Stories: Heroes, Hell, and Back https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2420-reading-st-century-american-war-stories-heroes-hell-and-back <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 05/10/2013 - 09:46</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2mediumWar.jpg?itok=YNYFE4LO"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2mediumWar.jpg?itok=YNYFE4LO" width="480" height="321" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><em>This is Part 1 of a two-part series. </em></p> <p> </p> <p><em>“What we didn’t know, even though all the old soldier stories say it clear as day: is that we would always be there, even long after we left.” </em>- <strong>Matt Gallagher, <em>Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War</em> </strong></p> <p> </p> <p>The 21<sup>st</sup> century in America has been permeated by war, almost from the start; even while most of America’s citizens remain unaffected—directly anyway—by its vicissitudes.  We need a literature that can begin to convey the multiplicities of war: the adrenaline; the sweat and blood; the isolation; the brotherhood; the memories and questions; and the return home. We need a narrative for America’s 21<sup>st</sup> century wars, and yet no single narrative will suffice.</p> <p> </p> <p>The literature of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is growing; polemics and essays increasingly augmented by memoir, stories, and novels. We will turn specifically to several here, focusing on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Busch">Benjamin Busch</a>’s memoir <em>Dust to Dust</em>, <a href="http://www.kevincpowers.com/">Kevin Powers</a>’ novel <em>The Yellow Birds</em>, and the short story collection <a href="http://www.fireandforgetbook.com/"><em>Fire and Forget</em></a>, co-edited by Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher. </p> <p> </p> <p>Story, one of the richest and oldest traditions—conveying and sharing experience—transports an individual’s experience into a more compact vessel, delineating and shaping conflicting thoughts, feelings, and memories that clog the brain’s neurons and body’s senses. Stories illuminate, bringing specificity to the abstract—“war”— condensing and opening up the realities of recent conflicts for a larger audience, while deepening insight and community for those who served. These emerging stories are national imperatives: for successful reintegration of individual veterans; for veterans as a group; for veteran families; and for the rest of the population, with all of the complex relationships entailed by dissent, agreement, and the responsibilities of a nation towards its warriors.</p> <p> </p> <p>The subject of war quickly evokes perceptions and misperceptions, bound by era, politics, economics, history, and ideology, ideas of right and wrong. At the same time, many feel the urge to retreat. War affects few directly, or such is our perception. Let’s spend a moment with this essay’s title—with its <em>21<sup>st</sup> century</em>, the <em>heroes</em>, that <em>hell</em> and <em>back</em>—it's a mouthful. And right there, in the title, there’s an implicit search for redemption: in the arc of a story. It is hard not to look for the silver lining. Will we find it—in war, and the stories war compels? Do we need it?</p> <p> </p> <p>Much as we might try to formulate one vet, the archetype, war resists this, whether we think of this as a post-modern perspective or just a more open viewfinder. World War I brought us our early vision of the broken soldier, men traumatized by the first glimpse of modern weaponry: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation">Lost Generation</a>. After World War II, came the G.I. Generation, later upgraded to the “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Generation-Tom-Brokaw/dp/0812975294">Greatest Generation</a>;” stoic and moving on—to green lawns, picket fences, wives home once again with the booming kids.</p> <p> </p> <p>Swiftly on the heels of World War II came Korea, later presented in the television show (and movie) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M*A*S*H_%28TV_series%29">M.A.S.H</a>., which was inflected as much by the Vietnam era in which it was made, as the post-World War II, patriotic introversion of the Korean-war era. Think about the packaging of that era—post-Korea and early or pre-Vietnam—still going on right now: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804503/plotsummary"><em>Mad Men</em></a> and Don Draper, a veteran scarred, his identity remade and fractured, but moving on, replete with beautiful surfaces—physique, wife, job, car—the interior hiding, complexity and lies, masking a shattered self. A mask so effective that the interior damage hardly seems to matter on the outside; and yet Don Draper’s risky or soul-searching choices (affairs) and his buttoned-up early married life both evoke the damage.</p> <p> </p> <p>But before the contemporary pretty packaging of earlier post-war life represented in <em>Mad Men</em>, complete with irony and fissures, came Vietnam. The word, in American lexicon, signifies an era, its upheaval and conflicts, the shattering of accepted values—honor and country—and the veterans who returned into this firestorm. <em>Vietnam</em>: for several generations of Americans, it has become more of an idea than a country. For many, its shadow is still here: the war that divided America, in stark contrast with earlier wars of the century, dissent overt and menacing: <a href="http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/times-they-are-changin"><em>The Times They Are a-Changin’</em></a>.</p> <p> </p> <p>Onward— the 21<sup>st</sup><sup> </sup>century: there is still something futuristic about the label, this era in which we live, still more to impact and mold. From early on, it has been infused with war.</p> <p> </p> <p>The year the Second Iraq War started in 2003, out came <a href="http://anthonyhswofford.com/">Anthony Swofford’s</a> memoir <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jarhead-Marines-Chronicle-Other-Battles/dp/0743287215/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1365701174&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=jarhead"><em>Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles</em></a><em>, </em>set during the <em>first</em> Gulf War. Canny timing, marking what can now be looked back on as the early stages of American 21<sup>st</sup> century war stories, though initiated by way of the late 20<sup>th</sup>. <em>Jarhead</em> began to reveal the next generation of American soldiers and veterans to a broader audience, almost before they had yet arrived.</p> <p> </p> <p><em>I look at the sky, blue like no blue I’ve known before, and at the desert that will not stop. This is the pain of the landscape, worse than the heat, worse than the flies—there is no getting out of the land. No stopping. After only six weeks of deployment, the desert is in us, one particle at a time—our boots and belts and trousers and gas masks and weapons are covered and filled with sand.</em></p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/dusttodust.jpg" style="height:500px; width:332px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Now, 10 years since publication, more than 20 years since that war, the landscape is growing more insistent.</p> <p> </p> <p>Language, stories, and patterns in 21<sup>st</sup> century first-wave (American) war narratives begin to suggest maps for reading, and perhaps even for writing. Swofford’s <em>Jarhead</em>, and Vietnam era’s <a href="http://www.txstate.edu/rising-stars/tim-obrien.html">Tim O’Brien</a>, via <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Things-They-Carried-Tim-OBrien/dp/0618706410"><em>The Things They Carried</em></a><em>, </em>assist in illustrating the circumstances of war narratives, the limitations and the possibilities. (Many more, that don’t fit here, add to this discussion: think Isaac Babel, Joseph Heller, Wilfred Owen, Virginia Woolf, William Manchester, Anthony Loyd, Janine di Giovanni, and on.)</p> <p> </p> <p>Tim O’Brien writes, in “How to Tell a True War Story”:</p> <p><em>A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.</em></p> <p> </p> <p>And in almost anything true, we can also find something false. O’Brien subverts and plays with notions of truth, and so must all writers, and readers. We ask questions, sometimes knowing there are too few answers, or too many.</p> <p> </p> <p>As O’Brien’s fictional character (also Tim O’Brien) tells us later in the same story: “In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.” And then, “In other cases, you can’t even tell a true war story. Sometimes it’s just beyond telling.” And yet we try, we have to. Stories help us comprehend, vanquish, make order.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://thephoenix.com/tools/print/?id=136841">Benjamin Busch</a>, veteran and actor, in his lyrical and introspective memoir, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dust-A-Memoir-Benjamin-Busch/dp/0062014854/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1365701852&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=dust+to+dust"><em>Dust to Dust</em></a><em>,</em> weaves together disparate experiences and stories—from childhood; from movie and television sets, where he has played the role of soldier; to Iraq where he has been one—all the while extracting meaning and searching for it. He carries the reader along in his particulars, from a boyhood spent with dirt and sticks and water to the adult he becomes, still attached and beholden to the elements: in similar ways, and in ways evolving and distinct. Busch’s evocative reincarnations of intent childhood days playing with toy soldiers, planes, and boats, daring bodies of water or building makeshift structures in the woods, remind of the adventure sought in not only imagination, but in activity and action: the heroes we make ourselves into, at first in play and later, in more fractured and increasingly less consistent ways, in adulthood.</p> <p> </p> <p>In <em>Jarhead,</em> Swofford describes a game of football out in the desert, a staff sergeant’s misbegotten idea to “play football for the reporters, wearing full MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture) gear and gas masks.” Ten-pound suits in 115 degree heat. The display escalates into a spiraling mouth-off, bravado and anger and agency—heroes of someone’s narrative, their own?</p> <p> </p> <p><em>I stand back from a turn with Kuehn. I feel frightened and exhilarated by the scene. The exhilaration isn’t sexual, it’s communal—a pure surge of passion and violence and shared anger, a pure distillation of our confusion and hope and shared fear….</em></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/yellowbirds.jpg" style="height:600px; width:399px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Swofford continues in a brilliant riff of expletive-filled flight, an all-empowering curse-off against the world, from the press-pool colonel, to President Bush and Dick Cheney and Saddam Hussein and “the sand and the loneliness and the boredom and the potentially unfaithful wives and girlfriends” and “the f**khead peaceniks back home, the skate punks and labor unionists and teachers” and “our confusion and fear and boredom” and “ourselves for signing the contract, for listening to the soothing lies of the recruiters”…and so much more. The passage speaks to the tension between power—wresting it, holding it—and powerlessness. Sometimes they coexist.</p> <p> </p> <p>The desire for agency and for adventure: this is strong, deep within us all, just as with the need for story. And again the dust and sand infiltrate everything, all that you touch or see or do. With his customary poetry of the sentence, Busch, in <em>Dust to Dust</em>, writes at first about soil but soon about dust and sand and transition from mere tangible to something ineluctable, not to be escaped, whether in earth, war, or life’s lessons in mortality: “There is a vastness to the underground. …Beneath us, veins of water are moving in the deep punctured by wells and the failures of dirt to know its place.”</p> <p> </p> <p>“I have always been a digger,” Busch affirms. Not 20 pages later, Busch is again a soldier, experiences woven through, rather than presented with straight chronology. “It was April 2003 and we were in the desert waiting to invade Iraq.” And, “I thought, as I sat on an abandoned sandbag bunker in the berm, that it was all for nothing, this life. All of this dust hurrying to be earth again.”….“I was listening to dust. We were waiting to invade a land composed of it.”</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.colummccann.com/about.php">Colum McCann</a>, in his foreword to the recently released anthology <a href="http://www.fireandforgetbook.com/"><em>Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War</em></a> reminds us, lest we forget, “These are wars that America is so determined not to see that we banned images of soldiers’ coffins from our nightly broadcasts….” If we need heroes, all of us, in some form, then we need also to forget—to forget what soldiers must do and what they witness, and to forget where we have sent them.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.fireandforgetbook.com/?p=3">Jacob Siegel</a>, author of “Smile, There are IEDs Everywhere,” the short story opening the collection <em>Fire and Forget</em>, writes in that story, “I didn’t have any real plans or ambitions for when we got back. I only had fantasies of other lives, like the fevered dreams of a sick man growing bolder and more intense the closer he gets to death.” And is death near? The question that haunts and lurks during deployment mutates. What about the return home? If you can’t go back (home); or what if you are back there (inhabiting the war) still?</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumIraqWar.jpg" style="height:279px; width:500px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>When Private Bartle, the central character in Kevin Powers’ debut novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Birds-Novel-Kevin-Powers/dp/0316219347/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1365986164&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+yellow+birds"><em>The Yellow Birds</em></a>, arrives back in the States, met by his mother, she says, “Oh, John, you’re home.” Bartle’s voice intones to the reader, “I did not believe her.”</p> <p> </p> <p>But, let’s be clear, not everyone is like Bartle. Busch weaves his war experience into a before, a during (including time back in the States between deployments), and an after. Even more firmly landing on a positive experience of return, post-war, is blogger, writer, National Guard enlistee, former marine, and police officer, Chris Hernandez, who wote in the <a href="http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/opinion/veteran-reports-of-recruitment-tricks-and-trauma-m/nWxRF/">Austin-American Statesman</a> this past March:</p> <p><em>The public is constantly reminded of how much we veterans are suffering for our service. I’m here to remind the public of a counterpoint. We benefited from our service, and not just financially. We learned important lessons about the country, the world, our fellow soldiers, and most importantly, ourselves.</em></p> <p> </p> <p>The media speaks more openly now than even a few years ago of some of the nameable fissures and ailments of return, more invisible than missing limbs, physical wounds. We have to be able to talk about these realities, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide, traumatic brain injury (TBI), depression, while remembering that’s not the whole story. Military suicides <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/14/169364733/u-s-militarys-suicide-rate-surpassed-combat-deaths-in-2012">rose in 2012</a>; and the total for the year was higher than combat deaths. In percentage terms, military suicides are lower than the overall population; but military suicides trend <a href="http://rt.com/usa/us-army-suicide-rate-025/">younger</a>: more life ahead, more life destroyed.</p> <p> </p> <p>David S. Cloud reports in the April 14, 2013, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-army-suicide-20130414,0,6499749,full.story">Los Angeles Times</a> on an intensive intervention program being used at Fort Bliss in Texas: "’If you get a soldier to treatment, the chances are he'll live,’ said Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard, a West Point graduate who commands Ft. Bliss and once served as President Clinton's military aide. 'We're really emphasizing getting help.'  We continue to need improved programs, funding, and awareness about mental health issues, trauma, and TBI. While we also need to be mindful of defining individual vets by trauma they may or may not have experienced.</p> <p> </p> <p>Same wars, but the meanings shift, according to whose perspective we inhabit. Some of the experiences repeat, the sand, the dust, perhaps a misleading recruiter; and yet, the characters and voices—the realities—they change. Do we each look for the story that makes sense; do we look for <em>our</em> story, whether veteran or civilian? The one—like a wife or husband—that appears to complete the picture. The figurative children—more than one—that we understand came from our blood, sweat and cells, our experience. Something that makes sense, until it doesn’t. And yet it might still be ours—our war, our country, our triumph or mistake. The thing—memory, event, person—that makes us think or makes us want to forget, or both.</p> <p> </p> <p>In reading <a href="http://www.kevincpowers.com/">Kevin Powers</a>’ enchanting novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Yellow-Birds-A-Novel/dp/0316219347/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1365702995&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=yellow+birds"><em>The Yellow Birds</em></a>—one might ask, is it problematic to write an enchanting book about war? Through the lens of the narrator, Private Bartle, and his friend and fellow soldier Murph, we go to Iraq—specific in some of its details of place (“lounging in the dust beneath a large shade tree on base”) and yet generic enough that it <a href="http://chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/01/05/book-review-the-yellow-birds-by-kevin-powers/">has been argued</a> by veteran writers such as <a href="http://chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/04/04/two-essays-two-reactions-two-very-different-americas/">Chris Hernandez</a>, author of the novel <a href="http://chrishernandezauthor.com/about/"><em>Proof of Our Resolve</em></a>, this could be any war. Powers’ novel contains moments of tension and insight that speak to war from an internal place, the language more poetic and melancholy than adrenaline-infused, even in battle:</p> <p> </p> <p><em>I hated the way I loved [Sergeant Sterling] when I inched up out of the terror and returned fire, seeing him shooting too, smiling the whole time, screaming, the whole rage and hate of these few acres, alive and spreading, in and through him.</em></p> <p> </p> <p>Could be a father’s or uncle’s war—could be Vietnam—could be the war people want to read, something made bigger, less grounded in one immediate moment, than the intensity of battle if dramatized in any kind of real time. This is philosophical; and it is digestible. And then we wonder: is this a flaw; or is it the point?</p> <p> </p> <p>Who is the veteran-writer—who is Powers—writing for? For himself: to unpack the crushed events of experience, memory, an unreal reality. For other veterans: needing to see their own experience rendered. For those who did not go to war, but must, either as an act of empathy or for necessary cohesion of a nation—as readers and thinkers and members of a complicated humanity—must make the attempt to understand. For some ever-morphing combination of the three….</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:<br /> <em>Kara Krauze is a contributing writer at </em>Highbrow Magazine.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Photos: New America Media; Dept. of the Air Force (Creative Commons)</strong></p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war literature</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-war-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american war books</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war books</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tim-obrien" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">tim o&#039;brien</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/dust-dust" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">dust to dust</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/benjamin-busch" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">benjamin busch</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/kevin-powers" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">kevin powers</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/yellow-birds" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">the yellow birds</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-afghanistan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war in Afghanistan</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mash" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">MASH</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/jarhead" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">jarhead</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mad-men" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mad Men</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/chris-hernandez" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">chris hernandez</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Kara Krauze</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 10 May 2013 13:46:30 +0000 tara 2834 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2420-reading-st-century-american-war-stories-heroes-hell-and-back#comments The Fall of Baghdad and the Betrayal of the Iraqi Military Command https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2287-fall-baghdad-and-betrayal-iraqi-military-command <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 12:58</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumWar.jpg?itok=tCsBrang"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumWar.jpg?itok=tCsBrang" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2013/03/iraq-stories-of-betrayal-swirl-around-fall-of-baghdad.php">New America Media</a> and Al Akhbar:</p> <p>  </p> <p> Ten years after the fall of Baghdad at the hands of US forces, rumors of a breach in the Iraqi military command that facilitated the invasion continue to swirl.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Some analysts trace the problem back to 1979 when professional military men in the upper ranks were replaced by Baath Party cadre with little experience. Some were promoted simply for being related to President Saddam Hussein, like his son-in-law Hussein Kamel, who became a top commander.</p> <p>  </p> <p> On the eve of the invasion in 2003, Iraq’s traditional army was of modest strength, having been exhausted by two wars and years of debilitating sanctions. Alongside it stood the well-trained and heavily armed Republican Guard, headed by the president’s son Qusay and a number of other close relatives.</p> <p>  </p> <p> One of the more controversial members of the top command was Maher Sufian al-Tikriti, a cousin of the president, who later became the target of a series of accusations that he made a deal with the invading Americans to take Baghdad.</p> <p>  </p> <p> After the invasion, many stories emerged of betrayals occurring in the military command. One officer explains that such acts did not take the traditional form of changing sides or ordering soldiers to stand down.</p> <p>  </p> <p> “There were a lot of opportunistic officers around the president who hid many things from him, in order to gain his favor,” he told Quds Press.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Others confirm that there were “some betrayals, but they were not restricted to the military. They included political and party leaders.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumsaddamhussein%20%28Wiki%29.jpg" style="width: 453px; height: 550px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> More than anyone else, it was Tikriti who was under the most suspicion for having struck a deal with the Americans.There were many rumors during the war of treason by, for example, then-minister of defense Sultan Hashem was wrongly reported by a Saudi newspaper to have been executed.</p> <p>  </p> <p> More than anyone else, it was Tikriti who was under the most suspicion for having struck a deal with the Americans to make sure that the nearly 100,000-strong Republican Guard under his command will not stand in the way of the invading forces, according to reports in the French press and a recent book on the fall of Baghdad.</p> <p>  </p> <p> However, the story may not be completely accurate, as another account has emerged in which Tikriti made a decision, along with one of his colleagues, to spare their soldiers more death by negotiating with the Americans. And in fact, he did order his forces stationed between Tikrit and Baghdad to pull out and refrain from engaging the enemy.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi confirmed reports that Tikriti had made a deal with the CIA in which he would pull out his forces in return for protecting him and several other officers and their families, in addition to sparing a number of bridges in Baghdad.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Tikriti, for his part, denies accusations of treason, with reports emerging from a Baathist website, al-Basra Net, that the man fought to the very end, citing the testimony of another officer in the Lebanese daily an-Nahar, who claimed that he was arrested by the occupation forces in the summer of 2004 for supporting the armed resistance.</p> <p>  </p> <p> As for Wafiq Samarai, who was head of military intelligence under Saddam and later became an advisor to President Jalal Talabani, he is skeptical of any major breaches in the Republican Guard command.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The fall of Baghdad, he explains, “was not due to a deal between Tikriti and the Americans. The real reason was poor strategic planning, in addition to the weakness of the military command and the interference of civilians in military affairs, not to mention the technical superiority of the American forces.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition of <em>Al Akhbar</em>. </p> <p>  </p> <p> <em><strong>Photos: New America Media and Wikipedia Commons.</strong></em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fall-baghdad" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">fall of baghdad</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraqi-military" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">iraqi military</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saddam-hussein" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Saddam Hussein</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/baath-party" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">baath party</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/invasion-iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">invasion of iraq</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/occupation-iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">occupation of iraq</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Alaa al-Lami</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:58:07 +0000 tara 2577 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2287-fall-baghdad-and-betrayal-iraqi-military-command#comments A Year After Withdrawal, One Million Iraqi Refugees Remain Displaced https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1866-year-after-withdrawal-one-million-iraqi-refugees-remain-displaced <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 12/19/2012 - 09:23</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumiraqirefugees%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=0lKuLrgE"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumiraqirefugees%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=0lKuLrgE" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> From <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2012/12/no-relief-for-iraqi-refugees-one-year-after-us-withdrawal.php">New America Media</a>:</p> <p>  </p> <p> Five years ago the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) described the Iraqi refugee crisis as “the largest long-term population movement in the Middle East since the displacement of Palestinians following the creation of Israel in 1948."</p> <p>  </p> <p> Not much has changed at the end of 2012, a year after US forces pulled out of Iraq. “Some one million people remain displaced throughout the country, of whom hundreds of thousands live in dire conditions,” the UNHCR recently noted. “Most are unable to return to their areas of origin because of the volatile security situation, the destruction of their homes, or lack of access to services.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> More than 2 million have fled to neighboring countries, where many subsist in designated resettlement areas. The United Nations reports that women are increasingly forced to resort to prostitution. Child labor has become a scourge. In Syria, more than 30 percent of Iraqi children are without schooling.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Yet while the United States had a direct hand in creating the exodus by invading and occupying that country for nearly a decade, spurring a civil war between religious groups, it is now more or less washing its hands of the refugee problem. Since 2007, the US has admitted a mere 64,000 asylum seekers - a pittance compared to the millions displaced -- and the number of refugees admitted has been going steadily down since 2010.</p> <p>  </p> <p> As of 2011, more than 30,000 Iraqis have applied for a Special Immigrant Visa, specifically created by Congress to expedite their cases, but to date only about 4,000 have been processed, and over one-third have been denied.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Perhaps the real problem has more to do with politics: Accepting Iraqi refugees would be akin to America admitting defeat in the aftermath of its efforts to pacify Iraq and the region. Former president George W. Bush prematurely declared Iraq a country of “freedom” and “democracy,” while President Obama, as a candidate in 2008, acknowledged that alleviating the Iraqi refugee crisis was America’s “moral obligation.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumObamaStateofUnion_0.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 400px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> “The Iraqis who stood with us are being targeted for assassination, yet our doors are shut. That is not how we treat our friends," candidate Obama declared. Alas, President Obama has done essentially nothing to abate the crisis since then.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Over a thousand translators who once worked for American military forces and British armies, and foreign journalists -- not to mention those hired by US companies doing reconstruction and those working in the Green Zone -- have been targeted and killed by various insurgent groups. Those who survived and remain are now living lives exponentially imperiled by the pullout of US forces.</p> <p>  </p> <p> History reminds us that there is a clear moral if not geopolitical mandate for the United States to help Iraq's refugees. In Vietnam, many of those who allied themselves with America during the war and stayed in the country were later sent to re-education camps; some were summarily executed and many were stripped of their properties. A far worse fate is likely for those who threw in their lot with America in Iraq, and who are now quickly becoming victims of its latest foreign policy failure.</p> <p>  </p> <p> When Congress debated whether to let in Vietnamese refugees in 1975, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern said it was better for the "Vietnamese to stay in Vietnam," and West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd thought that "barmaids, prostitutes and criminals" should be screened out. But President Ford threw his support behind the Vietnamese outcasts.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Witnessing such an act today from the president would seem unlikely, given rising anti-immigrant sentiment and a collective fear of mass migration from the Middle East. Besides, how could Obama accept Iraqi refugees when just last year, Secretary of Defense Leon Paneta declared the war has given “birth to an independent, free and sovereign Iraq?”</p> <p>  </p> <p> "We're not meeting our basic obligation to the Iraqis who've been imperiled because they worked for the U.S. government," noted Kirk W. Johnson in a <em>New York Times</em> article a few years back. Since then, Johnson, who penned “To Be a Friend is Fatal: A Story from the Aftermath of America at War,” has worked tirelessly to help those who once allied with the US army. "We could not have functioned without their hard work, and it's shameful that we've nothing to offer them in their bleakest hour," he wrote. Many who once allied with the U.S. now are in hiding, their application to the United States facing glitches and denials of employment. For those in Afghanistan, take heed: To befriend Uncle Sam can indeed be fatal.</p> <p>  </p> <p> But it’s inevitable that each time he ventures abroad, Uncle Sam leaves an unfinished story, and nowhere is it most unfinished than in Iraq, where despite flowery speeches regarding freedom and sovereignty by the Obama Administration, despite assurances that tyranny has been "cast aside," the tragedy and displacement caused by the United States invasion, occupation and abandonment is of an epic proportion.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>New America Media editor Andrew Lam is the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005), which recently won a Pen American "Beyond the Margins" award and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost" is due out in 2013. He has lectured and read his work widely at many universities.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong><em>Photos: New America Media</em></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraqi-refugees" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraqi refugees</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Obama</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/us-government" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">u.s. government</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/displaced-refugees" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">displaced refugees</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/united-nations" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">United Nations</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:23:19 +0000 tara 2069 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1866-year-after-withdrawal-one-million-iraqi-refugees-remain-displaced#comments A Look Back at the Iraq War and U.S. Troop Withdrawal https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1852-look-back-iraq-war-and-us-troop-withdrawal <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Thu, 12/13/2012 - 13:16</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumiraqwargraffitti%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=-k07fQKB"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumiraqwargraffitti%20%28NAM%29.jpg?itok=-k07fQKB" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lydon B. Johnson and chief architect of the Vietnam War, once likened his wartime experience to being in a kind of fog. "What the fog of war means," he said, "is that war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate -- and we kill people unnecessarily."</p> <p>  </p> <p> The director Errol Morris, best known for his films "The Thin Blue Line" and "A Brief History of Time," used that statement to give his documentary about McNamara its title. In an interview, Morris said, "I look at the McNamara story as 'the fog of war ate my homework' excuse. After all, if war is so complex, then no one is responsible."</p> <p>  </p> <p> No doubt Morris would agree that the same fog has now crept in and enveloped Iraq, one year after the U.S. withdrew from that theatre.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The war in Iraq started with Operation Shock and Awe but ended with a fizzle, and, some would argue, as an epic exercise in human futility -- neither victory nor defeat was clear. Instead, with the exit of the last American troops, the final meaning of the war is muddled.  In its wake, the war left us with more questions than answers:</p> <p>  </p> <p> Is this the victory we had longed for since Vietnam? Is this all we could muster after we invaded and occupied Iraq for nine years, supposedly to find weapons of mass destruction? Is Iraq now truly a free and sovereign nation, given the unending conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims there? And even if it is, was it worth the squandering of American blood and treasures, not to mention the killing of Iraqi civilians as "collateral damage"? Why liberate Iraq and not, say, North Korea or Syria, two countries that actually possess weapons of mass destruction? Why freedom and sovereignty for Iraq, if that was truly our purpose, and not, say, Tibet or Cuba? And if our national interest was at stake, have we protected that interest now that we have spilled precious blood and depleted our national treasury? Why, indeed, Iraq?</p> <p>  </p> <p> Historians will bicker over the answers but this much is certain: the war in Iraq claimed 4,487 American lives, and left another 32,226 Americans wounded, according to Pentagon statistics. According to Iraqbodycount.org, the number of Iraqi casualties ranges between 103,000 and 114,000 during the U.S. occupation. The Congressional Research Service has estimated the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom at around $806 billion dollars, while President Obama has said the cost of the Iraq war is over $1 trillion.</p> <p>  </p> <p> We closed a chapter in Iraq but the fog of war hasn't lifted. Instead one is left with an unsettling feeling, a bitterness in the mouth. We lost more than we hoped to gain. It's not defeat exactly, but in an age of perpetual war, it's clearly no victory. And in the end, if there's no clear objective, then isn't killing people objectionable and unnecessary?</p> <p>  </p> <p> But as the fog drifts about, it's as if there is a collective will to forget in this country. Let's forget Abu Ghraib, where we tortured and sexually humiliated our captives. Let's forget about the weapons of mass destruction, since we couldn't find any. Let's forget Haditha, where a My Lai-style massacre was perpetrated by our drunken soldiers. Let's forget waterboarding being condoned and supported by politicians. Let's forget extraordinary rendition, where we kidnapped thousands of world citizens and flew them directly to secret prisons for interrogation. Let's forget that there's still a military prison at Guantánamo where political prisoners are being kept without due process, which has led to suicides. Let's forget the 2 million displaced Iraqi refugees who continue to subsist in neighboring countries or are displaced in their own.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/medium--soldiers.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 402px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> It is worth noting that right after the war in Iraq drew to an end, Congress passed a defense budget of a whopping $662 billion with flying colors, $16 billion more than President Obama expected. In 2012 that number increased to $707.5 billion. No doubt much is needed for the new drone wars, with assassination a more assured strategy for success than ground invasion.</p> <p>  </p> <p> There was no fighting to speak of in a Congress known for its bickering and quarrels. There was no controversy over spending that amount of money among elected officials otherwise known for their push to cut basic services. The war industrial complex needs to be fed. Victory may no longer be needed in an era when wars are fought not to be won or lost, but under the pretext of keeping America safe.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Morris' documentary about McNamara has a subtitle: "Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara." One of them is: "Believing and seeing are both often wrong." What that means to McNamara is that doing the right thing turned out to be an enormous error. Too bad that lesson hasn't sunk in. Americans were duped into invading Iraq. And no one has yet taken responsibility for America's most disastrous mistake of the 21st century -- invading a country that did not attack us and that did not pose any real threat to the American people.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Alas, the violent deeds and aggression of empires seem to depend proportionally on the complacency, and therefore tacit approval, of their citizenry. And when a society hides behind the apparatus of bellicose foreign policies, allowing its government almost unchecked power for pre-emptive strikes and invasions, the only logical outcome is injustice and cruelty; and so the fog of war can only thicken with the years.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>New America Media editor, Andrew Lam is the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005), which won a Pen American "Beyond the Margins" award and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost" is due out in 2013. He has lectured and read his work widely at many universities.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong><em>Photos: New America Media; Wikipedia Commons.</em></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/troop-withdrawal" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">troop withdrawal</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/us-soldiers-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">us soldiers</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/obama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Obama</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war in iraq</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-afghanistan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war in Afghanistan</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:16:35 +0000 tara 2042 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1852-look-back-iraq-war-and-us-troop-withdrawal#comments The Descendants: PTSD and the Latest Generation of War Casualties https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1259-descendants-ptsd-and-latest-generation-war-casualties <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 07/02/2012 - 22:01</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumIraqWar_0.jpg?itok=2CJKVHnI"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumIraqWar_0.jpg?itok=2CJKVHnI" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> While war may be hell in every generation in which it rears its bloody-horned head, the participants are never the same. There is simply no accounting for the differences between the men fighting in Afghanistan and those who fought in, say, the Guadalcanal. Because of this, we must not treat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as if they have a precedent. They do not. Theirs is a war of insidious casualties, where so much fighting takes place in the days, months and years after they've returned home. Although the same could be said for all modern American conflicts, starting with World War II, the psychological struggles veterans face have seemingly become darker and more daunting in recent years.</p> <p>  </p> <p> A <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42980">study done by the Congressional Budget Office</a> from 2004 to 2009 found that one in four veterans of recent American wars suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. If the statistical findings of that study hold for the  2 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, that means at least half a million veterans suffer from PTSD. If this isn't staggering enough, consider this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-veterans-death-the-nations-shame.html">crippling dose of perspective</a>: Veterans are committing suicide 25 times more often than U.S. soldiers are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq; 6,500 veterans commit suicide every year; and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are 20 times more likely to kill themselves than average Americans. This is the barrage of shameful truths born out of a pair of obscure wars. These statistics inspire both indignation and perplexity: We should be doing more to help these self-sacrificing heroes. And what exactly is afflicting them that they should so desperately need help in the first place?</p> <p>  </p> <p> The term “post-traumatic stress disorder” has rapidly become so assimilated into the national shorthand when discussing war veterans that most of us never bother to understand it. After all, the words "trauma" and "stress" are right there in the title, and isn't that sufficiently expository? But the malady is far more complicated and ruthlessly elegant than that. On a fundamental level, <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml">PTSD</a> is a severe anxiety disorder brought on by exposure to traumatic events.</p> <p>  </p> <p> But the criteria for diagnosis are manifold; if it weren't, the percentage of veterans with PTSD would probably be much higher. People diagnosed with PTSD suffer from flashbacks and nightmares, have trouble sleeping, are emotionally deadened, and struggle painfully to lead normal adult lives. Previously stable relationships, especially with spouses or significant others, splinter and crack like they were under some surreptitious weight. Similar to depression, people with PTSD have feelings of gloom and hopelessness about the future. In fact, they have trouble conceptualizing a future at all: they are tormented by the feeling that their lives will not last very long.</p> <p>  </p> <p> One can trace a cheerless narrative of veteran suicides in recent years: Sgt. Jacob (Jackie) Blaylock, who shot himself in 2007; William Hamilton, who stepped in front of a train in 2010; and more recently and luridly, Abel Gutierrez, who killed his mother, 11-year-old sister, and himself <a href="http://www.todaysthv.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=202068">this past March</a>. There are literally thousands more stories like these. In fact, the Army has seen an 80 percent increase in suicides among active soldiers between 2004 and 2008 alone. It's hard to imagine, but there was a time <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Health/study-80-percent-army-suicides-start-iraq-war/story?id=15872301">not too long ago</a> when the suicide rate of soldiers was close to that of U.S. civilians. Now that those days are firmly, irrevocably behind us, the government and VA are still trying to catch up.  Besides the culprit that immediately springs to mind—PTSD—it’s difficult to discern what else might be responsible for this suicide epidemic. We began diagnosing PTSD after the Vietnam War, and it had traveled under previous names, such as shell shock and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand-yard_stare">thousand-yard stare,</a> in the two World Wars before that. In other words, post-traumatic stress isn't an explosive, game-changing new disorder. There must be other factors.</p> <p>  </p> <p> We might find a clue in the reported rise of depression and anxiety among soldiers, which could simply be a reflection of <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/therapy-matters/201105/mental-illness-the-rise-in-the-us">the rise of mental illness</a> among Americans in general. Perhaps this, then, tells us that our psychological composition is different than it was during much of the 20th century. As far as the data indicates, our minds are more fragile, more vulnerable to extreme conditions than ever before. Of course a worthy counter-argument could be made that such statistics are sociological, a result of overdiagnosis and a culture that covets prescription medication. But that doesn't explain the increase in veteran suicides. Maybe an age of manic technological overreliance has made us hypersensitive and anxious, hardly traits that prosper under combat conditions or when compounded with severe trauma. Or maybe Americans just have less emotional skin than in decades past, as the <a href="http://www.webmd.com/news/20100902/prescription-drug-use-on-the-rise-in-the-u-s">meteoric rise</a> in prescription drug use suggests. If Americans have become less resilient, it is not an indictment on them, and certainly not an indictment on combat veterans. It just means that more attention needs to be paid to the ramifications of a more shatterable psyche.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumussoldiers%20%28RafiqMaqboolAP%29.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 434px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> In its 2012 <a href="http://media.iava.org/iava_policy_agenda_2012.pdf">Policy Agenda</a>, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) points to a clear collection of facts that might explain suicide culture among recent veterans. After men and women have returned home from tours in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, they immediately face a panorama of obstacles. These include unemployment, which for veterans is somewhere between 12 and 17 percent, well above the national average; homelessness, which affects twice as many veterans between the ages of 18 and 30 as it does civilians in that same demographic; marital problems; physical and neurological afflictions; and, of course, post-traumatic stress, depression, and other mental health issues.</p> <p>  </p> <p> In other words, almost every single challenge that makes life difficult for civilians is magnified for veterans. As if it weren't hard enough for them to endure one or more years of harrowing fear, anxiety and trauma overseas, many of them come home to a new bitter crucible. It's really no wonder they are giving up on their lives. What's more, these two wars are completely obscured from the public. We don't talk or even argue about them anymore; they don't drive political or, dare I say, cultural debate; and the media would rather turn her burnishing eye to big personalities than anonymous vets. We simply act like they do not exist. We've turned our heroes into misfits and ghosts.  </p> <p>  </p> <p> The U.S. Army is still trying to wrap its head around the causes of suicides among soldiers, as evidenced by recent investments into research on the epidemic. They're finally beginning to understand that these soldiers are different. They come from a long line of U.S. war veterans, but as no American generation is the same, from Beatniks to Hippies to Generations X and Y, no generation of U.S. soldier is the same. In a 2012 <a href="http://media.iava.org/iava_2012_member_survey.pdf">survey</a> by the IAVA, 37 percent of the members who completed the survey said they personally knew a soldier who committed suicide. That is a frightening statistic that points to a rising suicide culture among veterans, one that veterans are aware of, but that people on the outside never stop to fathom. In addition, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they knew a veteran who needed care for mental health issues. But when asked if veterans were getting the care they needed for such mental health injuries (which are of course part and parcel with suicides), two-thirds said they were not.</p> <p>  </p> <p> We know that mental health problems and the suicides they can culminate in are sweeping through the veteran ranks, and that not nearly enough is being done about it. So where does the buck stop? Well, technically it stops at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA has rightly <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/va-mental-health-system-puts-numbers-ahead-of-helping-vets-according-to-testimony/2012/04/25/gIQABTfEhT_blog.html">come under heavy fire</a> for perceived negligence in the face of the climbing suicide toll. But really, we can't put all the blame on the government. There is a national culpability here that should be addressed.</p> <p>  </p> <p> While average Americans can dispute the virtues and tangible benefits of overseas conflicts ad infinitum, they cannot argue with the fact that young men and women are sacrificing themselves for the betterment of our country. Soldiers risk everything, and in so many cases give up everything, for their country and its citizens. Rarely do the country and citizens offer repayment; when they do, it is never in full. The VA might cobble together a benefits package, health care, and some mental rehabilitation for individual veterans, but it’s often not enough, especially when dealing with PTSD. Veterans should be part of the political discourse and national conversation, and these voices should drive improved benefits, services and an enduring expression of gratitude.</p> <p>  </p> <p> The American government and its citizenry alike should feel responsible for the well-being of  their broken heroes. They sacrificed for us, and hardly do we ever sacrifice for them. The devastating horrors of war are hidden inside hospitals, houses and morgues, instead of being illuminated by the media.  Americans fight for less taxes, more job opportunities, and in the case of election-year partisanship, fighting's sake, and don’t raise a finger in defense of the mentally afflicted soldiers who protected us.</p> <p>  </p> <p> It's one thing to reject the political act of war-waging, but it’s very much another to reject (or forget, blow off, evade, it's all the same) the people who fought for you. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are killing themselves not because of some incipient phantom cost of war that we're yet to discover, but because we're not there for them.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Mike Mariani, a </em>Highbrow Magazine <em>contributor, is an adjunct English professor and freelance writer.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong><em>​Photos: New America Media; Rafiq Maghbool (AP).</em></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/us-soldiers" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">U.S. soldiers</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-afghanistan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war in Afghanistan</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/veterans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">veterans</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/suicide" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">suicide</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/post-traumatic-stress-disorder" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">post traumatic stress disorder</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/depression-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">depression</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/department-veterans-affairs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Department of Veterans Affairs</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Mike Mariani</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Tue, 03 Jul 2012 02:01:08 +0000 tara 1189 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1259-descendants-ptsd-and-latest-generation-war-casualties#comments