[First published in AM New York]
THOSE UNPREDICTABLE extensions of duty and the “Stop-Loss” measures dashed the hopes of many soldiers and their families – but some, at least, were home for Thanksgiving.
Out of harm’s way, they could watch football and TV. But will the TV coverage of their service be anything that they will recognize?
Not according to New Yorker and Army National Guard Lieutenant Paul Rieckhoff, who came back after leading an infantry platoon through some of Baghdad’s worst districts for a year. “There’s a lack of understanding in American culture,” he says, “of what war and combat are really like. Americans don’t have the stomach to see what’s really going on. They think it’s a digital war, they think it’s a video game.”
Perhaps the media are influenced by senior officers like Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. His reaction to people being disturbed by images of Iraqi women and children killed by U.S. soldiers was: “You want a solution? Change the channel.”
From his apartment on the lower East Side, Lt Rieckhoff decided to respond by mounting his own information offensive.
It’s a powerful and useful website called Operation Truth (www.optruth.org), which is a veterans’ and active duty soldiers’ bulletin board.
“We’re aiming for a more direct connection to what our experience in Iraq is really like,” says Rieckhoff.” As well as facts about fighting conditions, equipment shortages and the over-stretching of manpower, there’s an effort to bring reality, or at least virtual reality, from the battlefield to our desktops. A double-click, and footage supplied by soldiers will give us, for instance, a soldier’s-eye view from atop a Humvee trundling across hostile territory.
There’s also accumulating evidence, anecdotally presented – and not yet taken up by the mass media – about the alarming degree of post-traumatic stress symptoms that are now showing up among members of a force that fights at closer quarters and is more exposed in its urban operations than most previous American armies.
“Optruth” had its origins in Rieckhoff’s own shock at how poorly informed he’d been himself as a soldier. “I didn’t think they were going to send me into combat without body-armor, without water. When we were in Baghdad we were given excuses, and when we came home we wanted answers.”
The site proclaims itself as nonpartisan·, despite the obvious political weighting of its many complaints.
Rieckhoff insists that he and his fellow Iraq vets are simply trying to stimulate discussion. ‘We are all over the political spectrum. Some are for the war, some against it, and everything in between. But we want to have a conversation, say what went well, what went badly, and what can we do about it? It seems that’s a conversation that this administration doesn’t what to have.
It’s likely, that since Rieckhoff and his cohorts are still in the reserve, they will be recalled to active duty. Then, he says, “we’ll pick up a rifle, go back on the line and shut our mouths.” But for now he still has a voice.
Listening to Rieckhoff, I hear the echo of another lieutenant – probably dead now, in another country’s army, on a battle-field even further away than Iraq. His advice was given to me when I was a young journalist fresh to combat. “If you really want to know what war is like – just ask a soldier.“
