The first FUCK of a Soldier
The first FUCK of a Soldier
"Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man, with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his First Fuck."
-----Anthony Swofford, "Jarhead", 2003
For both pro-war organizations and anti-war campaigns, veterans will always be the pop-star. They will be highly decorated and welcomed in most public demonstrations; their opinions about war and the war efforts were often citied. For American public, no matter how much books a scholar may have read about one specific war, their opinions are much less persuasive that of those veterans from the battlefield. If the veteran was actually shot in the battle, his words often carries more weight than anybody else.
However, being shot does not mean higher intelligence, and more than that, it does not even mean definite braveness.
However, most veterans do not know much about the reasons of war. Their experience from the battlefield were for most of the time, subjective and emotional, when they general public take their opinion as the standard about the war, they often neglect one thing about those veterans that as participants of the war, they often have no clue about how the war was about as a whole.
Anthony Swofford did an excellent job in giving us an idea about what a war is really about for a soldier in it. Ironically, when reporters were all so eager to have direct contact with G.Is on the battlefield, those soldiers were actually taking interviews as an opportunity to be a show star instead of offering voices of their own as people in the role of soldiers.
The military were anxious about complaints from soldiers about the righteousness of the war, however, for soldiers, that is the last thing they want to consider.
For soldier like Swofford, human rights abuses done by Iraqi soldier were nothing astonishing. Instead, they don't care about people from another country to be abused or even tortured by Iraqis--a group of people they have never heard about. As a normal participants of the war, if granted the opportunity, they will do more than the Iraqi had done. They will "rape them all, kill them all, sell their oil, pillage their gold, sell their children into prostitution."
And when we recall the fact that those war-related campaigns often use these people as their prove of their ideas about the war, we should all be astonished that we use to be so attentive about their opinion.
"I don't care about the Flag and God and Country and Corps"
"I don't care about a New World Order. I don’t care about human rights violations in Kuwait City. "
"Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man, with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his First Fuck."
"Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man, with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his First Fuck."
-----Anthony Swofford, "Jarhead", 2003
For both pro-war organizations and anti-war campaigns, veterans will always be the pop-star. They will be highly decorated and welcomed in most public demonstrations; their opinions about war and the war efforts were often citied. For American public, no matter how much books a scholar may have read about one specific war, their opinions are much less persuasive that of those veterans from the battlefield. If the veteran was actually shot in the battle, his words often carries more weight than anybody else.
However, being shot does not mean higher intelligence, and more than that, it does not even mean definite braveness.
However, most veterans do not know much about the reasons of war. Their experience from the battlefield were for most of the time, subjective and emotional, when they general public take their opinion as the standard about the war, they often neglect one thing about those veterans that as participants of the war, they often have no clue about how the war was about as a whole.
Anthony Swofford did an excellent job in giving us an idea about what a war is really about for a soldier in it. Ironically, when reporters were all so eager to have direct contact with G.Is on the battlefield, those soldiers were actually taking interviews as an opportunity to be a show star instead of offering voices of their own as people in the role of soldiers.
The military were anxious about complaints from soldiers about the righteousness of the war, however, for soldiers, that is the last thing they want to consider.
For soldier like Swofford, human rights abuses done by Iraqi soldier were nothing astonishing. Instead, they don't care about people from another country to be abused or even tortured by Iraqis--a group of people they have never heard about. As a normal participants of the war, if granted the opportunity, they will do more than the Iraqi had done. They will "rape them all, kill them all, sell their oil, pillage their gold, sell their children into prostitution."
And when we recall the fact that those war-related campaigns often use these people as their prove of their ideas about the war, we should all be astonished that we use to be so attentive about their opinion.
"I don't care about the Flag and God and Country and Corps"
"I don't care about a New World Order. I don’t care about human rights violations in Kuwait City. "
"Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man, with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his First Fuck."
posted by Anonymous at 12:25 AM
1 Comments:
Becareful about taking sensational quotes out of context. What makes sense in a chapter of Jarhead becomes shocking when pulled from its paragraph an turned into a title, but perhaps that's what you intended. What point was Swofford trying to make with these provocative comments?
Veterans come in all shapes and sizes, many are quite perceptive and some are not. Just like everybody else. The veteran's perspective is a crucial one. Experts may see the big picture in a way that boots on the ground cannot, but the experiences of veterans have always been the primary source of experts and historians who are trying to make sense of what the war is about. That is exactly why I assigned Swofford's book. It provides the soldier's eye view of activities of the press in the Gulf War. His perspective on what what the pools were hearing is fascinating.
Post a Comment
<< Home