Response to American Sniper demonstrates vast spectrum of war experience

I’m cleaning, like I do when I’m anxious. My husband Colin is thinking about shoes.

“Women and children,” he says. “You determine their intent by their shoes.”

We saw American Sniper earlier. All through the movie I fidgeted, like I do when I’m anxious. Colin sat rigid. Now he’s thinking about shoes.

“Women have no cause to wear shoes with tread,” he says. “So if they are, they are far more likely to blow you up.”

I say something like, “that makes sense,” because it does, and because I don’t know how else to respond. I often don’t know how to respond when Colin’s brain is in Afghanistan. I know his mind needs to dwell there for a while. It bounces between mountain passes and desert, between quiet conversations and the rumble of Humvee motors, or gunfire. Often it fixates on the suicide bomber who rammed his truck into Colin’s convoy. The young Afghan boy caught in the explosion. Colin’s gunner, his friend, engulfed in flames.

My brain goes to Afghanistan sometimes, as well, but to another time, another location, another mission. Colin served as an infantryman in 2006. My role in 2009-2010 as part of a nation-building Provincial Reconstruction Team was largely bureaucratic. However, when we met in 2012, Colin and I connected through our disparate war stories. We talked. He lent me his then-unpublished manuscript of war poetry. I shared an essay about redeploying. Our writing, our experiences, were drastically different. But they were also the same.

I discovered this connection, too, with my mother, who served as a nurse in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. When I came home from Afghanistan, despite the decades, borders, and job duties that separated our wars, Mom and I found common elements weaving through each deployment, and the aftermath.

In the weeks since its release, American Sniper has generated heated discussion of many colors: respect and admiration for what Chris Kyle and his family endured, attacks on his character, praise for the film’s raw and intimate portrayal, admonishment for lack of political context, rebuff for the use of the mythical/hero formula and appreciation for the same.

Perhaps the most impassioned debate comes from within the veteran community. I’ve seen numerous articles and social media posts from veterans proclaiming that the movie did not accurately represent their time in the military or in Iraq. Many express the valid concern that this contemporary war film will become the contemporary war film and will shape (or perpetuate) public opinion. Others rejoice that the movie has spurred conversation, regardless of the nuances.

The response mirrors war itself. War is a spectrum. Or more accurately, war is a complicated graph of various separate but related spectrums: of danger and comfort, of excitement and fear and humor and absurdity and friendship and guilt and shame and pride.

Veterans easily point fingers at those who had it worse, or better, or different.  We elevate some to the top of the heroism hierarchy. The rest are left muddling somewhere in the middle.

Kyle’s war certainly more closely resembles Colin’s war than it does mine. Still, Colin never engaged in urban combat (“urban” isn’t a term associated with most of Afghanistan). Colin worked directly with the local population, rather than viewing them solely through a rifle’s scope. He didn’t deploy multiple times. He didn’t leave a family at home.

But the movie left him thinking about shoes.

“I shouldn’t be sad,” Colin says. “I didn’t even come close to doing what Kyle did. But I did more than most, so it’s not like I feel insufficient. I don’t feel depressed. I just feel sad.”

I feel sad, though for different reasons. I’m remembering being on the other side, when my mom deployed and left me behind. I’m thinking about all the things I might have done differently in Afghanistan, all the things I might have done better. I’m trying to figure out what “better” would have been.

I’m also worried about Colin, because I’ve seen his sadness spiral deep and dark and lasting.

No, Kyle’s war was not Colin’s war. It wasn’t my war, or my mom’s war. It wasn’t anyone’s war but Kyle’s. Yet his narrative contains threads Colin and I, and many other veterans, can latch onto.

For the general public, American Sniper provides one perspective. One perspective, from one man, in his unique personal circumstances—and filtered through a Hollywood lens. One perspective cannot come close to a full representation of war.

But it helps.

As long as we have war, we need discussions of war, stimulated by literature, film and other mediums. The public bears responsibility for consuming and engaging with this art, in all its forms, from all its sources: veterans, journalists, civilians, Iraqis, and Afghans.

However, the onus is on veterans, too: for producing it. In order for the public to listen, read, view, veterans must speak, write, create. If we hope to achieve an environment in which veterans can have comfortable dialogue with non-veterans, where discussions of war are candid, not taboo and not sensationalized; if we hope to bridge the oft-referenced “civilian-military divide,” we, the veterans, must lay the groundwork. We must stop the finger-pointing and heroic hierarchies. We must put aside the pride and stubbornness and self-sustaining ideas that one type of soldier has more right to tell his or her story than another. We must welcome all narratives: familiar, traditional, and not. 

More narratives facilitate both a greater public understanding of war and increased opportunities for each individual veteran to find a story—or a thread—to which he or she can relate.

“I’m sad,” Colin says again. “I don’t quite know what to do with that.”

Eventually, he settles on sleep. The next morning he decides to join a support group at the VA.

I left my heart in Afghanistan

I guess I’ve been slacking a bit in the blog department. Sorry. Got caught up in the whirlwind of a new semester (more on that later). In the meantime, many thanks to my friend, Nate Jacobs, for saving me the trouble of coming up with a whole post. These insightful and articulate thoughts come from him:

I seem to learn more and more about myself every day since I left the military. Today I came across a guy who happened to be an Iraq veteran. Meeting another vet was like giving water to a thirsty man. I really haven't encountered any other vets since coming to Portland. Instantly there was a bond at what I haven't experienced in a while. Finally, someone who understood. Finally, someone who I didn't have to explain myself to. Our conversation became a game of how many war stories we could share we before we had to go our ways. I can tell he felt the same relief that I did having encountered another vet.

This just goes to show the power of the military bond. I left the military of my own choice. However I left a large chunk of my heart and soul in Iraq. I really wanted the Iraqis to learn and take control of their country. I really wanted the violence to stop. I had committed 100% of my being to doing whatever was in my power to make that happen. Like a Band-Aid ripped off a wound, it's not a clean separation. There's a little bit of Iraq still left in me. I can only hope there's a little bit of me left in Iraq.

Oddly enough, tonight I came home after the experience and turned on the TV. There was a TV show about a bunch of vets honoring a recently fallen 101 Airborne troop who had died in Iraq. The imagery and the playing of taps instantly brought me to tears and I cried like a child. That proverbial Band-Aid covers a wound that will always stay fresh. A wound that I never want to heal. I left the military. The military will never leave me. Iraq affected me profoundly and I'm grateful for the experience.

Well said, Nate.

Sometimes I forget how much Afghanistan affected me. No, that’s a lie. Sometimes I deny it. Nobody really wants to be tethered to – let alone defined by – a singular experience. Even an Olympic champion probably doesn’t want to be known just as an Olympic champion. Every champion has a face and a name and a personality, and a multitude of experiences that come before and after that crowning event.

But it’s impossible – and erroneous – to try to separate the two. That moment in the arena, in the pool, on the track, was the culmination of months and years of blood, sweat and tears, intense focus and commitment, passion and perseverance. And it made an impact; sent reverberations from the champion’s life to the world in the pages of history books. You can take the champion off the podium, but his footprints remain.

You can take the girl out of Afghanistan, but you can’t take Afghanistan out of the girl.

I learned so much from my military experience. I discover new lessons every day. Granted, some of the lessons suck: Life isn’t fair, idealism isn’t realistic, people have the capacity for tremendous cruelty, no one looks good in tapered light gray sweatpants. But in the real world, the bad comes with the good; and someday, hopefully, eventually, they even out. Or maybe, if you work at it, they even leave you in the positive. That’s what I’m shooting for when I pour my wine glass a little more than half-full.

Like Nate, I truly hope I left a piece of myself in Afghanistan. I’ll never know for sure. And I think it’s the not knowing that makes the separation so hard for me. An Olympic champion has the history books; concrete written proof that he left his mark on the world. In a warzone, nothing is quite so concrete. You have the statistics: number of missions completed, bad guys killed, schools built. But what does that mean? Even the concrete walls around the schools my team helped build could be whittled away with the picking of a fingernail.

Nothing is concrete, except the memories.

So where does that leave us? Inexorably tied to a place and a time we’ll never be again; perhaps sometimes even wistful for it because whether we like it or not, it does, at least to some extent, define us.

I guess I’ll think of myself as a puzzle. Afghanistan and the military are big pieces that don’t necessarily fit snugly with everything else. Do I need to bend and reshape them? Or mold everything else around that chunk? Or do I need to forge new pieces to fill the gaps? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll always be a bit skewed and misshapen. And maybe, in the end, I’m better for it.

At least I won’t be wearing tapered light gray sweatpants.

Looking for solid ground

So I started this blog at the worst possible time. That’s a bit melodramatic, but it has been a crazy couple of weeks. I apologize to all my loyal readers (hi Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa!) for the lapse in posts.

Now, here’s a story from a few days ago:

I don’t know how the conversation started, but it ended with convictions. It was the second time I’d had that conversation that day, so this time I knew exactly what to say.

I was talking to a classmate; one of the people here who seems so fascinated by stories about my time in the military. It’s a fascination I don’t fully understand – I think we have a way of un-glorifying our own experiences – but I’ll go with it because, frankly, it feels nice to be fascinating. This person is also someone with strong convictions, someone who knows exactly where he stands. Whether I agree with him or not, he’s the kind of person I’m a little jealous of right now because in so many ways I don’t know where I stand anymore.

I think I’ve felt that way for a while, but it wasn’t until I met with a Veteran’s Affairs (VA) therapist earlier that morning that I fully acknowledged it. She let me ramble and helped sort through my jumbled thoughts until I put my finger on it. So when the topic came up later with my classmate, I was prepared.

In a nutshell, this is what I told him:
I used to have strong opinions about everything: from politics to race relations, religion to foreign policy, whether or not Bud Light can be categorized as a real beer. I used to have a firm stance on solid ground. Now I’m teetering on the shifting sands of uncertainty.

And I told him why:
My solid ground was propped up by a combination of nature and nurture. I was raised in suburbia in the Pacific Northwest in a good, conservative, patriotic family. My grandfathers and mother served in the military. When I was 18, I went into ROTC, and four years later into the Air Force, where I spent four-and-a-half years. Somewhere in that eight-plus year stretch I “came of age.” I “found myself.” Or whatever cheesy title you want to give it. Like most people do in their late teens and 20s, I figured out who I was and formed opinions that correlated to that persona. It’s a vulnerable time in everyone’s life, full of opposing influences. And because I was in the military while my self-discovery was taking place, the military’s institutionalized values to some extent became my own.

But then I went to Afghanistan and everything got shaken up. I saw the best and worst in humanity, crammed together in the same tiny spaces – even within the same people. I saw sides of issues I’d never been privy to before: bureaucracy, corruption, censorship, suffering, desperation. In short, I got a new perspective, a new filter through which to view the world. And through that filter, from where I stood, nothing looked quite right any more. I tried putting down the filter, but I couldn’t. So my only choice was to stand somewhere else. I’m still looking for solid ground.

For a long time when I got back from Afghanistan, and then when I got out of the Air Force, I felt very unsettled. That’s a whole topic for another blog post sometime, but it’s important here to note that mostly I don’t feel that way anymore. Except for my convictions. I have some values, of course, that I’ve maintained and that will never change. And I have “hot button issues” that are entirely new to me – things that jolt me into a Hulk-like alter-ego I never realized I had until I got back from my deployment. But when it comes to my stance on some of those “big issues,” I’m still floundering. I hate floundering. Floundering makes me uncomfortable.

But I realized yesterday, if I really think about it, I’m glad I have that filter. Because now I have a solid, worldly foundation of life experience on which to build my patch of solid ground when I figure out where I want to put it.

I recently got out of the military. I’m back in “liberal academia." And I’m surrounded by a new group of people: people who don’t know much about the military; smart, eclectic, worldly, passionate people; artists; people who could have equally heated in-depth conversations about punctuation and about race relations; people from New Hampshire (love you guys!).

In many ways I feel like I’m back at that “coming of age” place again. I don’t have a clean slate (do we ever, really?) but I have an opportunity to reestablish my opinions, my values, my convictions. I am once more being bombarded by opposing influences. But this time I have the power of discernment. It may take me a while, but I know that when I do find my solid ground, it will be mine and mine alone. It will be shaped by my experiences, filtered through my unique lens.

When I find it, I know I’ll be unequivocally comfortable there.

And I will still never drink Bud Light.