Richie's Picks: GHOSTS OF WAR: MY TOUR OF DUTY by Ryan Smithson, Harper
Teen, April 2009, 307p., ISBN: 978-0-06-166468-7; Libr. ISBN: 978-0-06-166470-0
"Join the Army! Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual
people, and kill them."
-- Vietnam era slogan
"There is a certain romanticism that comes with being young. Young men and
women just released from high school are ready to take on the world. They
want to save it. They try for a while, but then they often get to a certain
age and they give up. Because the world is a big place. It's impossible to
fix, they think.
"And that's the problem I saw. America had given up. And that's why the
World Trade Center was allowed to fall.
"If I don't do something, who will?"
From their youngest years onward through high school, educators put great
energy into training and retraining students to not retaliate physically when
they are offended or attacked by a fellow student. "Use your words!" is the
basis of a lesson taught again and again in more and more sophisticated ways.
So how then does a student develop the notion that he or she should get out
of high school and sign up to get paid to go kill people? How does a high
school graduate get deluded into seeing this as "saving the world?" Why is he
or she not, instead, inspired to get out of school and work through peaceful
means to reduce tensions and conflict? Or, does he or she really believe
that we can bomb the world into submission until there is peace, and that such
a course of action will be the world's salvation?
"Now you have a new family. The only family who understands you are the
fifty soldiers you've grown to love. At first you just put up with their
snoring, their smell. Then you get to like them, their knack for biting sarcasm.
Before you know it, you're one of them. It's like being on a wrestling team,
only you're more pissed off and carrying munitions. That's a platoon of
American soldiers in Iraq."
That's right. The well-trained group effort involved in shooting and
blowing up thousands of people is like being on a wrestling team. Think
camaraderie and team spirit and winning one more for the Gipper.
And though I make no effort to cloak my sarcasm and revulsion for America's
costly and misguided involvement in Iraq, ($3 billion per week plus the
forever ongoing cost of the
damaged lives and shattered families), this is not meant to in any way
diminish the importance of GHOSTS OF WAR, a young man's frequently jaw dropping
account of how he ended up operating large construction machines in the middle
of the Iraq war and what his experience was like:
"These are the people that live in the town that Achmed built.
"An orange bubble rises from the ground. It is a hundred yards away and
growing bigger, higher, brighter. The sound catches up to it. A popping roar
like a thousand synchronized fireworks. I feel the percussion blast in my
head, in my chest, in my legs.
"The bottom of the orange bubble caves in on itself as the explosion turns
into a black mushroom cloud. I see body parts flying through the air.
"Dismembered people.
"I know the location where the bomb exploded. It's smack in the middle of
our route out of the city. We've driven through it many times before. We
were on our way there. It's a populated area full of markets and homes. I have
a sickening hunch that those body parts belong to women and children.
Infidels.
"This is the bomb that killed the people...
"We are stuck in the middle of this armpit of a city. The metallic smell of
gunpowder and the dusty smell of broken concrete fill my nose. We are
stuck, and people are dying. People have died.
"I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to run.
"Instead, I am watching death rain pieces of children from the sky. They
will not wake up tomorrow. They are infidel hamburger.
"I sit in this sorry excuse for a dump truck as the machine gun fire starts.
"These are the guns that accompany the bomb..."
In sharing tales of his experience, Ryan Smithson moves back and forth
between his visit to Ground Zero; the three phases of his nine-weeks worth of
basic training in Missouri; his year of operating machinery in Iraq; his being
plagued by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder upon returning home; and his path to
subsequently writing this book.
"I am petrified and what's scarier is I don't know why. I've never woken up
in the middle of the night for no reason. In Iraq fear was commonplace,
sure, but never while you were sleeping. Never for no reason. We got used to
being afraid. We got so used to it that it wasn't even fear we were dealing
with. It was just humor.
"Now lying in my bed, nothing has ever seemed less humorous. I'm on
American soil, no reason to fear anything, and my heart pounds like a bass drum.
I
wipe the sweat off my forehead and turn over to find a more comfortable
position. Turning puts my back to the door.
"I need to watch that door, I think. Someone is coming to kill me."
While I consider Ryan Smithson to be seriously mistaken in his estimation of
the benefits that have accrued from the US having invaded and occupied Iraq
-- and dead wrong in his apparent belief that Iraq had something to do with
9/11 -- the young man has some great writing abilities.
I would contend that it is in everyone's best interest to learn about the
cultures, customs, and belief systems of those in other countries considered
"adversaries." Similarly, I would argue that it benefits unity and
understanding amongst Americans when we take advantage of opportunities to better
understand the viewpoints of those with whom we have significant disagreements.
For many young adults, GHOSTS OF WAR will well serve such a goal.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
Moderator, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit
http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks
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