{"id":432,"date":"2009-03-23T15:30:11","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T21:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/?p=432"},"modified":"2023-02-15T09:34:33","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T15:34:33","slug":"iraq-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/archives\/432","title":{"rendered":"Iraq Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In their March\/April 2009 edition (online), STANFORD Magazine published <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stanfordalumni.org\/news\/magazine\/2009\/marapr\/pc\/iraq.html\">this<\/a> brief essay, a rebuttal to my own perspective, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stanfordalumni.org\/news\/magazine\/2004\/marapr\/dept\/email.html\">Email from Iraq<\/a>, from five years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;. . . . I have not been victimized by my military experiences, or by the Army. Claiming so is such a common refrain among veterans I&#8217;ve been tempted to adopt it, simply because it would require less explanation. In truth, I&#8217;ve benefited from my experiences. I have no complaints about pay, though I would likely have done better following through with my long-forgotten computer science degree. I haven&#8217;t suffered from shortages in benefits or care, though I don&#8217;t doubt others have. I enjoy the respect and credibility veterans seem to get for free and entirely independent of their competence. I&#8217;ve made many friends, and got to bear witness to that mysterious and heavily mythologized thing called combat. The great responsibilities I&#8217;d been entrusted with&#8221;leading men in combat as a platoon leader, preparing paratroopers as a jumpmaster, serving as a diplomat with Iraqi councilmen or Afghan tribal leaders&#8221;taught me much about myself and about people.<\/p>\n<p>I think the breadth and depth of these responsibilities overwhelmed my perceptions when I wrote &#8220;E-mail from Iraq.&#8221; To me, now, it reads like war propaganda &#8220;a demonstration of the goodwill, energy and character of war&#8217;s participants, while beckoning the reader to ignore how we got there. . . .&#8221;  (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stanfordalumni.org\/news\/magazine\/2009\/marapr\/pc\/iraq.html\">Read more at STANFORD Magazine<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In their March\/April 2009 edition (online), STANFORD Magazine published this brief essay, a rebuttal to my own perspective, Email from Iraq, from five years earlier. &#8220;. . . . I have not been victimized by my military experiences, or by the Army. Claiming so is such a common refrain among veterans I&#8217;ve been tempted to &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/archives\/432\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[50],"tags":[47],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1385,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions\/1385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/romanskaskiw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}