Army Anxiety: Have They Had Enough?

Early in March there was a popular news story about U.S. soldier, Robert Bales, who went on a "shooting rampage" in a southern Afghanistan village. Bales slipped away from his base early one morning and went from house to house, killing 17 Afghans- most of which were women and children.

Bales is a married man with two children back at home. An interview with Matt Lauer can be viewed here, in which Bales' wife defends her husband, saying that "he would not do that." Bales was unexpectedly deployed a fourth time, which his wife says was "a big shock" because he was not on schedule to do so. Lauer asks the question: "Is it possible that this is just the stress of war?"

This incident reminds me of some research I came across while working on my junior theme. During the Vietnam War, there were over 500 incidents of "fragging," an episode in which U.S. soldiers murdered their own officers. Although a different situation, "the stress of war" was regarded as the main factor behind these episodes. 

However, there is a big difference between the Afghanistan War and the Vietnam War; The Vietnam war had a draft. To me, this makes the incidents with the Vietnam soldiers less surprising because I would expect that a greater number of soldiers were fighting against their will--making them more susceptible to well, going crazy.

But if incidents like Bales' are still occurring, what does that suggest about our military today? With an absence of a draft is there the same amount of stress amongst soldiers? Maybe this war has just dragged on too long?

War Today: A Shared Sacrifice?

"Society is set up in such a way that it's the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters" (112), Jack Gladney tells his wife, Babette in Don DeLillo's White Noise, in trying to reassure her that their family will not be affected by the "Airborne Toxic Event," the large amount of toxic chemicals which have recently been released in the air. Jack believes that families who are not among "the poor and the uneducated," are safe from "disasters."

While researching my junior theme, I found this to be true when it comes to the "man-made disaster." My question is: Why hasn't America had a military draft in the past thirty years?

Part of the answer to this question is that the military largely recruits economically suffering Americans. This shown in Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, when he captures recruiters for the army approaching high schoolers in Flint, Michigan. This is a town in which the public high schools had a graduation rate of only 54.6% in 2008 (source).

Moore also makes a point when talking with Congressman John Tanner in Washington DC about the War in Afghanistan:"There's not that many Congressmen that've got kids over there, and in fact, only one." Moore makes the point that affluent families are not being affected by the war nearly as much as poor families. 


When there was draft, every family in our country felt the weight of war, not just the "poor and the uneducated"ones. How does this affect your opinion on whether or not America should have a draft?

More Celebrity Help

A couple days ago George Clooney was arrested in Washington, DC, at the Embassy of Sudan while protesting the actions of Omar Al-Bashir, the country's president. The Sudanese government is still bombing and attacking innocent civilians, confirming Al-Bashir's status as an alleged war criminal.


Clooney's plan is to use his celebrity status to draw as much attention as possible to this issue. He says, "I don't make policy. I can just make it louder." Upon hearing this, I was reminded again of the Kony 2012 video we talked about in class. Celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Oprah Winfrey used their star power to draw attention to this video and the issues surrounding Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony.


I found it interesting that in the past week the only things I have read about both these problems involving war criminals, it has been in regard to the celebrities involved with the issues. It seems that celebrities are becoming America's number one source for providing awareness of global conflicts. Awareness of issues is certainly necessary in order to solve them, but what does is say about our society if the path to this awareness is celebrities? 


Does the way in which we become aware of issues affect if how we go about solving them? Would learning about the war in Sudan through George Clooney talking about it on a talk show vs. learning about it from a newspaper article yield a different response from you?

Public Awareness: The Key to Kony?

The viral video Kony 2012 has certainly reached it's goal of becoming widely known, being that it has received over 64 million views. I wonder though, if this large view count is what will help to reach the video's apparent goal: stopping Joseph Kony. Kony, a Ugandan guerrilla troop leader, has been responsible for the abductions and murders of thousands of Ugandan children for over twenty years.
A man by the name Jason Russell created this video in order to raise awareness about the issue, in order to stop it.

Still from Kony 2012

Raising awareness is clearly a large theme in the video. In it, Russell says, "It’s obvious that Kony should be stopped; the problem is 99% of the planet doesn’t know who he is. If they knew, Kony would have been stopped long ago." I question Russell's implication that the reason Kony hasn't been stopped is directly related to the number of people who know about it. Of course spreading awareness couldn't hurt, but I worry that the people who are sharing this link/spreading word about the video has less to do with taking action against Kony, and more to do with people's obsessions with disasters covered by media.


Don DeLillo has this fascination with disasters a running theme throughout White Noise. In chapter 14, Jack narrates a scene of him and his family are watching floods, earthquakes and other disasters on TV and says, “Every disaster made us wish for more, for something bigger, grander, more sweeping” (64). Not that I am saying those who watched the Kony 2012 video are happy that such a calamity is occurring, but perhaps they got a sort of twisted excitement in sharing it with other people. How effective can this way of spreading the video around be?


I know that personally, after watching the video I was inspired to take action to help stop Kony. My action only went as far as telling some friends about it, however. I have a feeling that many other video viewers did the same.