Last week in ASTU, we talked about an excerpt from Klay\u2019s Redeployment. First of all, I just want to say that before reading and discussing it in class, I\u2019ve had bad impressions of military men because for me, soldiers are tools used by the government to do their dirty work for them.<\/p>\n
Second, I want to tell a short story as well. I have met a soldier before in Winnipeg. He told me with pride what he does for a living (probably expecting me to say \u2018Thank you for your service\u2019 or be impressed). What I actually said was, \u201cI\u2019m a pacifist, and I don\u2019t think protecting your country is killing other people or going to (invading) other countries.\u201d He\u2019s a good guy, so he told me what most soldiers would say which is, \u201cWe need to defeat ISIS. Someone needs to stop ISIS.\u201d I told him, of course, what I think which was murdering innocent people doesn\u2019t stop ISIS. It was a respectful, constructive conversation. Nobody was raising their voice (I\u2019ve told people who are civilians what I think of war before, they usually get mad and think I\u2019m ungrateful and that I should go to war myself). It was very civil. To see and hear a different perspective other than my own is enlightening. However, meeting and talking to him didn\u2019t make me think of the relationship between citizens, who are being protected, and soldiers.<\/p>\n
What opened my eyes to this idea is our discussion of Redeployment. I knew that veterans experience PTSD, physical injuries, and other mental issues, but I didn\u2019t think that one of the things that makes it harder for them is the society who\u2019s grateful for their service. I never thought that going home was another war to them.<\/p>\n
You\u2019d think they would feel safe in their own home, but being in the army doesn\u2019t actually leave them. In Redeployment, when the narrator and his wife went to the mall, he was thinking like a soldier, expecting someone to attack him out of nowhere.<\/p>\n
In Wilmington, you don\u2019t have a squad, you don\u2019t have a battle buddy, you don\u2019t even have a weapon. You startle ten times checking for it and it\u2019s not there. You\u2019re safe, so your alertness should be at white, but it\u2019s not (12).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
How should we act when they get back though? Do we just thank them for their service? Do we tell them what we think of war (like I did)? Do we ask them how many innocent people and\/or soldiers they\u2019ve killed? What should we do?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know. I have no answer. But for me, the best we could do is to stop war altogether (taking Butler\u2019s perspective here). Of course, that\u2019s impossible especially if we consider what\u2019s going on right now, politically. But just imagine if there\u2019s no war. We don\u2019t force men and women to kill innocent people and to kill other men and women. They don\u2019t have to be scared for their lives. They don\u2019t have to leave home and go back just to be stuck in a mall waiting for their alertness to be at white (not being alert at all I think\u2026 it\u2019s army lingo).<\/p>\n
Another option is to do our best to look at things from their perspective. When we empathize with them, we\u2019d understand that they need space.<\/p>\n
We can also respect each other\u2019s rights since they\u2019re fighting for our freedom and for democracy, aren\u2019t they?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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P.S. This is my last post, and I just want to say I really enjoyed writing and sort of ranting here. Check out my last last post on the ASTU blog<\/a> on 03\/29. I\u2019ll be one of the class bloggers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week in ASTU, we talked about an excerpt from Klay\u2019s Redeployment. First of all, I just want to say that before reading and discussing it in class, I\u2019ve had bad impressions of military men because for me, soldiers are tools used by the government to do their dirty work for them. Second, I want to tell a short story as well. I have met a soldier before in Winnipeg. He told me with pride what he does for a living (probably expecting me to say \u2018Thank you for your…read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[831545],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astu","et-no-image","et-bg-layout-dark","et-white-bg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/tbarrozo\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}