Through Veterans' Eyes: The Iraq and Afghanistan Experience

Through Veterans' Eyes: The Iraq and Afghanistan Experience
ISBN-10
1597974862
ISBN-13
9781597974868
Category
History
Pages
243
Language
English
Published
2010
Publisher
Potomac Books, Inc.
Author
Larry Minear

Description

"Larry Minear has given voice to an entire generation of combat veterans whose experience will shape our society for decadesto Come. The confliets in Iraq and Afghanistan will henceforth serve as the dominan! reference pointe for the American debate on issues of war and peace, just as World War II,, Korea, and Vietnam shaped our national attitudes For the past half century. If you want to know what our soldiers and Marines have taken away from their service in Americans latest wars. his balanced and insightful account is the perfect place to start---Amb. James F. Dobbins. formar special envoy to afghanistan and author of After the Taliban: Nation-Building in afghanistan "With this engaging book, Larry Minear has brought the war home to any American who wants to listen. After setting the stage through careful and comprehensive documentation, he wisely lets the veterans speak for themselves about their war and reentry experiences, providing the American public with a crucial opportunity to understand their challenges and difficulties."---Dr. Matthew J. Friedman. executive director. National Center for PTSD, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs "Larry Minear takes us on a wide-ranging tour of going to war and coming home. He sets the scene and them lets the people who've lived it speak for themselves in their own words, unvarnished and without spin. Outsiders will come away with a new understanding. Insiders will nod and know they have been heard."---Kristin Henderson, military spouse and author of While They're at War: The True Story of American Families on the Homefornt "The clarity with which the veterans express themselves and the success the author has had in capturing their thoughts represent a powerful use of oral history. This book should prove of immeasurable value in continuing the national dialogue on these contentious wars."---Gen. Richard I. Neal. U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.) assistant commandant As of early 2010, more than two million U.S. troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the American public is neither much engaged in the issues of these two wars nor particularly knowledgeable about the troops' experiences, which have ranged from positive and energizing to searing and debilitating. Based on scores of interviews---some culled from the Library of Congress Veterans History Project and others conducted by the author himself---Through Veterans' Eyes presents a composite narrative of the experiences of U.S. service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Minear quotes more than 175 veterans by name and includes a dozen of their own photos from the conflict theaters. Thematic chapters cover duty and service, politics, cultural and ethical challenges, relationships to local populations, and reentry into American society. Neither pro-war nor anti-war, Minear's approach encourages veterans to express their views on issues critical to the nation. What has motivated U.S. military personnel to enlist? What specific challenges have they faced in Iraq and Afghanistan? What have been the impacts of deployment on their families and communities? Is their experience changing their views of their country and the world? What lessons may be learned from their stories? Veterans' candid responses to these and other probing questions deserve consideration. The literature of Cuba, argues Eduardo Gonzalez in his new book, takes on quite different features depending on whether one is looking at it from "the inside" or from "the outside," a view that in turn is shaped by official political culture and the authors it sanctions or by those authors and artists who exist outside state policies and cultural politics. Gonzalez approaches this issue by way of two twentieth-century writers who are central to the canon of gay homoerotic expression and sensibility in Cuban culture: Jose Lezama Lima (1910-1976) and Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990). Drawing on the plots and characters in their works, Gonzalez develops both a story line and a moral tale, revolving around the Christian belief in the fall from grace and the possibility of redemption, that bring the writers into a unique and revealing interaction with one another. The work of Lezama Lima and Arenas is compared with that of fellow Cuban author Virgilio Pinera (1912-1979) and, in a wider context, with the non-Cuban writers John Milton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, John Ruskin, and James Joyce to show how their themes are replicated in Gonzalez's selected Cuban fiction. Also woven into this interaction are two contemporary films---The Devil's Backbone (2004) and Pan's Labyrinth (2007)---whose moral and political themes enhance the ethical values and conflicts of the literary texts. Referring to this eclectic gathering of texts, Gonzalez charts a cultural course in which Cuba moves beyond the Caribbean and into a latitude uncharted by common words, beyond the tyranny of place.

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