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Love My Rifle More Than You. This is the title of a memoir by a former female soldier, Kayla Williams, an E5 (Sergeant), in Iraq, trained as a Arabic linguist.
I have read only a couple of excerpts from the book, but I did read an interview in the NY Times Magazine and listened to Kayla on NPR. It made my adrenaline pump. Once again, I am reading from a soldier how awful the Army is. And, based on this account, it is. But, they are personal views, deal with an often narrow prism, and sometimes very short-sighted. But, still, I think, very useful.
About half of the interview on NPR by Terry Gross(a great interviewer) had to do with the fact she was a woman. It was the "poster" interview for those who don't think that combat is the place for women.
One of the guys I eat breakfast with each week has his own opinions about books like this. He says, "It just ain't right to have these books and TV movies about a war we are presently fighting." I think he's basically right on. In a sense, it is an example of how things have changed.
After Vietnam, you couldn't pay some publisher to publish your book about Vietnam. There may have been many reasons, but one of the main ones is that the media is not today what it was then. Today there are media outlets everywhere, 24 hour news programs, and imbedded reporters. The military, of course, has gotten in bed with them and it has bitten them in the posterior. Consequently, the military has to live with books and stories and movies and TV accounts that don't try to gloss over the screwups; but, tell their stories from a point of view; and, in general, show us just how messy war can be. Plus, the military has to live with the fact that because of the media, books, and movies, the public is aware that the war has been mismanaged in colossal ways . IRAQNAM!!!!!!!!
In the NY Times Magazine interview, Sergeant Kayla Williams says some pretty damaging things about the military. There are male GIs who come off looking like neanderthal hormone drenched frat boys. What I immediately thought: whose Army is this?- the same thing that I thought about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Who is watching these young soldiers? The answer is nobody; and, that is a function of poor leadership. And, in one of the good Sergeant's accounts, unsupervised GIs are throwing rocks at her breasts. We are suppose to be at war!
This is one of the most telling statements from the interview, "When you are in Iraq, you search for just about anything to ease the mind-numbing tedium of having nowhere to go and nothing to do." Well, objectively, we know this only applies to her unit and not as a whole, but it is more common than it should be.
We have young Ameicans dying. They are not out there playing "grab ass" or worryinig about having enough to do. They are combat troops and those who have better things to do than throw rocks at each other's penises. Sergeant Williams is in a support unit and her interview points up the sad state of many of our support troops in Iraq. The war has been mismanaged and the results are a slap in the face to all those soldiers who are in the line of fire everyday.
And, what really fries me is the truth of this question and answer: Question: Are you concerned that your book might be taken as evidence of the drawbacks of enlisting women who are generally believed to lack the physical prowess of men? ANSWER: Not really. It's becoming tougher to deal with all new recruits, as Americans, as a whole, become lazier and fatter. It used to be that guys would come into the Army after playing football in High School and have some physical training. Now, a lot of guys who come in the Army have been playing video games for years and can't run or do a pushup.
What is such a crying shame is that Sergeant Williams, apparently, a good soldier, has not benefited from her time in the military or in Iraq which leaves her like so many of our soldiers-disillusioned!
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