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The Romantic and the Realist
By Kelly Anspaugh
21/08/08 "ICH" - -- Recently, while discussing the state of the
war in Afghanistan with military personnel, President Bush
remarked, "I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly
younger . . . I think it would be a fantastic experience to be
on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. . .
. It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, you
know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and
thanks."
The president’s use of the term “romantic” is very suggestive.
There are essentially two ways of looking at combat: the
Romantic and the Realist. The Romantic view represents combat as
an opportunity for the soldier to prove and improve his
character. Combat, if it does not kill the combatant, will only
make him strongerwill lift up and transfigure him. The
experience of combat will transform a boy into a man, a man into
a Superman.
This Romantic view is given classical expression in
Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, in the famous speech the king
gives to his troops before the battle of Agincourt. Henry tells
his men that they should not be downcast because they are
outnumbered by the French, as the glory of victory will be all
the greater for this: “We few, we happy few, we band of
brothers; / For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall
be my brother. . . . And gentlemen in England now abed / Shall
think themselves accursed they were not here, / And hold their
manhoods cheap whiles any speaks / That fought on Saint
Crispin’s day.”
That the Romantic myth of combat is still compelling today, four
hundred years after Shakespeare wrote those lines, is evident
from how military recruiting ads attempt to borrow the Bard’s
rhetorical fire: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”
echoes distinctly in “The Few, the Proud, the Marines.” Recruits
are encouraged to think that with proper training they can
become “an Army of One.” Young men (and now women) are still
lured into military service by the promise that combat is a
“trial by fire” that will raise them up, transfigure them, turn
them into Heroes.
Such is the Romantic viewpoint. There is, however, another view:
the Realist. From this perspective combat is seen not as an
opportunity but as a disaster. Rather than improving one’s
character, the experience of combat is likely to injure it, in
many cases ruin it. Exposure to combat is like exposure to a
toxin: it does not transfigure so much as disfigure. What does
not kill us may leave us wounded, maimed, or wishing we were
dead.
It is the Realist view that comes to the fore in discussions of
PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This malady has been
illuminated by Dr. Jonathan Shay in his groundbreaking Achilles
in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. In
Shay’s view, the veteran with PTSD is unable to “turn off” the
survival skills he or she learned in combat, which skills are
inappropriate in a civilized context. This contradiction
exacerbates a host of problems associated with the original
trauma: intrusive thoughts (“flashbacks”), social anxiety,
insomnia, depression, violent rages, and substance abuse.
A particularly tragic case of PTSD has been in the news lately:
that of former Army medic Joseph Dwyer. Dwyer became famous
during the first week of the war when a photo of his rescuing a
wounded Iraqi child was published on the cover of USA Today. He
was an instant hero. When he returned home, however, he brought
the war with him – suffered from paranoid delusions that the
enemy was all around him, turned to huffing solvents to find
relief from his demons. He died from substance abuse at the age
of thirty-one. He left behind a wife and daughter.
A recent study by the RAND Corporation found that approximately
one in five of those who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan –
that’s 300,000 souls -- are suffering from PTSD. Unfortunately,
many of these soldiers are doomed to lead lives of quiet
desperation, as their Romantic conception of what a warrior
should be – that is, tough and uncomplaining--prevents them from
seeking psychological treatment.
Given that 1,000 veterans receiving care at the VA try to kill
themselves every month, we can begin to see the heavy cost of
indulging in Romantic conceptions of warfare (such as that held
by our present Commander in Chief). War is not glorious. On the
contrary, as General Sherman realistically remarked, “War is all
hell,” and for too many of our combat vets, hell is where
they’ll live for the rest of their lives. Perhaps we should take
this into account when we decide to send idealistic young men
and women off to do battle.
Dr. Kelly Anspaugh teaches a course on the representation of
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in literature and film.
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