SBlogs

Kat asked in her blog if anyone had a soldier blog. I was interested in reading one as well so I Googled “Iraq soldier blog.” Turns out there are many interesting soldier bogs out there.

The first link took me to site that has links to many of the individuals blogs. Interestingly, soldier blogs even have their own designation (according to this site): sblog ("s" for soldier). The web page author designates who is writing the blog (deployed soldier, from someone who has since been lost in combat, from family, from a veteran, etc.). Here is the site:

http://www.aapavatar.net/blogs.htm

Skimming though them, I came across this blog, who’s comments I found interesting: http://www.bootsinbaghdad.blogspot.com/

He has a link to photos and multiple videos. This is the one video I watched:
http://www.bootsinbaghdadfilms.blogspot.com/

The title is what intrigued me: Boots in Baghdad: A Grunts Life. That says a lot to me about how this soldier must feel. And the videos caught me off guard. The one above is of returning fire on enemy troops. Studying sociology and psychology, the soldier’s language you hear totally astounded me. I wasn’t really that shocked, just caught off guard. And it is shocking to me to actually hear and see this, rather than just reading about it. Anyway, you don’t see much in the video. It’s mostly black with the sparks of gun fire. But you do hear, very clearly, from someone right near the camera, “Light the mother fuckers up.” Wow. In social psychology last quarter, we briefly studied war, war-mentality, war-training, and killing. Yes, you are trained to dehumanize the enemy, that’s seemingly the only way war will work, but I was still shocked to hear as a civilian. And when you really think about it, that men on the other side of the fence could be dieing from the gun fire we’re watching, makes my stomach hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I completely support our troops, even if I don’t support the policy. I do not for one minute think anything less of the soldier who yelled that. I take issue with our training of soldiers.

The whole thing that this was all made possible for me to see, from the boots in Baghdad, is an amazing conquest of technology though. At the same time, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Should I be able to watch gun-fire and war so openly? Without any training or preparation? But this type of media I think works for the armed forces. After all, it does look remarkable like a video game.