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« Seizing Opportunity In Wake Of Intelligent Design Decision, Kansas Nerds Seek To Redefine "Gym" | Main | The Pitchforks And Torches Look Cool, But I'm Not Sure That I Should Join The Angry Villagers » November 09, 2005
"How Accurate Is Jarhead?"
Posted by Bill A Marine doles out some scorn for Anthony Swofford's "Jarhead:" "Welcome to the Suck." That was the tagline of Anthony Swofford's best-selling Gulf War memoir, Jarhead, but it also neatly summed up my opinion of the book. I bought the audio version after two combat tours as a Marine in Afghanistan and Iraq and settled in to listen on a cross-country drive from California to Virginia. By the time I hit Nevada, I was ready to throw the CDs from my car window. Swofford struck me as an ax-grinder who blamed the Corps for his own failures. He hadn't seen enough combat to justify his angst, and conduct like his—at one point, he points a gun at another Marine and threatens to kill him—would have landed my Marines in jail. His story felt all the more insidious since his venom was cloaked in fine writing. It seemed fitting that "jarhead" isn't even a term most Marines use. His take on the movie version is somewhat more kind, and features some skillful prose: One of the great secrets about the Marine Corps is that, beneath its veneer of cynicism, it's deeply idealistic. Swofford's misfit band of brothers may seem artfully contrived—a brash Texan, a bespectacled nerd, an immigrant family man. But taking such grab-bags of Americans and molding them into a team is exactly what the Marines do. These guys aren't black, white, or Latino; they're Marines. And Marines, thanks to their intrinsic brotherhood, can deal more bluntly with race than most of society, without negative undertones. Antics frequently mask this camaraderie, as when the platoon gathers around two scorpions—white Marines around an anemic-looking white one, and black Marines around a hulking black monster named "Chango"—to cheer as they battle to the death. Such is the boredom of waiting for war. 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