Red Wheelbarrow 2008 text FINAL REVISED.indd - De Anza College

BT: Part of it is that military tradition of my family, you know? I joined
in 1998, and I wasn’t against the intervention in Bosnia, and I guess I was
kind of gullible; I didn’t think my country… I thought we learned a lot
in Vietnam, and I thought we’d been sort of slapped in the face to sort of
think before we went into places. I know we have these low-level conflicts
and wars, and we have spies and hit men all over the planet, but massive
wars… I thought wouldn’t happen, and certainly it wouldn’t be done in
a preemptive way. That’s another thing; we just decided “oh well forget
the United Nations.” We use NATO if we have to—whatever we can do
to get our ends. And you know what? It’s scary that preemptive action
is now acceptable policy. The reason I say these things is, first, I think
we can make this country better, and second, I didn’t choose to leave this
country. I didn’t go to Australia because I love this country, and I don’t
want to leave. The U.S. is my home, but it’s not being run the way I think
it should be. That’s just my opinion.
Alainah McDonald: As a follow up to Joann’s question about “Last Night’s
Dream,” you also remind us of the way war haunts the mind, in this case
the lover’s mind. Would you talk a bit more generally about post traumatic
stress, about how you cope with it and about how we as a culture can help
returning soldiers deal with it? And what about the mental health of Iraq’s
civilian population today?
BT: That’s an excellent question, especially that last this one. What about
it? I mean what can we do? That’s a tough one. If they stop right now and
everyone puts their weapons down, OK. That’s it. We’re done, you know?
The rest of our lives, while we’re there especially, you’ll see that we have
much work to do to build up the infrastructure. And mental health, do they
have to deal with that? Let’s for example just make up a story that there’s
a five year old kid, an Iraqi kid, boy or girl, and they’re in this house and a
500 pound bomb blows up about a couple blocks away, right? So nothing
comes into the house. He doesn’t get hurt physically, doesn’t damage the
house, but the windows, it’s incredible how the windows shake and this
tremendous sound that’s really hard to sort of fathom, like if you believe
in God, like God putting a foot down on the planet BOOM, you know
just this sound and nothing else matters. That kid knows that sound. It
isn’t the sound you hear in a movie. It’s very different. Then the parents
I would imagine would come into the room real quick and make sure the
kids are okay. It would be a natural thing right? And then kids aren’t
dumb, so they get a sense even if they don’t really understand the whole
situation, they get a sense of that fear and all the worry and stuff of that
moment. And then maybe it goes away.
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