Scott Albright is not your ordinary ex-Independent reporter, ex-Marine, Iraqi war veteran, political science graduate, China specialist, PTSD sufferer and conqueror, freelance journalist, New Mexican and Hawaiian, a husband and a father expecting his third child.
He, of course, is all those things. But what is most interesting about Scott is that he has learned to describe his experiences in newspaper articles, blogs, a website and now a book that are at once coolly analytical and warmly empathetic.
He served two tours of duty in Iraq during his four years in the Marine Corps. He graduated from UNM and worked for two years at The Edgewood Independent, during which he won a first place in the New Mexico Press Association Better Newspaper contest for reporting on veteran's issues.
Last year he received a master's degree in China-U.S. relations from the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He is planning on beginning doctoral studies next year in international relations at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
I am turning the rest of this column over to Scott for excerpts from his book, Veteran's Notes: Bloggery of an Iraq War Veteran, which he describes as, “my story about returning home from war.” It is not a story of war but of what happens to a warrior after his war is over. It is the kind of story that the million or so young men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are facing every day, as is all of American society.
By Scott Albright
I thought the Marines would make me this great person that we read about in the papers, but I finally realized that it was never the Marines that made those people great, it was their heart and soul. It is their courage and state of mind, their persistence and internal strength. It is not something that you can be trained to be. It comes from within and you can be this person in any line of work. You can be a hero working at McDonald's or in a factory, you can change lives for the better just about anywhere, including your own. I wish I would have known this because I think I would have been a better Marine and would have had the courage to stop some of the senseless killing that even the highest ranking officials didn't stop.
I made a huge mistake and joined the service in order to better myself and to do something for my country. What I did for my country is I helped in the invasion of Iraq—how that's bettered my country I'm still not sure. But perhaps the military did help me to better myself. I was taught to do whatever it takes and to not give up. And hopefully I won't forget that because I need to be a persistent son of a bitch to make it all pay off now.
There are some aspects of my military training that have made me a better person. I tell myself that if I hadn’t been to Iraq and seen the violence I did I wouldn’t know how awful war is and therefore wouldn’t have the strong feeling that I do about violence, war, and U.S. foreign policy in general, but maybe I didn’t really need to experience that for that to have happened.
One of the hardest things about returning home from a combat zone is coming to the realization that the rules have changed.
Killing is no longer acceptable. It was okay in combat when there was a positively identified enemy combatant. You get an award if you kill the bad guy.
Fireworks cause anxiety among combat vets. The best solution? Go somewhere more peaceful until the Fourth of July is over.
As an Iraq war veteran I did receive a nice welcome home and even a few free beers, but it still hasn’t been easy…. I’d like to remind everyone about the difficulty all veterans face when transitioning from the military to civilian life.
For me it hasn’t been so hard getting a job, as it has been dealing with the fact that no job feels quite as important as the one I had as a Marine. As a Marine I had the responsibility of having to choose whether to take a life or to save a life on a regular basis. Nothing can feel quite as great as knowing you can change someone’s future so much.
As my grandpa, also a veteran, said, “A job doesn’t bring you dignity, you bring dignity to the job,” but I still have a hard time thinking about my friend who was once in charge of guarding thousands of dollars worth of high tech equipment working at Walgreens as a cashier.
Running a squad or a platoon counts as managerial skills, being able to monitor a radio and call in air support counts as communication skills and firing a weapon in combat counts as critical decision making skills.
One of the worst things a country can have is a bunch of highly trained killers running around without jobs.
It's time to take a break. U.S. military adventures have created a society of paranoid war veterans.
When I first came back from Iraq I was always on high alert, ready to move out, re-deploy, or take action against an enemy. My machine gun was always loaded and ready to fire, even if it was just in my head. After nearly six years of being out of the military I've finally unlearned many of the things I was programmed to do, and I'm thankful for that.
After six years I've finally begun to feel normal, but for many returning vets normal will never come again.
It’s time to re-think how nations justify their use of violence so future generations aren’t tricked into believing war is just, good, or inevitable, because it’s not. The use of violence to obtain specific objectives is no longer an acceptable practice for individuals, corporations, nations, or any other such entity.
(To see more of Scott’s work visit chinausrelations.com and militarytalkshop.blogspot.com, or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ChinaUSRelation.)
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