The New Republic's back page published a diary from a pseudonymous soldier in Iraq--"Scott Thomas"--about how fighting in a war does not take you into Red Badge of Courage territory. Instead, his looking into the abyss by fighting in the war allows the abyss to look into him:
AM I A MONSTER? I have never thought of myself as a cruel person.... I once worked at a summer camp for developmentally disabled childre... helping a student with cerebral palsy perform basic tasks.... Even as I was reveling in the laughter my words had provoked, I was simultaneously horrified and ashamed at what I had just said. In a strange way, though, I found the shame comforting. I was relieved to still be shocked by my own cruelty--to still be able to recognize that the things we soldiers found funny were not, in fact, funny. Not everyone was capable of such distinctions...
This is, of course, what every veteran who has seen combat will say--if you can get them drunk enough. The person I know of who has put it best is science-fiction/fantasy writer David Drake, a good chunk of whose work is best classified as horror and is really about his experiences as an interrogator in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the "Blackhorse," when it went through the Cambodian market town of Snuol:
I [now] had much more vivid horrors than Lovecraft's nameless ickinesses to write about.... I wrote about troopers doing their jobs the best they could with tanks that broke down, guns that jammed--and no clue about the Big Picture.... I kept the tone unemotional: I didn't tell the reader that something was horrible, because nobod told me.... [T]hose stories... were different. They didn't fit either of the available molds: "Soldiers are spotless heroes," or... "Soldiers are evil monsters"... [...] The... stories were written with a flat aspect, describing cruelty and horror with the detachment of a soldier who's shut down his emotional responses completely in a war zone... as soldiers always do, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to survive. Showing soldiers behaving and thinking as they really do in war was... extremely disquieting to the civilians who were editing magazines...
When the New Republic published Scott Thomas, the right-wing slime machine swung into action:
BLACKFIVE: So how does absolute horse shit like this make it into what should be a respectable magazine? Well first you will notice that this was the New Republic, not National Review, and while this mag has plenty of fabulist issues they are emblematic of the chattering classes as a whole. While the left makes noises that they think mean they support the troops, they don't really, and they do believe the dregs of society theory of military recruiting...
Gateway Pundit: The Weekly Standard Blog has been leading the charge to find the truth behind the disgusting anti-military hit pieces at The New Republic. Today, Multi-National Force Iraq responded to the horrific allegations of war crimes at the liberal magazine. It is more evidence that the writer who goes by the name "Scott Thomas" at The New Republic is slandering the troops in Iraq: "Sir, Our Soldiers our held to the highest standards in all regards to include Standards of Conduct and Rules of War. There has been no operational reporting of the misconduct of Soldiers as reported in the article...
Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: Some of the anecdotes in the soldier's July 13 "Baghdad Diarist" column read like perfect little melodramas.... The magazine's editors recognize that his friends might be covering for him, according to someone with knowledge of the inquiry.... Scott Johnson, a lawyer who blogs at Power Line, wrote that such anecdotes sounded "highly improbable."... Michael Yon, a respected military blogger who spent time with the unit this year, wrote: "That story about American soldiers at FOB Falcon sounds like complete garbage." Other bloggers said military personnel always wear uniforms and could not possibly be confused with contractors...
Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard: no such woman was at FOB Falcon in the past 14 months...it'd be good if we could push that back even further, but now one has to wonder how long "Scott Thomas" has been in Iraq that no one has seen or heard of this woman at FOB Falcon over the last 14 months at least...
Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard: There is a lot of speculation surrounding the identity of the New Republic's mysterious, pseudonymous "Scott Thomas", aka the Baghdad Diarist. A semiotics-based analysis by John Barnes has poured fuel on the fire with the conclusion that "Thomas" fits the profile of a creative writing program graduate...
OPFOR: Private Beauchamp has just placed himself in an unenviable 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' scenario. If his stories are true, he'll be facing the business end of the UCMJ. If false, he'll be exposed as a fraud and a liar, and will have destroyed that budding writing career that he so confidently promised. So we know he's a soldier. I never doubted that in the first place, he spoke the lingo well enough. But, as Greyhawk noted, the inquiry has really just begun. Now we have to go about fact-checking his stories, which I suspect will turn out to have been grandly embellished. So no doubt wheels are turning over in the 1/18's command staff right now. Wouldn't be surprised if Private Beauchamp was standing tall in front of the man at this very moment, under the scruntity of an aggressively curious CO who is demanding details down to the letter about each of his diary entries. Expect a press release soon. The Army is going to move quick on this, now that they have a face to the name. Either way, today is going to be a very bad day for Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp. As a final thought, I think Uncle Jimbo deserves a fair share of credit here. In this post at Blackfive, Jimbo tore into Beauchamp with the precision of a trained pyschologist, nailing him as a primadonna who brilliance is always unappreciated by the buffoons around him...
Loise Story, New York Times: Doubts Raised on Magazine’s ‘Baghdad Diarist’...
Power Line: It is striking that Beauchamp's statement does not add any facts to support the veracity of "Shock troops."... Beauchamp's concern over the "character" of his "comrades in arms" being "called into question" is touching. I'd had the impression that that was the sole purpose of his articles...
Michael Goldfarb, The Weekly Standard: [A] soldier would sooner drive on the rim, damn the consequences, then change a tire under such conditions. And we suspect "Thomas" and his buddies, lousy soldiers that they are if they exist at all, would sooner abandon the vehicle than get their hands dirty...
Jonah Goldberg, National Review Isn't this just a bit too precious? The guy writes about how his comrades mock disfigured women, slaughter dogs and wear baby skulls as hats, but he's upset that others have called his and his comrades' character into question? Someone explain that to me. In fact, much of the criticism has been that U.S. soldiers would have better characters than those described in his pieces. Sorry: No sale. Scot Thomas Beauchamp may or may not be honest, but he's by no means a victim...
Matthew Yglesias--foolishly, in my opinion--thinks that he should appeal to the right-wing slime machine's sense of honor:
Matthew Yglesias: As you may know, a little while back a soldier serving in Iraq writing under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas" did a piece for TNR detailing the morally deadening aspects of wartime service in Iraq. The Weekly Standard and the conservative blogosphere whipped themselves into a frenzy wherein they convinced themselves that Thomas' story was bogus.... Well, now here he is -- his real name is Scott Thomas Beauchamp, he's a soldier, and as best I can tell nobody has yet brought forward any serious reason to doubt his story. Needless to say, rather than spend some time reflecting on the fact-free zone the conservative press is trying to create, Jonah Goldberg is attacking Beauchamp while Mark Steyn argues that Jonah isn't attacking him viciously enough.
That's just crazy. All these people need to stop. They need to take a deep breath.... [T]hey need to think a bit about the epistemic situation they're creating where information about Iraq that they don't want to hear -- even when published in a pro-war publication -- can just be immediately dismissed as fraudulent even though the misconduct it described was far, far less severe than all sorts of other well-document misconduct in Iraq.
