Jason Christopher Hartley is just another soldier. But, he is just another soldier with a blog and a book coming out soon. He was one of the first soldier bloggers from the first days of the War in Iraq. I heard him interviewed yesterday on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He is an articulate and thoughtful young man who talks about the war from the perspective of both a soldier and an observer.
Jason had been blogging from Iraq for some time when his commander discovered that he had been blogging. He was told that he could no longer blog, because it could possibly effect security, so he shut down his blog. However, he continued to record his thoughts and feelings about the conflict in Iraq and sent those writings in e-mail to his family.
He tells us his story of being a soldier with a job to do. He had never been political, but he was patriotic. He believed that the leaders should have an important cause for a war, but it wasn't his job to question the motivation of the leadership. He operated under this premise for his entire duration in Iraq.
Circumstances in Iraq while he was there caused him to question specific problems in Iraq, but he always thought that he was a soldier and he had a job to do. He looked at specific problems as problems that hadn't been solved yet, not problems that couldn't be solved.
He also spoke of his internal conflicts with being in a war. These internal conflicts are universal and are by no means specific to the Iraq conflict. They are things that happen to every soldier in every war. For example, he tells a story about seeing a man driving down the road at night. The man stopped his car from time to time as he came across the long distance of the desert road. Jason had night vision goggles on and he could see somewhat what the man was doing. He looked to be stopping from time to time and handling some type of cylinder then getting back in his car and driving down the road. Jason came to the conclusion that the man was laying improvised explosive devices along the road. As the man came closer Jason and his group became more fearful of the man and his car. Jason ended up shooting or throwing a grenade at the man who was put out of action.
Jason later found out that the man was a civilian looking for water along the road, picking up cylinders that contained water. He tells us of his emotional need to kill this man, and even after knowing that the man was innocent of laying the IEDs he still feels good about what he did. He talks about the struggle between intellectually knowing that the man was innocent and emotionally knowing what he did was for survival.
It's been about nine months since Jason returned to the US from Iraq and he has had time to learn "the rest of the story about the War in Iraq." He now feels that the Iraq War was wrong and knowing what he knows now it should not have been fought. He feels used by the administration and is no longer apolitical.
You can hear the interview at: Fresh Air
You Can check out his blog at: Just Another Soldier