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Writing US Identities in the Wars Without Frontlines: Literary Perspectives on the Persian Gulf and Iraq Wars

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Writing US Identities in the Wars Without Frontlines: Literary Perspectives on the Persian Gulf and Iraq Wars Writing US Identities in the Wars without Frontlines: Literary Perspectives on the Persian Gulf and Iraq Wars Jenna Pitchford Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Nottingham Trent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2011 Copyright Statement This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed in the first instance to the owner(s) of the Intellectual Property Rights. 2 Abstract For many cultural commentators, the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) signalled a new era in which technological advances transformed warfare into what Jean Baudrillard refers to as a virtual experience epitomised by “surgical strikes” and “smart-bombs”. In contrast, the Iraq War (2003-2009) was hailed by many as a return to a more conventional form of combat in which soldiers fought their enemy in face-to-face interactions. This thesis argues that such an analysis of the conflicts overlooks the complexity of the war experience for many Gulf and Iraq War combatants. It therefore seeks to construct a reading of the literary responses to these conflicts, including novels, memoirs, and poetry, as well as alternative forms of narrative, which acknowledges the complexity of each war. Whilst it is important to recognise the ways in which Gulf War combatants experienced virtual war and Iraq War soldiers experienced guerrilla warfare, it is equally important to acknowledge the ways in which these conflicts resisted popular perceptions of them, and how this incongruence affected the combatants. The specificity of each of these conflicts produced multiple literary responses which indicate that combatants‟ fragmented experiences of contemporary war often resulted in a crisis of the unified self. This thesis undertakes a thematic study of US identities in the existing corpus of Gulf and Iraq War narratives, addressing the ways in which the unique nature of each conflict shaped soldiers‟ experience of war, how transformations in military technology impacted on the perceived gendering of the military, and how technology affected national identity and the perception of the “other”. Crucially, it also examines the ways in which new communication technologies enabled Iraqi civilians to write back to Western discourses of the latter conflict. 3 Table of Contents Title Page 1 Copyright Statement 2 Abstract 3 Table of Contents 4 List of Illustrations 5 Acknowledgements 6 Writing Contemporary Conflict: US Identity in Gulf War and Iraq War Literature 8 Part One: Transitions in Warfare and the Literature of Conflict Chapter One Literary Transitions Through Virtual Warfare: Responses to the Persian Gulf War 27 Chapter Two A Return to “Real War”?: The Iraq War Narrative 68 Part Two: Gendering the Changing Face of Warfare Chapter Three Masculinity Under Threat: Male Narratives in an Age of Changing Warfare 104 Chapter Four From Carer to Combatant: Women‟s Tales of the Wars without Frontlines 139 Part Three: Writing National Identity in Contemporary Warfare Chapter Five Nation and Difference: US Perspectives on National Identities 182 Chapter Six Writing Back Through Technology: Iraqi Narratives and the Virtual “Other” 229 Conclusion: Towards New Literatures of War 270 Bibliography 277 List of Publications 300 4 List of Illustrations Title Page Illustration The title page image of the mechanical American soldier is reproduced courtesy of Jim Morrow, July 2010. Chapter Illustrations Chapter images reproduced courtesy of Xavier Pick, January 2011. The illustrations used for each chapter of this thesis are from Pick‟s current multimedia project on conflict and peace between East and West entitled, „Journals from War and Peace‟. These „works in progress‟ are the result of Pick‟s six week visit to Basra (in southern Iraq) following American, British and Iraqi armed forces in 2008 and 2009. Given the aims of this thesis in terms of highlighting unconventional forms of storytelling (particularly in the most recent conflict), it seems apt to acknowledge Pick‟s concept of large scale visual storytelling using a mixture of drawings, photography and film. Pick currently lectures at The Royal College of Art, London. His current projects can be found at: <http://www.xavierpick.co.uk/iraq/iraqsketch/iraqsketches.html> 5 Acknowledgements Special thanks should go to my supervisory team, Dr. Phil Leonard, Dr. Daniel Cordle and Dr. Sharon Ouditt, who originally encouraged me to embark on this path of research and whose support and guidance throughout this process have been invaluable. My thanks also go to Nottingham Trent University, which funded my doctoral research, and to the British Association for American Studies and the US Embassy whose Short Term Travel Award helped to fund my research trip to the United States in 2007. I would also like to thank past and present members of the academic and administrative staff in the Graduate School, and the members of the English Department, who have been continuously supportive. I would like to thank Alexa Potter, Judith Gray (Library of Congress) and Melissa Watterworth (University of Connecticut) for assisting me in my preparation for, and during the course of, my research visit to the United States. With their help, I uncovered some fascinating documents and alternative narratives which have shaped my thinking about the Gulf and Iraq wars and their literary responses. Thanks also go to Dena Everett and Patricia Ames (US Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair Army Base) and Regina Akers (Naval Historical Center, Washington Navy Yard). Special thanks should also go to Darlene Iskra, Deborah Kidwell and Larry Minear with whom I shared some interesting conversations during my research visit. I would also like to thank Xavier Pick for allowing me to reproduce selected pieces from his fascinating visual narrative project. My thanks also go to Richard Aaron, whose collection has informed this thesis in several areas, and whose willingness to discuss his part in collating the peace packets has contributed a great deal to my own understanding of the material. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends who have offered the utmost encouragement and support through every difficulty, and helped to celebrate every success, of the research and writing process. 6 The greatest hazard of all, losing one‟s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death 7 Introduction Writing Contemporary Conflict: US Identity in Gulf War and Iraq War Literature 8 Writing Contemporary Conflict: US Identity in Gulf War and Iraq War Literature What follows is neither true nor false but what I know.1 Anthony Swofford, Jarhead Communicating the experience of combat is problematic for veterans of any war. However, those deployed in the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) and Iraq War (2003-2009) face new challenges of representation due to the unique nature of these conflicts. This thesis does not claim that these conflicts are entirely different from previous wars. Rather, it asserts that it is essential to explore the ways in which literary responses to the conflicts point to a transformation in combatants‟ experiences of war resulting from developments in contemporary warfare and the lack of a stable front line. Specifically, it examines how the combination of new and traditional war experiences can result in the crisis of the combatants‟ unified identity. The Wars without Frontlines The Gulf War marked a point at which the temporality of war shifted. Although the Vietnam War is often perceived as the first media war in many ways, the Gulf was the first war in which media coverage was instantaneous. The nature of the Gulf conflict led many cultural commentators to question its status as a war. Noam Chomsky highlights the asymmetrical 1 Anthony Swofford, Jarhead: A Marine‟s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles (New York: Scribner, 2003), p. 3. 9 nature of the conflict: „As I understand the concept of “war”, it involves two sides in combat, say, shooting at each other‟.2 Chomsky takes the view that such a conflict should not be considered a war against a powerful military force as the media encouraged Western audiences to believe, but rather it was, as Richard Keeble describes it, „a 42-day secret massacre hidden behind the media construct of heroic warfare‟.3 Jean Baudrillard argues that the perceived virtuality of the conflict eclipsed the real events in the Gulf region. In a series of three articles written at various points before, during and after the conflict, (which were later collected under the title of the concluding article, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place), Baudrillard seems to suggest that the Gulf War did not occur. Contrary to popular belief, his suggestion was not that nothing happened in the Gulf, but rather that a form of virtual displacement was initiated by allowing the televisual spectator into the battle zone. Like Chomsky, Baudrillard points out that the Gulf challenged public understanding of the nature of war: „war has always involved an antagonistic and destructive confrontation between adversaries, a dual relation between warring parties‟.4 The outcome was inevitable since the Gulf was a virtual war in two senses: a „virtual war which results from the strategy of deterrence and the virtual informational war which we experience through the media‟.5 However, for Gulf War combatants, it is this perceived virtuality that problematises their experience. Gulf War soldiers were processing information from several sources, both in terms of their own perception and the information processed through technological sources.
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