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May 31, 2004
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
The New York Times reports on the counseling and advice provided to soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan:
Colonel McClure, now an Army chaplain, is here to warn the hundreds of soldiers before him who had returned five days earlier from Iraq, their uniforms still mildewed from the months away, that whatever they think right now, coming home may not be as easy as it seems. After the first embraces with cameras clicking, the homecoming parties, life may get complicated in unimagined ways....
And you will surely get "dumb question No. 3" from those who never set a boot in Iraq: Did you shoot anyone over there?
Colonel McClure, who did two combat tours in Vietnam, shares his own crass retort: "I don't know. I never went to look." But as laughter seeps through the rows, he turns sensitive again. Never answer the shooting question, he advises, because it will only prompt another: How did it feel?
"Don't let them get to that follow-up question," he warns the soldiers, now silent. "That one hurts."
Of course not. Hurt is to be avoided at all costs. In fact, one should take pre-emptive measures to try to avoid any real conversation:
Instead, they are counseled to take their spouses on dates, to buy ice cream and go on outings to Chuck E. Cheese's with their children, to come home with unexpected bouquets (corsages work, too), and to talk with their mates, but without telling "all of what you saw over there."
Posted by zeynep at May 31, 2004 01:42 AM
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