Jason Christopher Hartley, Soldier

Five years ago today, President George Bush announced the start of the Iraq War. Some $600 billion later, with over 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers, more than 6,000 U.S. casualties, and some some 82,000 dead Iraqi civilians, the U.S. continues to occupy the country.

Jason Christopher Hartley, a National Guard soldier who was living in New York City on 9/11 and subsequently served at Ground Zero, maintained a blog during his 2004 tour of duty in Iraq. Though he was ultimately ordered to shut down the blog and demoted, his story has been published in a book, Just Another Soldier, a humorous and unflinchingly honest view of Iraq from the perspective of one highly perceptive grunt with substantial material that never made it on his blog.

We recently spoke with Hartley at length about his service in Iraq; part two of our conversation will be published tomorrow.

When George Bush officially announced that the U.S. would invade Iraq five years ago, what was your reaction? I felt that it was dubious at best. But the thing you have to keep in mind is that before this whole thing started I was very apolitical, which is a polite way of saying that I was pretty ignorant – politically ignorant. Which I think is pretty typical of soldiers and pretty typical of the average American. We don’t have a basic understanding of current events. So at that time I thought, ‘this seems really fishy.’

But I’m pragmatic and I figured, ‘Well, they’re probably making a pragmatic decision where the end will justify the means. If we go into Iraq on whatever pretense and a few years down the road things end up better than before, then maybe it will be a good thing.’ But that didn’t happen at all. We’re definitely worse off now. My political opinions and feelings and understanding of the whole thing have changed greatly from the day our president announced we were going to be going into Iraq.

And you were in the National Guard at the time, right? Yeah, I’ve done the National Guard pretty much my whole career.

When the war started, did you think you’d be going to Iraq? I figured we’d be going places when 9/11 happened. Even before we went to Afghanistan I figured that given the president that we had that I would be sent somewhere at some point.

And what is your opinion about the war now and what do you think should happen at this point? Well, it’s definitely not an easy question to answer. I really think the best answer is that we need to get the hell out. But I think the reason why that is such an incredibly distasteful decision is that it is to admit defeat and it will be a big mess in Iraq when we leave. It’s just going to be bad all around. It doesn’t feel like the right thing to do; we broke it and we ought to fix it.

But the more I think about it the more I think it’s going to be fucked no matter what. We can leave in ten years; it’s going to be fucked. We can leave tomorrow; it’s going to be fucked. It’s going to be fucked regardless. So get out. That’s my opinion now. To keep it simple, I have no problem with our invading Afghanistan. I think that was justified and I’m sad to see our attention not remain with Afghanistan. But we should have never invaded Iraq.

When you were told you would be deployed to Iraq, how did you feel? To be completely honest, I was stoked. Just because the soldier in me was eager to finally get to go do something. I mean, the intellectual side of me knew that it was probably not the best idea. But it’s not really a soldier’s place to do a holistic kind of thinking. I do my job well, I know how to do what I’m trained to do and I’m happy to do it and I put a lot of trust in people who are over me, that they know what they were doing. And so even though it was fishy, I said, ‘Whatever. I’m just happy to do what I’m trained to do.’ I volunteered; I tried to get in OIF 1 with the invasion and it didn’t quite work out. But then we got sent over with OIF 2. And I was happy and excited; it was something new and interesting even though it’s really fucked up.

You postponed going on leave to Barbados because you didn’t want to leave Iraq. Was that a common sentiment among soldiers in Iraq? Not really. But there were definitely guys like my buddy Jeff, who appears here and there in the book, who had the same mentality as me. You don’t want to leave the madness, because you know it’s not going to make nearly as much sense when you come back. It can be really demoralizing to leave and realize how fun it is to be home and having sex, eating good food and chilling out. Then you don’t want to go back to that clusterfuck.

Why did you name your weapon Wazina? I lived in New York City for three years, not really doing much, designing web pages, finding myself if you will. I came here when I was 29-years-old and ended up becoming friends with this group of lesbians, because they would have me; they were a bunch of weirdoes and I was kind of a half-reject. So we palled around and I had an enormous crush on one of the girls named Wazina. I thought it was kind of funny and ironic because she was Afghani, she was born in Kabul. But she was a little Goth girl; small and always dressed in black. And she kind of looked like an M4. So I thought it would be funny to name my rifle after her.

What’s the biggest thing that needs to change about the Army? I wish there was more of an intellectual tradition with the Army. Maybe that’s being overly idealistic. I guess if I could choose one smaller thing it would be the whole anti-gay thing. That crap’s retarded. But I just wish there was an overhaul in the de facto system in place that creates soldiers that are really kind of amoral and pragmatic to the level that their value system is fucked up. Because the system reinforces making something that just looks correct rather than something that actually is correct.

Do you have an example of that? Well, for instance, the Marine Corps has a martial arts program that heavily emphasizes being a good citizen, not just an effective soldier, but also being, for lack of a better word, spiritually aware. They’ve only been doing it for a few years and I wish there was something like that in the Army, that we were more like samurai. And it wouldn’t be that hard because it’s pretty amazing what they teach soldiers in boot camp just through basic Pavlovian conditioning; it wouldn’t be that hard to plant seeds so that guys develop some kind of ethical back up system so that things like Haditha and My Lai don’t happen.

Check back tomorrow for the second part of this interview.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in News on March 18, 2008 8:30 AM

Comments [rss]

matty

Great inteview.

However, why can we comment on this interview but not any quasi-celebrity interviews?

Guest

The one thing people seem to be missing here is the fact that this guy is in the National Guard. THE NATIONAL GUARD! Or to put it in layman's terms so that everyone can understand, they GUARD our NATION. That means they should be here, in the United States, on standby, in case anyone invades or some other such disaster occurs within our borders.

MissPinkKate

I guess if I could choose one smaller thing it would be the whole anti-gay thing. That crap’s retarded.

I support the sentiment, but LOL at the word choice....

Bottomless Chips

I wouldn't take the observations of ONE National Guard enlisted soldier too seriously. This guy wasn't a general or even an officer, he was a regular troop with a blog. As such, while he is certainly capable of commenting on his own observations of the day to day experience, he wouldn't have any special insight into policy or the merits of being in Iraq or Afghanistan.

It's just nice to hear someone else's perspective. I'm sure there's someone else, another private, who wants to stay for the next 100 years.

Anyone can have an opinion on foreign policy.

eyekantspel

Lest my comment be mistaken for knocking this guy, I'm not. His blog is an interesting read on a National Guard member's experience, is pretty well-written, interesting pictures, etc.

eyekantspel

I wouldn't take the observations of ONE National Guard enlisted soldier too seriously. This guy wasn't a general or even an officer, he was a regular troop with a blog. As such, while he is certainly capable of commenting on his own observations of the day to day experience, he wouldn't have any special insight into policy or the merits of being in Iraq or Afghanistan.

sinisterteashop

And many think the Iraqi death toll is much higher than 80M.

ORB (Opinion Research Business), an independent polling agency located in London, puts the total war casualties at 1.2 million.

Bottomless Chips

Interesting interview. A couple of points, I believe "only" 4,950ish soldiers have died, and the war has cost much more than $600B at present costs while it will eventually cost $3+ trillion. And many think the Iraqi death toll is much higher than 80M.

Anyway, what I found most interesting was his allusion to how corrupt soldiers become from war. To me, that's the saddest part. Because a few individuals believed in the Wolfowitz doctrine and the WHIG became our war deciders instead of Congress (our elected officials after all), they've given the death orders of thousands of people, ruined the lives of vets who will become homeless, maimed thousands of our men and women...and all for nothing. In fact, it's been counterproductive. History has shown that killing leaders is what led to 9/11, it led to preventing nations from achieving what we set out to do (ha!): achieve democracy. c.f. Korea, Vietnam

Many generals dead and alive espoused views contradictory to our current president: no big standing armies, because you are more apt to carelessly put them into unnecessary wars.