Crawford Reflection

I liked the Crawford piece on the Iraq war, but I did think it was hard to follow. It was difficult to keep track of what was real and what was fiction, but I guess that this was the point. Fiction is used to emphasize the truth. Telling fictional stories of having to shoot at children makes the war seem worse. Telling stories of the idealized return home from war makes his own true story of returning home from war seem worse as well. All along when he was in the war he imagined coming home to all these wonderful things, like his friends and his wife, so he wrote a story about he imagined that would play out, but the true story of his homecoming was much more sad. I can see both sides of the idea of "accidental soldier". It was accidental in the sense of that he was not expecting it, and it was like a car accident in his life, changing everything and wruining everything. On the other hand, he did sign up to join the National Guard so he should have known that the possibility of having to fight was there, making it not truly accidental. I do think that he got the point across that war is bad and wrecks lives.