Being in the Second Iraq War

Abstract

Utilizing the methodology of poetic ethnography, the current article presents a U.S. soldier’s narrative of his experiences during the second Iraq war in 2003. The study provides a methodological, ethnographic platform through which remembered lived experiences of the Iraq war from the perspective of one U.S. soldier can be presented for examination and reflection. This political, critical ethnography attempts to offer a counterweight to prevalent rhetorical constructions of the Iraq war and its participants. The study follows the development and psychological contortions of one soldier as he moves through and expresses his remembered experiences and raises serious questions about the ways in which this soldier was positioned and manipulated and his response to these nearly incomprehensible events. This poetic ethnography aims to add to the growing literature on the very real complexities of what war actually means to all those who participate in it.