Going across the world to another country is not only difficult for military members on deployment but for the families they leave behind as well. This memoir is revealing about what both parties go through during the distance.

In “The Day After He Left for Iraq”, Melissa Seligman opens the reader’s door to her world. Her family’s story reflects that of so many others who share similar experiences. Being free to share it and hear it allows us to acknowledge that we are human.

Melissa’s husband was deployed to Iraq while she was home with a baby and a toddler. The toddler understood more than adults would imagine. It makes you think about how important it is to prepare children for deployment and the return.

I am thankful that Melissa shared her family’s story. I’ve always wanted to know what a soldier goes through in war but was afraid to ask out of respect for their privacy.

As a young woman dating enlisted men in the military, I was discouraged by their immaturity and disregard of respect for young women. I guess I didn’t meet the good ones. I later married an Army Officer and he is a good man.

Now, as the mother of a young woman who is a Naval Officer on deployment and soon to be mother in law of her fiancee, also a Naval Officer just returned fro deployment, I pray every day for their future and that they will be safe and know they are loved.

I pray that when they have children I will be able to be a support during any deployments. I pray that the young men will become gentlemen who respect women and the families of the other side in the same way they would wish for their own families.

Many returning Veterans do have to seek counseling and their spouses as well but sharing their stories is a huge step in understanding their world. I will still respect privacy but do desire to find out how I can support our military families. As my daughter marries and shares her experiences, I hope to become involved in healing the heartaches of those returning from war.

I hope I never have to experience war. There are valid views on all sides. Americans who serve willingly need to be supported. Objectors during drafts need to be understood, such as what happened during the Viet Nam era. Those fighting against us may not have good cause but their mothers grieve for lost children just the same. The innocent on both sides still hurt.

I am glad I read this book. It is a start in knowing how we as citizens can help.

The parents of British service men and women killed or injured as a result of the war in Iraq have won a legal inquiry launched to assess its legitimacy. It found that the Prime Minister of Great Britain at that time, Tony Blair, was persuaded by the President of the United States, George W Bush, at least a month before the war started that it was the right thing to do. This was based on the premise that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and was a threat to the West.

In Australia there was general unrest and the public made it clear that such a war was not in our interests but the dye was cast. Bush had already talked up the need for an invasion with our Prime Minister, John Howard, along the same lines. It caused outrage in some quarters and people put lit candles in their windows in protest.

Generally, it was seen as another Vietnam in which there could be no winners, but a consensus of opinion was that an awful lot of innocent people would die. The country was not a threat to Australia and we have a lot of Iraqi born people in the country who came as migrants. The flood of opinion against it was overridden by a government determined to stand with the USA on yet another hopeless battle-ground.

After 9/11 it was inexcusable that Bush turned on Iraq which had nothing to do with the destruction of the Twin Towers or the other damage sustained by the terrorist hijackers. While he nominated Osama Bin Laden as the instigator and planner of the attack, and his whereabouts was Afghanistan, he pointed his guns at Iraq and few could understand why?

The hell that descended on the people of Iraq lives on in the memory of all who witnessed it on the media. Thousands of bombs exploded over homes and businesses as people died or were maimed. Although the forces claimed otherwise the civilian death toll mounted as men, women, and children were slaughtered.

The case was made out against Sadam Hussein, the President of Iraq, and he paid the ultimate price of being hanged for his so-called terrorism. Tanks rolled into the streets of Baghdad and other cities as services were cut, the infrastructure was destroyed, and businesses ceased to exist. Statues of Hussein were cut down as if they were to blame for what happened to the USA.

Out of the mess grew Isil, which is now a severe threat to the world. What the leaders who set up the invasion never contemplated was an Iraq afterwards. Certainly American troops hung around and tried to patch things up but they could never bring back the dead.

The Americans, Australians, and British men and women of combat who died during this exercise of horror gave their lives on a whim. The Inquiry found that the diplomacy that could have resolved the issue without bombs was not given a chance to work. Now many families will be seeking compensation and justice and the country they destroyed in their haste for war deserves it as well.

What does that mean? Have a suicide bomb clip followed by a new school opening? Sounds good doesn’t it? But what does it really mean? What is fair and balanced in a war? It implies that there is some kind of 50/50 split between the terrible and the uplifting. I suppose in Iraq it might be true that in the north, where the Kurds rule and sectarian issues are minimized, headway is being made. It may also be true that in the South, where the Shiites control broad stretches of desert and oil, infrastructure can be rebuilt and survive. Gee … sever those geographical and cultural islands from the war and there is plenty of good to report.

But that is not where the trouble is. And where there is trouble, it is not an even score. A new Baghdad police station today is tomorrow’s insurgency target. I suppose if one stood in one place long enough, he or she could report the good and bad without even moving. But what would it prove? Progress? Failure?

An eager supporter of the President’s “plan for victory” marketing campaign, Laura Ingram put out a challenge to the mass media to report the good news out of Iraq, pointing out that reporters can go beyond the safety of their green zone balconies and see more than mortar round and roadside explosions. She suggested setting up the Today Show from Camp Victory in Iraq and then try to report only bad news. When challenged by David Gregory, she indignantly referred to her own recent visit and dared everyone to do the same thing.

Fortunately she has posted a journal of her trip on her official website. It seemed like the only fair thing to do was read it and learn about the good news she suggested is suppressed by the media.

Her one week trip occurred in early February 2006. You can read it for yourself but you will find this is a very fair summary of her journal (much of the text is copied from her site):

Day 1, Camp Victory (Baghdad): The troops are inspiring. The security situation is terrible. There are practical limits as to where she can go. The good news is that training Iraqi forces continues apace and more security operations are being turned over to them every month. She finishes with this: “I wish every American could see even the small part of the operation here that I’ve seen so far. They’d be more proud of our military and more grateful to be Americans.”

Day 2, Camp Taji (North Bahgdad): Her team is briefed about the goals of the days operations. Good news, everyone who travels outside the camp is in an up-armored vehicle and any concern about body armor completely misplaced. The troops she has met are fine people. IED incidents are down since December. She meets 30 Iraqi troops who are being trained. They are friendly and seem dedicated. Their American counterparts seem genuinely fond of the men and not happy that the whole story is not being told by the “major media.” “Thanks for coming here, Laura,” Brigade Cmdr. MacWilley said, as he waved goodbye. “How do we get the rest of the country to see the great work these men and women are doing here?” “You just did,” I said.

Day 3, Camp Victory (Baghdad): I started the day with a pre-patrol briefing for an 18-soldier Humvee convoy to a local village near Camp Victory. When we arrived at the village, children swarmed around our vehicles, waving and laughing. The kids were absolutely gorgeous-especially the girls with their big, curious, almond-eyes. I became their instant new American friend when they saw I had my helmet filled with Tootsie Pops. (Big mistake to bring only two bags!) She met the village mayor who seemed to express heartfelt thanks to all coalition forces. She met more troops that evening. They are soft-spoken and humble. She broadcasts a show that night and the troops are thankful for our prayers.

Day 4, Central Baghdad: I felt both awkward and on edge as we snaked our way through cement barriers, past dilapidated shops and garbage-strewn streets. Not to be too dramatic, but I found myself constantly scanning the sidewalks for men on cell phones (possible bomb detonation device) or cars parked on the side of the road (potentially packed with timed explosives). I tried to put myself in their shoes but it’s hard. Most are just walking to work, or looking for jobs, trying to get by. It is undeniable that the security situation is pretty terrible. Her team reaches an orphanage housing 25 kids. Later they travel to a children’s hospital. It was horrible. The good news: they will soon have a new wing neo-natal and pediatric wing thanks to the generosity of the American people and hard work of the USACE and its contractors. That evening she had an interview with General George Casey. Bottom line: Iraq is a complicated, difficult, hard-to-understand place. But we need to make this work. There is hope and success amidst the sadness and suffering here.

Day 5, Camp Victory (Baghdad): She visits the garish Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (honoring those Iraqis who died in the Iran-Iraq War). She meets an Iraqi military man and asks him: what would happen in Iraq if U.S. forces did a Murtha and pulled out immediately? “Disaster! Total big bad everything. Disaster!” he insisted, waving around his finger in the air. On her eight mile trip back to camp she asked her Rhino driver-a heavily tattooed heavy metal-listening contractor-when he thought people could travel between cities in Greyhounds, not Rhinos, he answered deadpan, “200 or 300 years.” To travel 8 miles on the ground has taken us 5 hours-so far. Life in the military means danger, sacrifice, commitment and-waiting around a lot. [note: Rhinos are heavily armored transport vehicles]

Day 6 Camp Victory (Baghdad): She is briefed on how Iraqi forces are slowly but surely taking over the battle space. At lunchtime she enjoys shooting weapons at targets. She broadcasts two live hours of her radio show from the media center. That evening she concluded her visit at the Cigar Club for stories and teasing with the guys and a few gals.

So the good news is that the troops are wonderful brave people whom we can be proud of. Well, I’ve been hearing that tenfold from Senators, Congressmen and Congress women, and all the mainstream media shows, and most notably Al Franken who has been I think on three USO tours over in Iraq and Afghanistan. Quite frankly, I don’t need anyone telling me that, it is one thing we all agree to.

I guess that is not the good news she must be referring to that is being purposely suppressed. Well she mentions how she was briefed about Iraqi forces taking over more and more security. She was briefed about that. She talked about great power point presentations given by military brass. It wasn’t something she saw with her own eyes. What she did observe and wrote in her journal was that the thirty Iraqi men she met who were being trained did not want their pictures taken for fear that they’d be executed at home if recognized. That speaks volumes of their bravery and sadly of the dangers that still exist.

She was told the body armor issue is misplaced (not sure what that means, assuming it’s no longer an issue). Well that is good news! But I have a feeling it was the barrage of ‘negative’ reporting from two years ago that embarrassed the Pentagon into action. As for the orphanage and children’s hospital, is the good news that the facilities exist?

If this is all the optimistic news she uncovered and compelled her to challenge the Today Show to broadcast, I am having real difficulty understanding what good news is not being reported because I have heard this all before, with one exception. When CNN drags a camera into an orphanage or children’s hospital, it suddenly turns ‘negative’. As for the troops wondering why these stories are not being told in the press at home, it seems to me they are. So who is telling them they’re not being reported? Laura maybe?

One last thing. I purposely skipped over her constant reference to ‘terrorists’ throughout her journal. She never once called them insurgents, gangsters, or secular militia. Just terrorists. By casually using the term ‘terrorist’ to describe everyone who shoots a gun or blows up a car, it deliberately clouds the picture and purposely misleads people. It isn’t journalism but then I’m pretty sure she’s not a journalist because if she were she’d know that more of her fellow journalists (84) have been killed in Iraq than any conflict since WWII.

She also continues to snidely and falsely state Murtha’s position about immediate withdrawal. Murtha’s point is simple. The killing is about secular hatred. It is being carried out by Iraqi insurgents as part of a growing internal civil war. As such, he believes our troops should retreat to the outskirts and draw down the numbers as quickly and safely as possible; six months, nine months, a year. He has never talked about a weekend withdrawal as Laura misleads us to believe. And he didn’t dream this up on his own either. He has formulated this proposal after many off-the-record, back room conversations with key active military leaders (access few have; certainly not Ingram).

Finally, she insinuates that we’d be more proud of our troops if we saw them in action; that somehow she is more prideful than those who are troubled by this war. If we learned one thing from Vietnam, it is that we can support our troops in wars we don’t belong in. I’m the first to admit that the soldiers in Vietnam were treated harshly upon their return. And those of us who participated in that were terribly wrong! As a result of learning from that misdirected anger, I have nothing but admiration and respect for those who find their way into battle. The idiotic notion that if you hate the war, you hate the troops is a mean-spirited myth used to push a position that needlessly damages the very thing it tries to protect: troop support.

Fair is fair. I give Laura Ingram tremendous credit for taking the trip. It certainly is something I’m not planning to do anytime soon. In light of her recent battle with breast cancer, I admire her determination, bravery and spunk. I’m also sure the troops appreciated her visit like they appreciate any smiling face from the States. It does help morale and that is always a good thing.

So why does she undermine herself? Why does she find it necessary to spin her experience into some confirmation of her ideology? It borders on shameful. She is not interested in a dialogue at all. This charge that only the bad news is purposely reported out of Iraq seems to lack any substance. Even her own journal fails to reveal anything new or any unreported good about the war. Her challenge quite honestly appeared silly at best.

I’m left wondering how the guys at the Alamo would have wanted their news balanced. “Troop levels are fine. Spirits are high. We have plenty of beans, bandages, bullets and booze. We are looking forward to Bob Hope’s visit.”

I wish to be an absence, and I wish for the actress Talitha Bateman to be a presence. And this is in relation to the universe; Bateman should be the only real presence in the universe, and I should be the only real absence in the universe.

To be an absence, it occurs to me that some sort of gesture is necessary. I can’t literally become an absence, and so to amend this inability, the Iraq War from 2003 can be the way in which I bridge the gap between myself and my desire to be absent.

The Iraq War is not a living being. Bateman is a living being, and I am a living being, but the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent war until 2011 – or thereabouts – is an event – and an event is a series of actions.

A series of actions is a non-series of non-actions; a non-series is a non-sequence, and a non-sequence is a non-structure. Meanwhile, non-actions are non-movements. Non-movements are numerous origins, and numerous origins is the equivalent of one aftermath.

The Iraq War is a non-structure of one aftermath – a structure of reactions. A structure of reactions is a reaction to no difference; a reaction to no difference is a reaction to equality.

Lastly: a reaction to equality is an equal origin. And an equal origin is an unequal reaction – a judgement which is superior.

As things stand, I’ve elected the Iraq War to be a way for me to prevent my failure to be absent, and in doing so I’ve associated the means of justification with a judgement which is superior – but what is the actual meaning, of the connection between a judgement which is superior and a means of justification?

To begin with, a judgement that’s superior can just be an inferiority. And then once a means of justification is altered into a non-justification, the issue is much simpler: the meaning of the connection between an inferiority and a non-justification – ergo, the meaning of the connection between an inferiority and an inferiority.

The connection between an inferiority and an inferiority isn’t the same as between an inferiority and an inferiority, which would make the connection between an inferiority and an inferiority an inferiority and an inferiority. An inferiority and an inferiority is a superiority, however, it’s a superiority which is the conflict of being a superiority because of the power of a repeated inferiority and a superiority because of the general rule that repetition can’t honour the original identity.

The Iraq War is a power that’s because that power has honoured and betrayed the same thing. A power that’s a power because it honours and betrays the same thing is a power that’s incorrect because it only honours the same thing; a power that’s incorrect is correct, and a correct that only honours the same thing is a correct that betrays different things.

A correct that betrays different things is a correct that betrays non-things – a correct that betrays non-things is a thing that is a betrayal of the correct.

The Iraq War is a thing – or a series of actions or a series of things, either amount to the same thing – and it is a thing which is famous for being a betrayal – although the exact nature of the Iraq War is far more intricate than that.

More curiously, but perhaps not famously – otherwise that would involve a lot of subversive egotism – the Iraq War is a part of history that means a technical error. By technical error, the implication is that in general, warfare, nationalism and the protection of capitalist systems can be exempt from their natural state of being corrupt.

Either through magic, or through nothing but the cold and clinical art of deductive logic, it’s the 2003-2011 Iraq War which has the natural ability to call to me: not outer space, not music, not the countryside, not the farm life and not the American people – the Iraq War.

So I can use the Iraq War, that’s been established. But what now?

At the beginning, I said that I wanted to be an absence, so that Talitha Bateman can be a presence. The Iraq War can’t be a presence, because that violates Talitha Bateman’s ability to be a presence. Thus, the Iraq War needs to be something which is neither a presence or absence; the opposite of a presence and absence is the opposite of alternation. The opposite of alternation is non-change.

Non-change is permanence. Permanence is the absence of instability, and the absence of instability is the absence of corruption – the Iraq War is the epitome of corruption, and thus, it is a suitable agent to permit Talitha Bateman to become the only real presence in the universe, and to permit me to become the only real absence in the universe.

Talitha Bateman was the star of the 2017 horror spin-off/prequel Annabelle Creation. Her character, Janice, is why I’ve felt the need to reference the Iraq War; as hard as it is to admit, my desire to be a father to Talitha Bateman seems to have just been a way for the Iraq War to defeat Janice.

Even if this is true, it won’t prevent me from my ability to extend this writing to Bateman herself.

To Talitha Bateman: thank you, for your performance in Annabelle Creation and for your ability to help me become reality

There’s a popular saying that “truth is stranger than fiction.” In the case of Shant Kenderian, the saying certainly applies. In his nonfiction book (once the most popular selling book on BookSurge before being picked up by publisher Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster), Kenderian recounts his own tale of being drafted to fight a war against his own country.

Born in Iraq as an Armenian Christian (already an outsider in a country populated with Muslims), when his parents divorced, Kenderian went to live with his mother and siblings in Chicago. Like many children of divorce, he felt torn between his parents, and after two years of living in the United States, he decided to go to Iraq for a brief visit in 1980. His goal was to see his father and reconcile their acrimonious relationship (because of his parents’ divorce) before returning (after his two week visit) to the US to complete his schooling. Days before he was due to return to the US, Saddam Hussein closed all the Iraqi borders, ordering all men of draft age (between 17-55) into service to fight for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. Under the threat of execution for refusing to serve, Kenderian did his time in the Iraqi Navy and returned to Baghdad, where he continued his studies in engineering while awaiting the issuance of his green card from the US Embassy that would allow him to return home.

Two days before he was scheduled to depart Iraq, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, thus pulling Kenderian into yet another war (Desert Storm) before he could leave. Thus begins the saga that is recounted in 1001 Nights in Iraq. As an Iraqi-born US resident, Shant Kenderian was put in the unenviable position of being forced to fight against the country he loved and considered his own-the United States.

Kenderian recounts with depressing detail his time as an engineer aboard a ship in the Iraqi Navy just off the coast of Kuwait. Forced to service the ship with only a wrench and screwdriver, Kenderian tells of the depravity faced by most soldiers on the Iraqi side of the conflict. Of his crew, only 2 Iraqis of 15 had guns of any sort; Kenderian himself had none. Food was scarce, as were any other sort of supplies. Every day was a nightmare in which the Iraqi soldiers expected death at any moment by the Americans.

Clearly, Kenderian had to do something to change his fate, and so he devised a plan-to surrender to the Americans at the earliest opportunity. Kenderian thus hoped to plead his case as a US resident forced to participate in a war not of his own choosing on a side he would not have selected. Kenderian eventually did get captured by the Americans, but not before his ship struck a mine, killing several of his Iraqi crewmates. However, even his capture by US forces meant extreme hardship. As a prisoner of war (POW), again and again, he was interrogated, forced to live in difficult conditions, and plead his desperate case, to return to his family in the United States.

Despite this unbelievable story, Kenderian never lost his sense of humor, his humanity for others (Iraqi or otherwise), or his faith in God that he would eventually be returned to the country he considered home. Only a man of real courage and compassion could have survived this ordeal to tell this story of resilience and hope. Through his book, Kenderian has opened the door into a world few Americans understand or have experienced. His story been featured on public radio’s This American Life, and truly it is a unique one.