Here's a (Sad) Hoot

An editor friend just did me the favor of reviewing my second draft of the novel (tentative title, "Division Street") I wrote about the "Bush wars" effect on American families and - while I'm very happy he thought the book held well together throughout - I just had one point of contention.

In it, one of the soldiers is critically injured just before his return from duty, winds up in Germany and then shipped back here on life support. Unfortunately, in today's military, this kind of situation is commonplace (it's not uncommon in any war but the stats for Afghanistan and Iraq are above normal). The editor's issue was in my having the soldier flown into the states at night to Walter Reed under cover of darkness.

"Too contrived", I was told, and "it just screams of you inserting a political agenda you've kept out of the rest of the work." [I actually worked very hard to keep my political thinking from the book, trying to let the characters live and tell their own stories, with the characters drawn from research, discussions with families and soldiers, with teens being pushed to enlist, etc.]

So I sent back to my editor friend a half dozen minimum references to articles in The Post and other publications indicating this is SOP (standard operating procedure) for Bush soldiers.

That's the very sad and odd nature of war in the Bush years. Some of this stuff is so egregious, so nuts that to the eye or ear of someone who doesn't work to read up on a topic, it just sounds like "ranting from Bush's opponents". But you don't HAVE to make up stuff about this president and this Pentagon. Just telling the truth is horrific enough.