American Soldiers Against "the War on Terror": War Trauma in Selected Poems by Brian Turner

The U.S.-led war against Iraq (2003), labeled as the "war on terror," was declared to uproot terrorism in some targeted countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, "the war on terror" proved to be a "war of terror" as it has not only scarred the bodies of its victims on both sides, but has also traumatized their minds and psyches. Considerable numbers of Iraqis and Americans, whether soldiers or civilians, have suffered from war trauma. A good number of these traumatized victims have attempted to express their trauma and to testify to the experience of war. This paper researches war poetry written by traumatized victims and survivors of the U.S. - led war against Iraq, such as Brian turner (1967- ), an American soldier who served for a year in Iraq as an infantry team leader. Poetry enables the traumatized to speak for others and to others about the real story of his/ her traumatic experience. This paper draws on the political and cultural dimension of trauma theory, applying its psychoanalytic perspective of Freud, Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Judith Herman and others to the texts under analysis. Through testifying to the war trauma in the poetry of Brian Turner, the researcher attempts to show how Turner has brought the miseries, destruction and terror of the war on Iraq graphically and vividly to the reader through an American soldier's eyes in an attempt to unfold and speak aloud the untold truth of war, whose credibility is only available through those who have gone through such a horrible experience as himself. In his poems, Turner resists war and its outrages that inflicted Iraqis as well as Americans. He also fights back being silenced or repressed by any cultural or political hegemony, which pressures war victims and survivors into silence.