War

In the context of war and how it intersects with the personal lives of individuals, the line between an observer and a participant can easily be blurred. It is often hard to distinguish the two because observers become participants and participants also live in an environment that necessitates observation. How far one bends towards the other, of course, is dependant on the individual and his or her situation.

Naturally, observers in conflicts are those who view it - whether as a news reporter, a part of a delegation, an investigator, someone who lives in the environs of the conflict – but do not make his or herself an active member of the situation(s). A participant is one that is involved in the situation and takes part in the state of affairs surrounding them. However, as is the case with war, it is very difficult to be just one or the other.

Daniel Ellsberg shows how difficult it is to be strictly an observer. In his book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, he tells how he was a U.S. State Department observer in Vietnam. One specific group he patrolled with to observe the different situations that the State Department felt needed to be reported on was based out of Rack Kein. He tells the story of how the unit he was attached to felt a certain responsibility to look out after him when they started taking fire one day because he was unarmed. The following day, he brought his own weapon (Ellsberg, 151). He writes that he had no intentions of using his weapon, but did so for his safety and the safety of the soldiers, so they could pay more attention to their jobs instead of protecting him, an was only slightly concerned that it was illegal for a civilian to carry a weapon in a war zone, (Ellsberg, 151). After he started taking pictures (his job as an observer) in the middle of a firefight, and the resulting backlash from the squad leader, he started to shoot whenever they came under fire right along with the soldiers (Ellsberg, 152), realizing a camera was not necessarily going to keep him alive.

In this situation, Ellsberg was sent into a combat zone strictly as an observer. His job was to report what was happening on the ground and to make recommendations based upon what he saw. But in becoming an observer, he had to also participate. He carried a weapon just like the traditional participants (soldiers), and he fired it when attacked as well.

Upon returning home, Ellsberg was a participant in the fact that he made an effort to stop the Vietnam War. He testified before congress (Ellsberg, 341-342), published the Pentagon Papers in the New York Times (Ellsberg, 375), and participated in anti-war protests (Ellsberg, 376-381). Though he was not necessarily a participant in and during the Vietnam War as a soldier, he participated and took some ‘hopeful’ ownership in helping end the war (Ellsberg, 457).

At the early stages of Ellsberg’s career, it seems that he would have separated observers from participants in terms of definition. Later in life, however Ellsberg would find it difficult to separate an observer and a participant because of the experiences he had as both.

In Janine Di Giovanni’s book Madness Visible, about the Yugoslav wars of the 1990’s, the author tells about how she was entering Kosovo as a writer with two of her colleagues. They were detained out of nowhere by drunken Serb forces, and Giovanni watched as one of the reporters she was detained with was beaten (Giovanni, 89). She herself was robbed, and stripped of her passport, and was told to run away as the Serbs fired over her and her colleagues’ heads (Giovanni, 90). Immediately after, she was taken custody again, and watched as the Serbs beat refugees (Giovanni, 91) and was close to being shot in the middle of nowhere before being released (Giovanni, 92).

This part of Giovanni’s book alone demonstrates the type of events that she experienced while ‘observing’ the war. In this small block of time, she had been a participant (though not necessarily a willing participant) in the war. In this measure, Giovanni was not an antagonist, but she did develop a personal experience of how her participation as an observer resulted in her participating in the war as one defending herself against aggressors.

John Crawford writes in the book The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell about his experiences in Iraq. Crawford, though a soldier – a traditional participant – would say that that the lines are blurred as well. He writes of an Iraqi who gave them shelter by a gas station they were guarding, and explains how he was just there, knew what it was like to be a soldier, and just wanted everyone to be okay (Crawford, 161). This Iraqi man was an observer: He wasn’t a reporter or called by some delegation, but his home became a place where war brought in participants. It was to this end that this observer, the Iraqi who would just sit at his little shop and hear these soldier’s stories, paid the ultimate sacrifice as a participant when some Americans from a unit different than Crawford’s shot him (Crawford, 173). Being there long enough not only made him an observer, but a participant, though on the wrong side of a gun.

Not only does this story from Crawford give credence to observers becoming participants, but his whole book is an example of how a participant can become an observer. The whole book was written from Crawford’s war journals, his personal experiences and observations, in which the reader gains insight into what it is really like, not only in war, but what it is like to be a soldier on a personal level. The observations of a participant (Crawford) give readers a taste so that they can observe what he experienced.

Susan Griffin writes a bit about observers and participants in her book, A Chorus of Stones. In this example, she is not necessarily talking about war, but in the development of the American war machine via nuclear arms. In one segment of her book, she talks about how the U.S. Government put soldiers and marines in bunkers close up to the blast of a test run of a nuclear bomb. Not only this, but it was made to be a spectacle for tourists as well. “The travel section of the New York Times promises the likelihood of an attenuated cloud passing right over the observer’s head (Griffin, 31).”

These observation posts ended up causing catastrophic health problems for those that were in the group of observers. Because of his observation, Marine Israel Torres had reoccurring health problems for the rest of his life – eventually leukemia, and it was not until 30 years later that he was given any sort of resolution from the U.S. Government (Griffin, 42-43). These actions resulted in him being an observer and a participant at the same time – though not necessarily a willing participant. But he was, in fact, a participant in a government study on the affects of radiation on soldiers.

This is just one story of how one role precludes the other from Griffin’s book. In the case of Heinrich Himmler, she discusses how one can be a participant and not necessarily an observer, but it is difficult that the two roles not coincide if any sort of conflict goes on for decent amount of time. Himmler, who was key in developing the organizational systems in carrying out mass killings, did not view one until 1941 (Griffin, 155). After he became a literal observer of what he has participated in, he realized that the participants who actually conduct and observe the brutality, in other words those who have both their participant and observer roles finally realized, have it more difficult than anyone else emotionally (Griffin, 156-157).

Author Jack Todd gives an interesting take in his book Desertion in the Time of Vietnam. Jack Todd shows how it is nearly impossible to avoid being an observer or participant, no matter how hard one might try. Todd deserted the U.S. Army once he was on leave in Basic Training during the Vietnam War (Todd, 121). This was in an effort to get away from being a participant. He ends up going to Canada, where he gets a job with the Vancouver Sun, and ends up covering an antiwar rally where he ends up getting arrested (Todd, 213-219). Though he never wanted to participate in the war, the job he got as a reporter required him to observe, and like Giovanni being hijacked in Kosovo as if she was an enemy combatant, he was arrested as though he was a protestor. Because of this, he spends much of the next few years of his life with antiwar protestors, making him a participant against the cogs of the war machine.

With all of these authors bringing their experiences and observations to the table, it shows how each one of them find that the line between being an observer and participant is truly a difficult one to define. Yes, all would agree that observers by all intents and purposes are not to partake in what they are observing, but situational awareness dramatically decreases the possibilities of that happening. For each of these authors, it appears that observation and reporting is the primary goal of the observer, but, as the examples of participants shows, the primary goal of a participant is not necessarily to actively pursue the aims of war or conflict.

Participation does not preclude that one is going along with the situation, but rather participating in some aspect of the war or conflict that could even go against the ‘flow.’ Participants do not have to be combatants, support elements, or policy makers. Participants include those who killed partisans under Himmler’s orders but also those like Ellsberg and Todd who participated in antiwar rallies. None of these authors, not even Todd who wanted to run as far away from the Vietnam War as possible, look back and say that they were not involved in some way with the war/antiwar effort.

What is often forgotten is the so-called freakonomics side of war, or rather, the minute and delicate details that are overlooked in history – the personal side. When international politics actually do touch the individual, it takes affect in a way that is more than just a typical observer/participant relationship. Nations may be able to differentiate on a grander policy scale concerning who is considered an observer and who is considered a participant, but when it comes to the individual in each situation, as these authors provide, the definitions can intermingle between the two.