Redneck
Philosopher
By Joshua Kors
Talk
with James Downen for a good 15 minutes, and it's unclear whether
the man should be writing Kenny Rogers' lyrics or George Bush's
foreign policy.
Downen
apologizes for delaying his interview, but lately, he says, he's
been as busy as “a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”
Anyway, he says, describing his
years of service as a military photographer is easy: “I'm just a
doofus with a camera” living in a “rinky-dink redneck town.”
But as
Downen's comments slide from the personal to the political, it becomes
increasingly difficult to dismiss him so easily. If the Sergeant
First Class insists on being labeled a “redneck,” he is then the
greatest redneck philosopher this side of the Mississippi, and his
views on poverty, religious extremism and the geopolitics of oil
prove remarkably nuanced, a worldview clearly devised on his own
and fed by years of first-hand experience in Central America, Europe
and the Middle East.
The
37-year-old sergeant began gathering that experience as a child,
a military brat who followed his father to
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James
Downen's unit worked to provide drinkable water and basic medical
treatment to isolated communities in eastern Afghanistan.
Downen's photos of the Afghan mountains and its villages are posted
here, in the gallery below.
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northern Europe for his service in Belgium. (“My father's a wicked
man,” says Downen. “God, I love him.”) Later Downen himself served
in Germany and Saudi Arabia, trained with the 82nd Airborne in Panama,
and did duty with the army reserves in Bosnia and Kosovo, where
he worked as a combat photographer.
“When
you've been to so many countries, it broadens your view of the world.
You experience what people are like.” And you see, he says, the
poverty, the desperation and the grip of religious fundamentalism.
It's that fundamentalist component, says Downen, that is the key
to the War on Terror. And there's a tinge of frustration in his
voice as he adds that in his opinion, America has yet to realize
this.
Echoing
the wisdom of Robert McNamara, whose hard-earned lessons were laid
out in “The Fog of War,” Downen notes that the key to winning any
war is to correctly identify the enemy. And the enemy here, he says,
is the not the rebels of Afghanistan or the insurgents of Iraq but
fundamentalist Islam. “We need to look at the education system in
the countries we're fighting and funding. If their textbooks teach
that we are the enemy, if the families are telling their children
that we're game, how do we ever expect to live peacefully with them?”
The
sergeant pauses for a moment. And that folksy charm slips back into
his voice, as he reflects upon his experiences on the ground in
Jalalabad and Saudi Arabia and how the attitudes there are so absurdly
misrepresented on TV's yak shows. “People are saying, ‘Oh, the world
hates us now.' Well, the world has always hated us. We're Americans.
We're infidels.”
Downen's
discussion of this hatred that's fueling the insurgency plays with
such honesty because it's clear from the passion in his voice just
how much he loves America, how without hesitation he's willing to
give his life to reverse Islam's opinion. It is why, after serving
honorably in central Europe and the Middle East, and with just a
few years to go before his 40th birthday, Downen leapt at the chance
to serve once again with the Army's 321st Civil Affairs Brigade
in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.
“On
9/11 I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, going to photography school
and working at the Greensboro Airport. When my sister Rachel called
and told me about the attacks, the first thing I did was call up
my reserve unit and say, ‘Okay, when are we going?'” Downen lets
out a soft chuckle as he remembers his unit administrator's reaction.
“He said, ‘Stand down. We haven't been called up for anything yet.'”
That
changed, of course, in due time. By Summer 2003, Downen and his
brigade were off to the Hindu Kush mountains of eastern Afghanistan,
part of a coordinated effort to provide its dirt-poor communities
with drinkable water and basic medical treatment.
The
Medic
Downen
shifts for a moment to the topic of bin Laden and the shock and
anger voiced by military critics who can't understand why the al-Qaeda
leader has not yet been caught. Those comments, he says, come from
people who've never been to Afghanistan, never seen the Hindu Kush
mountains, its rugged terrain, massive cliffs and complex network
of caves.
“The
mountains are incredible, and as soon as you see them,” says Downen,
“it makes perfect sense.” If the Hindu Kush offers anything, it's
isolation. If bin Laden's still there, he says, it's going to take
a determined effort and time to root the terrorist out.
Such
isolation may be good for bin Laden, but it's been a disaster for
Nangarhar's people, cutting them off from the public eye and leaving
them to make do in make-shift communities that, in Downen's words,
are “straight out of the Stone Age.” “The people live in huts made
out of mud. There's no running water, the roads are all dirt, and
the toilet facilities are outside.” The sergeant adds that it's
not just the isolation that has kept these Afghan villages in the
dark. It's also war, which has been raging there in one form or
another, between a variety of combatants, since 1973. The villages
caught in the crossfire have had little opportunity to develop their
infrastructure or absorb modern notions about germs and disease.
“Their
sense of sanitation, oh, it's nothing like America. But in civil
affairs, you have to get out amongst them. You have to eat their
food.” The main dish in Nangarhar is Qabili palau, “which is basically
an oily rice” sometimes topped with sugared almonds and yellow raisins.
“You eat with your hands. Or, well, one hand. The left hand is used
for … bathroom purposes.”
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