518 FBF: Dust to Dust: Life & Death, War & Peace by Benjamin Busch

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It'S my pleasure to welcome Benjamin Bush to the show. He is an actor, director and author of Dust to Dust. He also served in the military and with the 10 year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, this is a very timely topic. So we're glad to have him today to talk to us. Benjamin, welcome. How are you?

Hey, thank you so much for having me.

The pleasure is all mine and I just like to give our listeners a sense of geography. Where are you located today?

I am currently looking out my window at a white field of snow in northern Michigan.

Oh, fantastic. It's great to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit about your background and your work. I mean, you're an actor on two shows. I guess you've been on the West Wing as well. Most people have seen that. But Give us a little background.

Yeah. Well, I grew up in central New York. My father was actually a writer, my mother a librarian. So words were very much in my life. Although I spent all my time out in the fields and forests not writing and not reading, I was very experiential. I wanted to have dirt on my hands. I thought that was the best way for me to explore the world. And I kind of had a martial instinct to me and an artistic at the same time. And it is no surprise that I ended up being both a Marine and an artist in my later years. I kind of had those courses set for me. And that's what I really go into in my book. Dust at Dust is trying to reawaken everyone's sense of journey. The path that we've chosen has much been based on choices where we turned left or right along that trip. And it wasn't until after my second combat tour in Iraq in the city of Ramadi, that I returned home to a child who I didn't really know and lost within a year, both of my parents. And I think the book finally. I think I was finally moved to write a book that summarized or at least gave some guidance to how to get back in touch with the path you've made through your life and the importance of all those little moments. I never thought as a child. I never thought my parents were vulnerable. I never even thought they were mortal. And after a tour in the Marines where I didn't think I was mortal, my second tour was much bloodier. I was wounded in that tour. And all of our preconceived notions will eventually be met with test. And war tested mine, as did the death of my parents. And so I began to write the book, mostly not looking for myself, but looking for my parents, as we all do. And that's what brought me finally to look at my own journey for the first time. I don't think I'd ever really looked back at myself specifically, and this is what triggered it. So I'm hoping that the book does that for everyone who reads it.

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. It's really an incredible perspective from someone who has seen so much action. It's definitely a sensitive perspective. It's been called a beautiful meditation on war and loss. What an amazing perspective. Really.

Yeah. I don't consider it to be a war memoir, although the war plays into it very noticeably. About a third of the book addresses my 16 years in the Marines, which you would think would take a larger portion, but really the book's going after life itself. And Much of it plays in childhood, the things that lead to war. It kind of puts war in context. You don't often see that in a war memoir. You kind of get right into the war, and then you kind of are left in it or you get out of it. This one is kind of where war's place is in our lives as people. Conflict is always not far from us. And this kind of addresses that I was drawn to, that I was drawn to endangerment, because I was fascinated with uncertainty. I was always drawn to the unknown. And I think it took me all the way to the extreme, which is conflict with one another. We don't pick the wars we get as Marines. We go to the ones we're issued. But within them, you are still tested by all these great uncertainties and moral tests as well. How do you remain just? And as the war progressed and we began to question its legitimacy, how do you then. How do you deal with that? The Vietnam veterans struggled terribly with that from Vietnam, and I think you're seeing some of that now with veterans of Iraq.

Yeah. Yeah, you definitely are. Tell us about the chapter titles in your book. I mean, they're odd in a way. Arms, Water, Metal, Soil, Wood, Stone, Blood, Ash. Is that a cycle?

Well, I wanted, you know, like I said, I kind of went against a lot of conventions with memoir because I wasn't. I wasn't setting out to celebrate myself. I wanted to provide a window for readers back into themselves. And so I took my environment and I broke it down. I was always very much part of my landscape. And so I took the things that composed it. I took the soil, and that's a chapter. And the stone and water and metal and wood and blood and bones, and finally ash. And I took each of those substances from childhood to adulthood. So we really begin to see in each chapter how I began to first notice one of these substances. We had a river, so water was kind of first noticeable to me as a force in that river. And then over time, you see how your perspective on water does change as an adult. It's the same river, but it means different things to you. And so each chapter does that. By the time we get to the end of one substance, we're somewhere in my adulthood. And then the next chapter begins, once again, back in childhood. And it's not something where readers need to be concerned with chronology. It's not about this happened and that happened. It's more about, let's take a look at this huge piece of our environment and think about it. So many people Work with dirt, work with stone. Our surroundings, even if we live in a city, are still composed of these same elements. Buildings are built out of concrete and stone, glass and everything else. So I really sought to kind of track these particular themes in hopes that people, as they read this book, would keep putting it down because it would inspire them to remember things from their own lives, which these elements speak to.

Why a lighter on the COVID of.

The book that was actually designed by Allison Forner. It's a wonderful. And I wanted something which was a solitary object. The first line of my book is I knew very early I was a solitary being, which we all are in our own ways. And I wanted something which was familiar, which in the hands of an adult is just useful and not dangerous, but in the hands of a child is dangerous. And so a lighter that had been lost and recovered kind of spoke to all the things I'm going talking about in the book. And Ash is the last chapter in the book. So I guess beginning it with fire and ending it with ash makes sense.

Yeah, it definitely did. Do you express your thoughts as to the justification for the war? Obviously with this 10 year anniversary? A lot of that is under question. It has been really since about maybe one year in or so. Well, I mean, it's always been in question. But the whole weapons of mass destruction thing, the WMD thing with Bush and Colin Powell, et cetera, in connection. Wendy Rice, just any of your maybe more political thoughts on the war.

Well, you know, the book is not a political book and that would be a distraction from the things that I'm really trying to speak to. I didn't want to editorialize in the book because I really did want this book to be an awakening for its readers. I wanted to write something about all of us and I didn't want to put an opinion on it. I just wanted to make it an observation. So the whole book itself is really me trying to give the readers my eyes and let them walk around looking through them for a little while. If I can in some way remind anyone of something that they've kind of let go fallow in their head, then that's the purpose of the book, is to turn us back that way. I do write about the more political thoughts in current periodicals. If you look up my piece that came out in the Daily Beast on the very day of the ten year celebration, March 19th, then you'll see a different side of me, which is, you know, which is editorializing in my own way, which is presenting my view of certain facts and how They've been handled in the public, so I do that, but in different places. I don't do it in my, in my, in my book. I think there's probably three or four sentences that even address that aspect of the work.

That's probably hard to keep that out, I'd say. But it's interesting that you didn't want to editorialize and you wanted to make it, you know, really just give someone your, the reader, your eyes. But I mean, you've done a lot of other work, your periodical writing, your acting work. And I'd like to talk about the broad spectrum, not just the book, if we can. So I did want to get some of your thoughts on that, if you don't mind sharing them.

Yeah, well, I mean, the piece that I wrote for the Daily Beast a week ago is very indicting of a passive public and what became very clearly a disproven cause for war that we ended up staying in for nine years, which is kind of unbelievable. I differ in my approach to Afghanistan because that's where Bin Laden was and I did believe in going and getting him. Turning Afghanistan into a Western nation or a democracy is a different idea and a different mission entirely. I don't think we initially planned on that kind of thing. But Iraq, the call was for weapons of mass destruction and a link to 9, 11. Both of those were complete and totally disproven, which means that everything that followed thereafter was based on an unjust cause. How do you ever reconcile that as a Marine or soldier or anybody else who goes forward in the name of a nation for something which can never really be legitimized? How do you explain that even to Iraq? I don't know that you can.

Well, just. And we don't have to talk about this for a long time, but I just want to maybe a couple points on that. Number one, I've always wondered if the Bush presidency was that crooked, if the whole thing was that just that wrong. They knew there weren't WMDs, why didn't they just plant them? I mean, if, if there's that much criminal behavior in the political, which I don't deny that there is, by the way, but it seems like it'd be pretty easy to plant a couple little vials of anthrax somewhere or, you know, any other WMD and you know, say that it was found out there in the middle of war torn Iraq, it wouldn't be too difficult to, to do something like that, it seems.

Well, you know, I can't get into their mind I'm still wondering when any of them will confess to their real reasoning. They had the intention to go to war. We see from memos and meetings now, in retrospect and investigations. They were planning on going to Iraq long, long before we went. In fact, we went into Afghanistan very light and too light. Light enough that bin Laden was able to escape for 10 years because they were holding the largest portion of their force for an invasion of Iraq. We didn't realize that at the time, but that's why Afghanistan was so stripped down in operation initially and then almost ignored, because Iraq became the true focus of the war for several years. I don't. You know, I couldn't begin to even guess or pretend to have ideas as to why one thing was done and not another. There was an idea that this war was based on whether you go with the neocons who are in favor of freeing nations and creating a global world by way of making democracy happen wherever they possibly can, especially desperately wanting to have one in the Muslim Middle east, where that was the most unlikely thing to occur naturally, at least at that point in their time. So, I don't know. I wish someone would finally be honest with us. I don't think they ever will.

Yeah, I agree.

And we're at that point, you know, 10 years. What's done is done at this point. I don't know. We can't undo anything we've done.

All right? No question about it. It just seems like we have a pretty sad future, you know, as long as there are so many profit motives for war, it just seems like we'll never have peace. The saber is rattling very loud with Iraq and North K. And I just. It seems like we've just. We've always got a couple wars coming up at any given time. It's a sad state of affairs, really.

Well, you know, I think the largest problem is our lack of clarity as to what we think we'll be able to accomplish by imposing ourselves. I think it's pretty clear that conventionally, no one can stand against us. But we're not dealing with conventional war anymore.

Right. We're dealing with guerrilla.

We're dealing with. Yeah. We're dealing with ideological war, we're dealing with religious war, and we're dealing with cultures and traditions that we don't have a concept of motivations for. We try to simplify everything because we're Americans. We don't like to study too long. And I think the biggest problem we have with that is our impulses are pretty impressive. And what a company's impulse is a lack of sustained effort. We're not fans of prolonged engagement, prolonged conversation or prolonged study. And unfortunately, with places as complex as Syria and Iran and Afghanistan and Iraq, these are ancient places. Even with recent government shifts, they're still very subtle and nuanced and we're just not getting it. We don't seem to want to learn. That's the part that I find the most disturbing is our lack of willingness to invest in thinking. Instead of weapons, we've got great weapons. The Marine Corps is a very dangerous organization for good or otherwise and has been used as such. There's a lot of anti military pull. But honestly, I joined the Marines on purpose. If we were to be used, and we always hope for a noble mission, then I wanted to be one of the Americans who went forward for that noble mission enough that I could die for it. And I think that we forget even now the counter to all of this is, well, if the military realized that this was a false war, then why didn't they all just quit? Why didn't they resist fighting?

Yeah, it never happens in a unified. The command and control is far more organized than a bunch of individuals who have scattered different thoughts. Obviously.

Yeah, well my response to that is, and it's complicated. I mean, if the Marines know that we're involved in a war which has been proven as unjust in its cause, why do we continue to go? Well, you know, we sign up for service, like I said, we don't make the wars. We are sent there by the electorate. And if the electorate feels that it is not worth reversing, which they can do at any time. There could have been a vote at any time to end the wars. I mean, they awarded a second presidency to George Bush against an anti war candidate in John Kerry. So I always kind of throw it back that we as Marines and the military in general, we are tools of the state. We know this, we hope that we'll be used honorably. But if we are sent, we signed up to go. It's not an organization. One of the amazing things is in order to defend democracy, the military is not a democratic organization. It doesn't have a vote within it. It doesn't vote for its wars and it doesn't ask our opinion in going. We are sent and that's what we sign up for. It's kind of this one undemocratic group that you join specifically not to have a choice in. And so though it's kind of a cop out answer like, well, if you know, why didn't I just say, no, I'm not going to go. My Marines are being sent so I want them to be well led. So I'm going. Of course I'm going. And I'll do what I can in the name of justice on the ground. I'll take what initiative I have as an intelligent individual to try to do the least harm possible and at the same time preserve the lives of those in my charge. It's a pretty heavy task. But I joined the Marines. They didn't force me.

Yeah, yeah, good points. I just think the motives are far more, far bigger and more sinister than the electorate. I think it has to do with central banking and the military industrial complex. And there's just so much, there's just, it's just too damn profitable for obviously overall, it's obviously destructive. It doesn't create value ultimately. It creates massive waste, but creates a lot of value for those few players that supply and finance war.

Well, what we've seen with these wars especially is a shift from the military providing on the ground support in concert with State Department specialists to everything being subcontracted in My Thief and the Beast. You know, I mentioned it. The US forces outside of the embassy are now gone. That's true in Iraq. But there are 20,000 contractors we're still paying to do things in Iraq, probably the same number in Afghanistan. And that's money we're borrowing to pay for efforts we've already declared lost. I think there was just today they were Secretary of State Kerry, of all people, Secretary of State. Now he was trying to get the Iraqis to halt Iranian overflights to Syria with arms. And the Iraqis are kind of like, no, I think we're going to do what we want to. You know, you made us an independent state and you have no pole here, even though we're still spending billions of dollars in Iraq. So we kind of created the monster that, that we'd said we wanted, which was a free thinking independent Iraq. And now we can't push them around. It's kind of the end of all things. For all of our intentions with our experiment there, this isn't the thing we do.

Good points, no question about it. Tell us a little about your acting. You're acting in two shows now, I believe. And then you've got. Is it a documentary coming up or a conventional film?

Well, I was on a show called the Wire on hbo, which is considered the greatest show ever. And I have to agree, it really was an amazing, amazing show. So smart. A real examination of who we are in American cities now, and probably all cities everywhere. And I was just a small part of a wonderful thing. But it was a great experience for me. And because of that, I became friends with a lot of wonderful actors that I've used in my own films. And then I was written off that show to go do Generation Kill, which amazingly enough was based on the book about the invasion of Iraq with 1st Marine Vican. And I had gone up that very same pathway in the invasion. So it was almost a recreation of the things that I had done. And I was now wearing a costume of my uniform and I was playing a character that I really had been. It was the hardest work because I felt the least believable. You know, when you play something so close to yourself, you really do feel like you're acting because you're trying so hard not to be yourself. And at the same time, that was what the part was. So those have come and gone. They're out there in the world of Netflix, and I'm very pleased with how they both turned out. And since then I've. I've made a few films. One of them is last year called Bright, and it had a number of actors from both of those shows in it. I shot it in LA over five days. And that came out in concert with my book, Dust to Dust. And it's interesting how the two kind of feed off each other. The one chapter I did not write in the end was light. It wasn't a substance enough for me to really describe, even though light, amazing enough, is a substance. And so I wrote a whole movie that focuses around lights and a character who is afraid of the dark, aided by a father figure who is blind. And they are all characters that I've met as people on the wire in Generation Kill. So my art and my life are constantly going back and forth. I was a Marine and I play a Marine. I didn't write about light, but I ended up making a movie about it while thinking about the same things I was thinking of as I wrote my book. So I'm always kind of cross pollinating with myself all these different media that I use to express. I'm a photographer, I write poetry, I write prose, and I act and direct films. They all are related. And there's certain things that I can't do with one that I can do with the other, which is why I always move between these various mediums. Some things I write better as poems, some things I'd rather just show you with an image. And so it's interesting how that's always worked in my life. And I think being Marine, although you'd think that you couldn't have two more opposite things, being an artist and being.

Yeah, those are pretty opposite. Seemingly. Yes.

Even better than. I went to Vassar College as a studio art major, which really throws a wrench into it. I was the first Marine to come from Vassar since 1861. So I've always kind of had the military side and this artistic side. And the two of them really have benefited from one another. I found them both useful.

Well, that's a very interesting. You are a whole person. That's great to hear. Well, he give out your website and you know, of course the book's available on Amazon. By the way, it's got five star reviews and a lot of reviews, 50, 50 plus reviews I believe, and five stars. So looks good. And of course you can buy the book on Amazon and I'm sure other bookstores as well. But do you have a website or a blog of your own or are you strictly writing on other sites like the Daily Beast?

Yeah, I don't write or blog myself, but anyone can find me on Facebook. The COVID of the book is my profile picture. And anyone who wants to leave a message, I always respond. I'm happy to hear from readers, especially about what my book makes them think of in their own life, because that's the purpose.

Fantastic. Well, Benjamin Bush, thank you so much for joining us today.

Hey, it's been a pleasure. Let's do it again sometime.

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