peace quote
Peace, to me, means placing the sanctity of human life above everything else. All greed, all disputes, all ambitions, everything.
essay: imagine
Now as I reflect, I realize that war is the worst enterprise that our race can undertake. And combat is the worst experience that an individual can experience. The second worst thing, of course, is thinking that war is a way to settle things and that it somehow brings good. I want to live to see the day when I can say “I remember there was a time when men slaughtered each other for something as unfathomable as an imaginary line on a map or in the name of some all loving being who wants us above all else to treat each other nicely.” Imagine that.
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interview
Question: Why did you join the armed forces?
I joined the Army to defend my country and her freedom loving allies. I joined because I grew up in a society where men who defended their land were seen as heroes, and I wanted to be a hero. After becoming an Infantry Lieutenant, I was deployed to the war in Iraq. I was sent to maim and kill fellow human beings because some other human beings said so.
I went to war, not as a conscript or enlistee, but as an officer appointed by the U.S. Congress to lead men. And as such I was obligated, at times, to lie to my soldiers to tell them the “importance and honor of the mission” to the leaders of our nation, and to their leader, myself.
Question: What was the most defining moment of your time at war?
My men didn’t have the effort or will to care about our nation’s mission. All they, and I, cared about were ourselves. There were 36 of us who slept, ate, patrolled, sweated, sweared, laughed, cried, wondered, cowered, and dodged death together every day. The first man I lost faced death only days after his 20th birthday, alone. 20 years of existence and that was it.
I saw civilians killed by both sides. Sometimes on purpose and sometimes without any purpose. I smelled human bodies burn. They smell like a pig roasting in the wind. I still hear the garbled Arabic screams of the kid whose jaw I took off with a lead pipe. I was trying to hit the man choking me, he ducked, I missed. How can I regret that? How can I even comprehend having done that? I barely can. I imagine that kid either alive with no face or dead and every day I don’t know which is worse.
Then I was wounded. And I had that helpless feeling you get when you’re wounded, when you know it’s bad but you don’t know just how bad. You think you may be dead already but you’re not sure. Everything happened as though it were a dream. I was dragged through the sand by two, maybe three angelic soldiers. A piece of small metal fell out of my neck in the aid station as I vomited and blood was coming out my ears and eyes...
There was a kid next to me on the chopper ride flopping around like a fish in agony. There was an older soldier next to me who has struggling to breathe because his lung was gurgling through his chest. It works out fine for some of us and for others not so much. Heroes, all of us, of course.
Question: What about you has changed the most?
Before the Army I studied philosophy and French and Genetics and then I left it all to be a hero.
Some days I sit back and think that maybe it wasn’t all bad and I realize there was good along with the bad. But it is hard to focus on anything good, anything, after seeing so much evil. I feel sorry for myself for having a bum ankle, a crunchy shoulder, a bad memory and whole lot of nightmares. A mute 20-something burnout.
I realize now that we humans have about as much control over the whole show as a cup of coffee has over how much sugar is added to it. As ordained by physics or god or spirits or nothing. I’m finally learning, after 26 years, to just enjoy each moment. Even if it isn’t the most fun moment, or the last moment that is waiting right around the corner. Really, what else is there to do besides loving each other, loving yourself, and enjoying every single moment?
Question: Now that you have returned, what does peace mean to you?
Peace, to me, means placing the sanctity of human life above everything else. All greed, all disputes, all ambitions, everything.
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Edited to include all of his profile found at
http://www.whynotpeace.com/PeaceSoldier/Profiles/DGsProfile/tabid/76/Default.aspx
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