Friends -
I’ve just witnessed footage taken from security cameras that captured the final hours of Andres Raya, a young Marine, who died at the hands of a police squad. It is believed that this event occurred as a result of Raya’s fear of returning to Iraq for a second tour of duty. After having left Camp Pendleton under the pretense of going for a bite to eat. He didn’t return and was found later in the parking lot of a liquor store in Ceres, CA, having fired a round from an assault rifle. He proceeded into the store and asked that police be called. When the police arrived, two officers were shot, one fatally. Raya then escaped to a nearby neighborhood and hid behind a house. When drawn out by the police several hours later, he charged them and was shot to death.
These were obviously the actions of a disturbed and frightened young man.
This entire situation begs these questions: what sort of hell are we putting our soldiers through? What type and degree of trauma are these men and women experiencing? Have we indeed entered into another Vietnam?
Though I imagine some may criticize this characterization, for reason of outcome or purpose (which, as yet unanswered, beg a whole other series of questions), I offer this aspect: what we’ve seen and acknowledged in the way of trauma in these televised wars. Note that I point out the fact that these wars have been televised. This not only suggests that it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the inhuman truth of war, but also that the amount of suffering that has been lost to time is truly immeasurable. The veterans of WW I and II and Korea (not to mention the countless wars past) were not impervious to the mental and physical anguish inherent to combat. PTSD is nothing new - they used to call it shell shock.
As the proposed Iraqi elections near, we witness a steady stream of what is referred to as “insurgent violence”. This term is used to reinforce the idea that those that are in opposition to American occupation are inherently wrong in their thinking. Though I admit the presence of foreign nationals who are engaged in terrorist activities for the sake of keeping Americans out of the Middle East altogether, I hold that there are many Iraqis who are simply resisting what they feel is an imperial power - the U.S. .
Incidentally, it occurs to me to point out that Iraq was, in its inception, a construct of the British Empire - and speaking of the British Empire, I can’t help but wonder if we Americans weren’t characterized as “insurgents” , too, back in 1776.
So, presently, a 19-year-old lies dead in California because he didn’t want to meet his end in a foreign land. What dark thoughts were going through his head as he went on this bloody odyssey could only have been the twisted products of a saturnine fear. His call to duty had become a latent death sentence. It must be said that the futility of this war has come home in a grim picture.
Let us support our troops in the best possible way. Let’s bring them home.