Narrative Paper
05/26/2011
In
2007, at the age of 19, I deployed to Iraq for the first time in support of
Operation Iraqi Freedom V. Over the
course of fifteen months, I served as an Infantryman and conducted about forty
raids resulting in the capture of multiple suspected terrorists and weapons
caches. Many of the soldiers that I
served with quickly became desensitized to the everyday hardships that innocent
families go through in war-torn, underdeveloped countries. The sweltering heat, back-breaking weight of
our gear, and wretched stench made it easy to forget that we were dealing with
people not too different from us. Because
of an experience that I had with an Iraqi family in 2007, I will always
remember that no issue, even the capturing of a terrorist, should be viewed as
completely positive or negative.
My unit
was stationed in the city of Hit in the Al-Anbar province of Iraq. Over the course of a few months, we had
systematically conducted raids, patrols, and stakeouts to run insurgents out of
the area so that it could be returned to the local security forces. Normally, we would quietly enter houses in
the middle of the night to exploit our advantage of having night-vision
goggles. This mission was different; we
were going to pull up to the house of a suspected terrorist in thirty-three ton
Bradley Fighting Vehicles. In an urban
environment, the Bradley sounds like a derailed train roaring through your
neighborhood.
At about
midnight, the nine members of my squad crammed ourselves into the back of two
Bradleys and started heading towards the objective. We had been briefed earlier that night by our
platoon leader that our mission was to detain a known insurgent living in the
city. His role was to give religious
permission and blessings to Jihadists.
We had no idea if this man was going to be armed or defended. The inside of the Bradley was too deafening
to hear each other talk, so each of us sat and pondered what would be waiting
inside the house.
After
riding for a few minutes, the Bradleys stopped and the driver dropped the ramp
to let us out of the back. We fell into
a line and jogged towards the front door of the target house. As we approached the door, a member of my
squad pulled a shotgun off of his back and blasted the hinges off of the
door. As I entered the house, all I
could hear was the high-pitched ringing in my ears and the frantic thumping of
my heart in my chest. We moved quickly
through the rooms searching for hostiles, weapons, and our target insurgent but
after a few moments, I realized that the situation was not what we had
expected.
The
living room and both bedrooms of the house were full of sleeping people, made
up mostly of women and children. As we
burst into each room with our weapons raised and ready, the startled
inhabitants burst into screams and cries.
I started trying to herd them all into one bedroom towards the front of
the house, using what little, broken Arabic I knew, so that we could continue
our search. After a few minutes, one of
our guys found the target hiding under a bed and detained him with cuffs. The rest of us continued to hastily search
the house for evidence and use interpreters to gather information about the
other people there.
Like
many others, our “target” was using the money he made working for insurgents to
provide for his brothers, parents, wife, and children. He was a person trying to survive, just like
us. As we blind-folded and marched the
man back to our Bradley for transport to a detainee facility, his wife, mother,
and daughters all screamed and sobbed.
The hatred that they felt for us was overwhelming. Without the man of the house, they would have
no money for clothes or food. In the
eyes of his sons and brothers, I could see a desire for vengeance forming; I was
watching new terrorists emerge. Everyone
there knew that it would be a long time before they saw him again, if they ever
did.
Any feelings of a mission
accomplished were replaced with confusion and guilt. In about twenty minutes, we had changed the
lives of an entire family, including innocent children, forever. I realized then that one seemingly justified
action can have unexpected and undesired effects. Because of that experience, I will always
remember that there are unseen consequences to all of our interactions with
other people and that no issue, even the capturing of a terrorist, should be
viewed as completely positive or negative.
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