Dear Mr. President,
On June 10 Daniel Somers put a gun to his head and killed
himself. He was one of 22 veterans who committed suicide that day. He was 30
and suffered from PTSD and traumatic brain injury, a result of his 2004 deployment
to Iraq. He wrote that he was unable to even approximate “the number of
civilian deaths in which I may be complicit” (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-23/politics/41440993_1_veterans-affairs-ptsd-veterans-and-troops).
After returning from Iraq, he studied Arabic and volunteered to deploy again to
make amends; to save lives. Assigned to a military intelligence unit as a senior
analyst, he interviewed Iraqi civilians, insurgents, politicians and suspected terrorists,
but it was futile: “new lives saved do not replace those who were murdered,” he
wrote in a farewell letter to his family (http://gawker.com/i-am-sorry-that-it-has-come-to-this-a-soldiers-last-534538357).
In 2008, still tormented by the war, he applied to the VA for help, an exercise
in frustration, incompetence and indifference and his final letter is a glimpse
into a morally injured mind and soul. He was “Too trapped in a war to be at
peace, too damaged to be at war,” he wrote. “There are some things that a
person can simply not come back from.” Most of the stories about Daniel Somers
focus on the inadequacy of the VA and the tragedy of his death but I think his
note was not just about that; it went much deeper, to the heart of what war is,
the insanity and immorality of it and the hypocrisy of politicians who send
people off to kill and die for no reason other than their “religious lunacy” or
their “ever growing fortune.” It goes to why we war, the lies and propaganda
that make it possible, the myths we are raised on—to follow one’s leaders right
or wrong, the necessity of loyalty, the necessity of war, that war is honorable
and just, that warriors are heroes and that the noblest sacrifice of all is to die
for one’s country. How is it that “we” always fight for freedom and liberty
while “they” always fight for tyranny and oppression? I have never known peace;
my life has spanned constant war from WW II to the Cold War to Korea, Vietnam,
the Gulf War, the War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan… we have never stopped warring
and we have never made an attempt to understand why or to understand who our real
enemies are. It’s time to change that, Mr. President. Stop making war and start
making peace. In honor of Daniel Somers and all the other casualties of war.
 |
| Daniel Somers: A Casualty of War |
No comments:
Post a Comment