The other night I was at an open candidates forum for a congressional race in the Midwest. The democratic candidate was asked if he supported bringing our troops home, and what was the best way to get them home. He responded that we should bring our troops home as soon as possible; then he laid out a sensible step-by-step plan to do so. Naturally I agreed with him, as did the vast majority of the crowd; but not everyone agreed. Actually there was a group of middle-aged men behind me who didn’t agree at all; not only did they not agree but they were very vocal and obnoxious in their disagreement.

“So he thinks we should just cut and run!”

“The terrorists will take over and all our boys will have died for nothing!”

“If we don’t fight them over there, then we’ll have to fight them here at home!”

We’ve all heard these ridiculous arguments before, it’s just regurgitated crap that they heard on Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. Now normally I can just ignore this shit; but for some reason this time it really got to me. They just wouldn’t shut up, and they were intimidating all these other people around me; I couldn’t let this one go, I had to do something

So I turned around and said to this guy:

“Hey! I spent a year on the ground there, and I agree with everything this candidate is saying, we do need to get out of Iraq”

He responded:

“Oh yeah? Well guess what? I don’t care that you spent a year there!”

So I turned back around and tried to ignore the rage that was growing inside me, tried to control my PTSD, tried to let it go. But he just kept on pushing, trying my patience, and seeing what it would take to set me off. Then he found it…

He whispered into my ear. “If you didn’t want to go to war why did you sign up in the first place, huh?”

Like many of my brothers and sisters in IVAW I signed up before Iraq, before Afghanistan, and before September 11th. There was no way we could have known that the government was going to launch us into a illegal and immoral war with no clear objectives and no end in sight. There’s no way we could have known that they would poison us with experimental vaccines, larium, depleted uranium, and lies. There’s no way we could have known that we would be used and abused on the battlefield, wounded, traumatized, and then dumped back into society without any counseling or reintegration training. How could we have known that we would have to fend for ourselves in the job market, with health care, with PTSD, with substance abuse, and with trying to reclaim a semblance of the life we had before all this mess started. There is NO WAY anyone can know what war is like until you have been there, until you have smelled the stench and seen the bodies; until you feel death following you wherever you go.

So I stood up and got right into this guys face, looked straight into his eyes and asked him:

“Have you ever been to combat?”

“No.”

“Have you ever served?”

“No.”

“Then you’re about to have one pissed off Veteran on you’re fuckin hands!”

That’s when I saw the fear in his eyes…

He looked at me and he realized that I had been to the other side; I had seen shit that he could never comprehend; and I had done shit that he would never, in a million years, have the courage to do.

A part of me died in Iraq, it will forever be buried with the men we lost and the people we killed.

That’s why this man was afraid, because he looked into my eyes and he saw death.

After a moment the guy backed down; the candidates left the stage and the forum was over. Before leaving the room I stared the guy down one last time, but he didn’t even have the courage to meet my gaze. He just sat there with his good ol’ boy buddies, trying to regain some reassurance of manhood, some sense that he could have done what I’d done if he’d wanted to, but I know he’ll never find it. Because deep in my heart I know he’s a coward; and deep in his heart, at the very center of his being, he knows it too.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a huge part of my life. There are times when I feel like I’m getting the better of it; that I’m beating it; that it’s not such a big deal anymore. Then I hear a news report about more dead GI’s, or I see something by the side of the road that I think is an IED, or I listen to a friend who is facing his second deployment to Iraq, that’s all it takes. That’s all it takes to bring me back there, with an M-16 that doesn’t work, in a country that does not forgive.

I am so lucky to have the network of friends in IVAW that I can call on. I know that if I ever need help or support or if PTSD is driving me crazy that I can call on friends who know exactly what I’m going through and who can help me and talk me through the worst of times. I love all you guys and you should all be proud of this family and community that we’ve created within IVAW. We are the hope for countless waves of new Iraq War Veterans, and we will be there for them, just as we’re there for each other.