Hannah Roberts

I am a US Navy veteran. I did two deployments to the Arabian Gulf on a destroyer, served as a VBSS boarding officer, strike warfare officer, 1st LT, and Damage Control Assistant. I joined the military after september 11th because I was an idiot 17 year old who had a hero complex and bought the lies that drove us to war. I wanted to SERVE and DEFEND my country and all of that. I grew up a lot and wised up while I was at the Naval Academy and saw through the lies and the glamorizing campaigns to keep young people hooked into our government's violent actions. My brother is a purple heart recipient, MP army vet who served in Iraq and watching the pain my brother carries to this day has always been a driving force for me--both to stay in the military to ensure that I could do the best for the kids in my charge and also to ensure my peers know that there is nothing glamorous or sexy about PTSD or killing humans. I left the service because I could no longer justify my participation in policy and actions that I absolutely morally oppose. I take my role as a veteran seriously and want to help fellow vets, many of whom suffered much worse than I in our years in uniform, and also to help shape policy such that violent conflict doesn't conscript and consume future generations. I had the opportunity to run as the US civilian representative at a 100 mile run in D-Day France to mark the 70th anniversary of the Allied Invasion that eventually liberated Europe. The legacy war leaves is brutal and never ending and it was saddest of all to see heroic propaganda glamorize the SACRIFICE and human suffering. There was much less memorial space dedicated to THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN than things designed to make our dead (American, Canadian, German, French, Italian, Polish, Belgian, all of the above and et cetera) immortal heroes for their deaths. If I took anything away from France it is that people who are asked to serve in uniform in conflicts must come out on the other side and fucking stop the cycle that will swallow up those that come after us. I regret serving and giving my energy and approval to our acts of violence and international criminality but having gone through the training and crucibles of indoctrination, deployment, and service of the United States Military, there are lessons I cannot unlearn, sights I cannot unsee, actions I cannot undo, and protests I cannot ignore. As a veteran my gift to my country is continued service and to live a life of peaceful conflict. Diplomacy, transparency, knowledge, and backbone.