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A young man's death in
Iraq
Note: Among
the many emails he receives, Tom Engelhardt,
editor of Tomdispatch, found one
from Chris Christensen, an airline pilot and
veteran of the Vietnam War living in a small town
in Texas, particularly poignant. Christensen's
mail (below) discusses the death in Iraq of
the son of a friend, and speaks of how video games
influenced the youngster. Letters like
Christensen's are sobering. The Iraq war is daily
more horrific, for Iraqis and Americans. And that
is finally being felt in the US.
"In
our small town of Columbus, Texas (population
3,900), we buried one of our local sons on his
19th birthday. He was killed in action in Iraq. He
was a friend of my two oldest sons and his father
a friend of mine.
"There is not a lot for
a young man to do in our town, and most leave for
college, jobs etc. Christopher came to see me at
his father's request prior to enlisting last
summer. I am an Air Force vet from Southeast Asia.
I talked blue in the face to try to get
Christopher to go with me to an Air Force or Navy
recruiter. In fact, I told him in no uncertain
terms that the Army would put a gun in his hand
and send him out to be a target. No soap.
"His head was already filled with a lot of
crud from the recruiter about being a scout,
riding a four-wheeler ATV [all-terrain vehicle]
around - big fun! (Christopher was an Eagle
Scout.) He had an acquaintance who had been doing
that (not in Iraq), and I got the sense that this
acquaintance was giving him the hard sell too. I
wonder if the Army has a referral bonus system. Do
you know?
"Christopher also had this
inexplicable desire to 'go shoot some Raqis'. Some
latent desire maybe from too much video gaming. I
heard that in the weeks before his death, he was
involved in a brief fire-fight and froze in
terror. No doubt reality caught up to him at the
speed of a 7.62. Too bad his recruiter or buddy
had not told him about the fear he would
experience when he realized someone wanted to
really hurt him or kill him.
"When I
learned of Christopher's death, I was sitting at a
PC in a hotel lounge in Manhattan. (I'm an airline
pilot and was on a layover in New York.) I broke
down and cried. There were lots of others around
and I'm sure they were wondering ... but none
asked. I found I was crying not so much for the
senseless loss of a young life, or even the grief
our friends would bear. As I thought about it, I
was crying for our country. What have we come to?
"As I mentioned, there is not much for a
young man to do in small towns like ours after
high school. Christopher had mentioned to me when
we talked last, before his enlistment, about
riding that four-wheeler ATV around as an Army
scout and having a good time. His recruiter had
him hooked. He also mentioned going to shoot some
'Raqis'.
"This is my sadness. Our children
are being weaned on hatred and violence in this
country. It starts with television, gets
reinforced and is refined with violent video games
(one, in particular, produced and distributed by
the US Army), and finally the infection spreads
through violent team sports in high school.
Football in the south is the battlefield training
ground for the next generation of cannon fodder.
Kids are told to go out there and 'hurt 'em, tear
'em up, kill 'em'. It is ingrained. (Careful now,
don't get me confused with the liberal left. I own
guns and support the right. There is a huge
difference between defense of home and property
and exporting violence to other countries.)
"As I travel in other countries I see no
parallel. There are of course team sports, but
violence and undercurrents of hatred that lurk
within are, as much as I can tell, not there.
"Christopher didn't know it, but as a
small town southerner he was being trained for his
death since early childhood.
"Our little
town votes mostly Democrat on local elections, but
typically Republican in presidential races.
Discussion or debate about policy in public is
seldom heard and somewhat discouraged. What a
shame. Most people around here take a passing
interest in national or foreign policy for a week
or two prior to an election, then just turn back
to football, or whatever is covered on the sports
page that day.
"The notion of death or
dismemberment at the hands of an enemy is so
foreign as to be incomprehensible to most American
youth. Our media does such a precise job of
keeping images and details of such things out of
the public eye. Not so for many foreign presses.
Our schools would never consider teaching children
about anything so morbid or unpleasant.
"The thought that a boy like Christopher
would so lightly desire to kill some people he
knew nothing about is very distressing to me. On
the one hand, Christopher was a pretty gentle and
easy-going kid. If someone said to him, 'Hey let's
go shoot some kids from Sealy', a rival school, he
would obviously have said, 'You're crazy - get
lost!' But Iraqis, why it's open season.
"He only saw the differences. He had
somehow developed enough hatred to override his
sense of right and wrong, and any teaching of love
of fellow man. He went to the Southern Baptist
Church here, and I know it was taught to him. On
the other hand, the president of the Southern
Baptist convention declared this a 'just war'. A
little hypocrisy there and probably confusing for
Christopher. We left that Church, by the way.
"I know of a few men and women who knew
Christopher, who have been supporting the
occupation, and are beginning to change their
minds. His death is the second our rural county
has experienced in the last few months. It is
beginning to change some attitudes here - but too
late I'm afraid.
"I hope that we learn
sooner than we did in Vietnam that we can't
successfully force our ideals on another society
unwilling to adopt them or defend them for
themselves. There just aren't enough Christophers
to go around."
(Used by permission Tomdispatch) |
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