Iraq War Veterans, 20 Years Later: ‘I Don’t Know How to Explain the War to Myself’ | Op-Docs

foreign we all talk about how when we're gonna go home how proud we're going to be to be combat vets I mean how many people can say that they're combat veterans you know 19 years old I fought in a war it's it's awesome nothing can beat that that's the coolest thing in the world you know it'd be fun to look back on just waiting to get to that point where I can look back on it oh here it is oh oh 2003 um they got us out here back then life is hard got us pulling two hours ago and then they opened up to eight between twelve I don't give a I think I'm stuck in hell oh I'd rather be there instead of jail put it back there on the map send me my mail it's not a moment a day to go about it not a thought about back that never crosses my mind it made me who I am today going to a country where you don't know nothing no one is going down knowing you're hearing the bombs and the gunshots it's real now like you've been trained for it they done told you about it now you're here Wednesday yeah I'm already ready that's the worst you can go through at the age that we was going through it trying to hit the camera someone's smoking a cigarette in the [Music] what are you gonna do to get out of the army can be a rock star sometimes I remember oh yeah that's right I went to Iraq now that I have a kid sometimes I find myself thinking is he gonna end up going to some war that ends up not doing any good for the world and receive a bunch of shitty care afterwards I think we were in Baghdad for a few days and then we were in a firefight outside the Abu hanifa mosque and it was just totally bizarre just gunfire everywhere it's a couple of RPGs I just think and let the am I doing here and that question never went away I don't know how to explain the war to myself and have yet to have any clear thought of like yes we actually made a difference there because we didn't at all there was no difference made maybe for the worse [Music] the area I come from is uh very small not a lot of opportunities for people fresh out of high school so it's either Community College or go do something travel the world get paid for it experience places like this I had swore I'd never joined the army I watched my brother come home all rigid when I was like 12 and I was like no way and then he called me and he said you watching this and I said what he goes turn on television and about 30 seconds after I turned on the television the second plane hit when that happened one I was mad you know I used my backyard um but I immediately thought you know this is what I need to do I need I need to to defend my I just felt it I just had to do it I had to go join my brother I had to be by a side there was no way I was going to let my brother go into a war and me not be there we'll keep one saw back here just know where your people are so you need to start holding that what you me that deployment was funny because there was no clear cut Mission the whole time you're wondering like what are we really doing are we really in combat are we not in combat who's actually the enemy now you're in Baghdad now you're in the heart of ottomia now you're now what [Applause] was going through my mind was it was dark out and I couldn't see my fingers basically I was hoping I still had my fingers I couldn't tell where I was shot I just knew my arm was numb and I found out I had my fingers and I could move them the doc came by and he was patching me up and we just had a shallow conversation about you know oh wow man you got shot I was like yeah and I think I was only 19 at that point and to be shot in the first two weeks of a 16-month deployment was was setting the tone to say the least [Music] IDs are the scariest gunfire and crap like that that don't bother me you know whatever with IEDs I had that in garbage man and it could be anywhere and you riding through the hood and you see a milk jug on the side of the road but the milk jug looked kind of cut or a trash bag trash bag looked kind of ripped up that's the that they will put the bombs in I don't see any wires but it's on the surface we found Coke cans with them plastic explosives in them on the corner and when you're walking around a neighborhood that's literally I mean trash up and down the streets it's you can't really tell where they are you see us when we're going around corners there's a box on the side of the road it's just cringe and take the turn hopefully you don't hear a bang I still cringe when I pass garbage I still I asked my wife she goes nuts I avoid garbage like the plague on the road I will swerve my car to the other side she's like what the is wrong with you we're riding in the open tailgate of a truck and people are getting up all the time and we'd still go out there with it part of our 87 billion dollar budget provided for some secondary armor put on top of our thin-skinned Humvees this armor was made in Iraq it's high quality metal and it will probably slow down the shrapnel so that it stays in your body instead of going clean through that's about it [Laughter] when we first got here they were waving at us and next minute as soon as we drive by we'd get shot at and or some days they'd look at us mean and you know give us checks gestures that they didn't want us there when I first got there I noticed a lot of people doing this to me you you American they didn't say you they were just in about four months into it my interpreter looks at me and goes Sergeant Beatty have patience wait what have patience [Applause] we hit houses with the wrong address [Music] and then we'd have to apologize because we just kicked your door in or we just blew your door in or we just damaged your house at three o'clock in the morning let's go go here come here hold on hold on get down get down here [Applause] I still hear it in the psychological side of it now I still carry I still think about that guy I still remember punching him in the face when he was going for this one to punch him in his face oh yeah and there's his glasses right there if you look and you put yourself in their place how would you feel if you had someone kicking in your door and you as the man want to protect your family and me coming through the door with bad intentions because the Intel that I received told me you're a bad guy in your life I'm always giving carry that and I'm still working on that four times yeah he's protecting his house he gets punched in the face put on his damn back ends up in Abu grape and he's never going to get that time back so I think about that I don't feel like I'm defending my country anymore and that kind of sucks and that's that's the whole purpose when you're a kid to join the Army a lot of people feel is like you know defend your country but we're not defending our country anymore I know we haven't defended our country in a while but I didn't agree with the Iraq War when I went in I I was I went in for Afghanistan I joined to go fight in the melons I want to fight I wanted to fight the Taliban um you know unfortunately once you join you have no politics your property you know you go where they send you when I was 20 I thought we were Invincible we were kids we were just Invincible we're gonna go here we're gonna do this and we're gonna get out and I tell people to this day the day that I grew up was November the 1st 2003 that was the day I grew up I think this day we all grew up and you say that day and it just got the call over the radio and that one of our Humvees was engaged with some kind of RPG or IED nobody knew what it was at first it just hit and it hit it hard our hubby was limping back to the the compound and we're getting status reports constantly nevermind I'll just kind of went on with what we had to do that night and then we got up the next day and they told us we had a nine o'clock formation nobody told us it's a why they'll end up the whole battery and the PC came out and he was he was already crying he was really shook up and we knew something was bad and he told us that during the night that Lieutenant Cogan had died and then you just everybody's heads just went down it was you could hear that the gasps and tears and a lot of people I think most people really wanted to go out and just chill everybody after that was the first death we had suffered in a battalion and then we'd had people hurt but no one had died yet that's a really big thing to just grasp all of a sudden it's one of the things you'll never forget several other people in our unit were killed Lieutenant salts PFC Moore um sergeant major cook was killed um Sergeant McKeever rest in peace boys all that talking about that that is so depressing man you just have no idea you have no idea man so what does it do to a generation of young people during these deployments they become old they are old the young men yeah I mean I feel more grown up I mean I've changed a lot in the last you know a year you know for people back in the States it was just a year you know nothing really changed it just got a year older you know for me it was like you know a lifetime you know I feel I've grown up 20 or 30 years out here and every day it was well I guess I'm just doing what I'm doing today so that I can get to tomorrow so that we can get to our 365 days and leave and then that changed then we stayed out there for a few more months I think it was like 419 days that we were there maybe George Bush should fund my guitar business he owes me a beer at least at the minimum the Iraqis are probably wondering how in the hell are they supposed to believe in a system that we forced fed them when our system doesn't even work going back to George Floyd two words not okay there's actually a picture of me in Time Magazine with my knee on a suspected terrorist chest it wasn't on his carotid artery it was across his chest all these shootings not okay [Music] my mom doesn't like the Army too much because I mean took both her boys and we're over here and you know she hates that but she's very proud and nothing beats it it's the greatest feeling in the world Jason's bike was always affectionately known as the because that was my brother okay foreign you call someone Jason was that phone call from me and I was always that phone call for Chase so it was hard for me when he did do what he did you know the first few months or any call why didn't he call me and I know that you can see [Music]

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 5,778,120

Keywords: When did the iraq war begin?, Who fought in the iraq war?, Why did the us invade iraq?, iraq war, 2003 iraq invasion, george w bush, iraq war 20th anniversary, How long was the iraq war?, What happened to veterans of the iraq war?, 9/11, us veterans, us military, Donald Rumsfeld, the gunners, gunner palace, Baghdad, soldiers, american troops, saddam hussein, ied attacks, deployment, september 11 2001, march 20 2003, the new york times, op-docs, nyt video, documentary

Id: RIWfH3iEgXU

Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 20 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/UsagiJak]

I cant remember the name of the Documentary but at the beginning it follows a young soldier and he shows you this picture of this girl from his school that he hardly knew, but because he knew her and she died during 9/11 he used it as a justification of his joining the military to get revenge against the bad guys

it shows him and all his squad mates like "YEAh!, lets kick some Hajji ass" and as it progresses you see they come more and more jaded and confused about the whole thing.

At the end of the documentary he is just full of regret and like "What the fuck were we even doing here in the first place?"

EDIT: Its called This Is War on amazon prime, its also under the title of Severe Clear too, Directed by Kristian Fraga

[u/shadowCloudrift]

Jesus, I can't believe it has been like 20 years already.

[u/SardonicWhit]

Oh this explanation is super simple and easy to follow. I spent 10 years in the U.S. Army, with deployments to both Afghanistan and Iraq as a combat arms soldier. I did this to buy new cars and more houses for men with already full plates. That’s it, that’s the entire thing. It isn’t convoluted. Being a poor kid with zero prospects, I hoped to use the military to build myself a better life, but all I did was fill the mouths of other men. There’s your reason, there is no good justification, it was simply those with money using those without money to enrich themselves. So you can explain it to yourself, very easily in fact, but the question here is, will you?

[u/mx3goose]

It wasn't a war. It was a massive way for the United States to field test new equipment as well as use it to activate the National Guard/reserves so they could update all of their equipment from Vietnam. The entire Iraq war was a fever dream for contractors and the military industrial complex.

Everybody you know that died over there was for nothing more than greed and their own misplaced trust in the fever of patriotism after 9/11. That is a very hard pill to swallow, its taken me 20 years to choke down that my bad knees, bad hearing and the people that died was all so I could get a bachelors degree for "free". Come to terms with it however you want but stop looking for something deeper it only prolongs the healing. At this point all our war was good for is the Hollywood script mill at this point.

[u/Only-Friend-8483]

No shit, I’m a combat veteran who served in Iraq as part of 1AD (the unit these guys are part of) at the same time, in the same place. I recognize a bunch of the background the video is shot against.

I hear my own words come out of these guys. After years of working to get out of this headspace, stuff like this takes me right back. The feelings and the experiences and the truths are so complicated, nuanced, and powerful, even 20 years later.

[u/SaintHuck]

New York Times has blood on their hands.

[u/charleykinkaid]

Iraq War = War Under False Pretenses.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

[u/lowly_precedence]

When he said ''They become old'', I got the goosebumps .

[u/it_was_my_raccoon]

Trying to look for any comment on this post that has any kind of sympathy for the real victims of this war, the Iraqis. Goes to show how dehumanised they have become in the narrative of this war.