There was this amazing speaker I saw tonight.
He was invited for a Voices plenary, which is basically a speech that all the Voices students (second semester freshman, mostly) had to attend to write a two page reflection on (but it's open to the public).
Normally, I wouldn't attend something like this. I just happened to get out of a meeting early and bumped into a girl who reminded me that the speaker was tonight.
I am so glad I went. What a once in a lifetime opportunity.
His name is Camilo Mejia. He was the first U.S. soldier court-martialed for desertion during the Iraq War. He was in the military because he needed funding for college, mostly. And just as he was about to graduate from college after being on active duty for 3 and a half years and then being in the Florida National Guard for (almost) the rest of his 8 year mandatory involvement, he was deployed. Just a few months short of not only his graduation but the end of his military involvement, he was deployed to Iraq. (And his contract was extended to 2031 without consent).
He wrote a book about it called Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia. I haven't read it, but I'm considering it. Maybe on a really sunny day when everything seems absolutely perfect. Because, boy. The stories he told were absolutely horrifying.
These are real stories. Real stories about what's going on over in Iraq. True stories that most Americans are oblivious to. He deserted because of moral issues, because of the things that he saw. His first mission involved working at this place for prisoners of war, where he was assigned to keep certain suspects going into questioning awake for DAYS at a time. They were all blind-folded, and the American soldiers were responsible for commanding them to move left, right, up, down, etc to ensure they stay awake. If they started to nod out too much, the soldiers had to hit the wall with a sledge hammer, which rung loudly in the prison, so everyone thought that it was really a gun or an explosion going off, and they would immediately wake up and keep moving. Then of course, the last resort-- put an unloaded gun up to their head. They'll feel the cold steal and their heart will skip a beat, they're so anxious to please.
How frightening. I realize that this world isn't perfect. I try to rationalize it by considering the fact that everything needs to be balanced somehow. There'd be no peace without war, right? But why, how do we end up resorting to methods like these? What darkness lies within the human soul that permits stuff like this to happen? How do we rationalize the violence away with a simple word-- "enemy"?
And that's sort of how he felt. That's why he left.
There was another story he told us about when he and a group of soldier were walking through a town. I guess a little local boy threw a rock at this lieutenant's head, and the guy got sick of it and wanted to show the boy a lesson. So he put him in cuffs and dragged him through the rest of the town to put him in prison. The other locals began to gather, watching this dude drag an eight year old through town, when this old man started running after and screaming at them. At last the lieutenant stopped, finally agreeing to let the old man teach the kid a lesson. So the entire platoon watched as this old man, CRYING because of the brutality he has to display to save this boy from an unknown imprisonment, slammed this kid with his fists into a bruised pulp until the lieutenant finally let him stop.
It's so crazy. So hard to understand.
Sergeant Mejia was a psychology major when he was in college, so a lot of the comments he made detailed how such an environment can affect you psychologically. I think that was the best part of the speech-- he tried so hard to make you understand the different thoughts, stimuli, whathaveyou that could lead to that kind of insanity. But he did it in a way that didn't justify the actions... just helped you make a tiny bit more sense of this world.
I mean, you're far away from family, food rations are odd, you are assigned to do these crazy things that you're too afraid to speak out about, you have to march through towns knowing that anyone, everyone in a window, door, car could be an enemy trying to kill you, and you don't know whether you just almost kicked a bomb or a piece of garbage. It's scary. You're on the edge of your seat without a break, missing the people who mean the most to you in the world, and wondering if you're ever even going to see them again. How would that affect you?
Anyways, he certainly left because of the things he saw, and now he's dedicating his life to helping people realize what war can be like, to help them get over the romantic vision that many people have of war.
He's certainly a very brave man. And a pretty good speaker. He made a lot of humorous pop-culture references that had most of the full auditorium giggling.
Anyways, I'm pretty satisfied with the fact that GMC hosted him. We get some of coolest people here sometimes.
Until next time...