Читать книгу Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan - Aaron Glantz - Страница 16

Jesse Hamilton

Staff Sergeant, United States Army Reserve, Fire Support Specialist
Deployment: July 2005–July 2006, Fallujah
Hometown: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Age at Winter Soldier: 28 years old

I worked as part of a ten-man team while I was in Iraq, so I didn’t serve with a lot of different U.S. soldiers and marines over there. I did work with a lot of the Iraqi forces though, and if you want my opinion as to whether or not Rules of Engagement actually exist within the Iraqi army, the answer is no.

We had some phrases: “Spray ‘n pray,” where the Iraqis would just start shooting and pray they hit the enemy, if there was one. “The death blossom” was also a term we used regularly, because once the shooting started, death would blossom all around.

I never saw any civilians get killed by these actions, but one instance sticks out in my mind. I lived in Fallujah the whole time that I was in Iraq, on an Iraqi firm base, and the enemy would take potshots at us. They would shoot RPGs at us. We’d get mortared and as soon as something like that would happen, the Iraqi guards on the roof would start a barrage of fire. It didn’t matter where the fire had initially come from, if it was just mortars or a combination. They would just start shooting. One day I ran up to the roof. And while I couldn’t see any incoming fire, I saw the Iraqis shooting indiscriminately, and that was normal. I saw a civilian running and the wall that she was running in front of was just peppered by bullets. The Iraqis weren’t shooting at her. I know that for a fact. They weren’t aiming at her. They were just shooting indiscriminately.

Iraqis can be very brutal. We would often take in prisoners. Sometimes it wouldn’t even be on a joint mission. The Iraqis would conduct presence patrols and bring people in for questioning. They weren’t overly nice, but they weren’t overly brutal in those situations. But when we took Iraqi casualties, that’s really when the tides turned. I saw Iraqi soldiers make prisoners run the gauntlet from the vehicle in which they were transported to the S2 Intelligence Office where they would be questioned. Our job as American advisers was to try our best to stop that, and we did. However, there’s only so much you can do, and you can’t prevent it all. We weren’t there when prisoners initially got picked up. More times than not, the guys that they were bringing in got released after a short questioning.

After a while I was almost like, “I don’t care. I’m over it.” I tried to stop it, but I just stopped caring. It was their people and that’s what they were gonna do. We’re just ordinary people that decided to pick up a uniform and serve this nation and you can only take so much. We’re sons, we’re brothers. Some are fathers. When people take pot shots at you, shoot RPGs at your house, mortar you, it begins to wear on your mind and that creates apathy.

The Iraqis have been doing their thing for thousands of years and I think it is very pretentious of us as Americans to think that we can go in there and spoon-feed them democracy. I think it’s even more pretentious to try to go in there and change their culture and the way they handle situations. I think that it is a lost cause in Iraq. I think that regardless of when we leave, whether it is tomorrow or in a hundred years, the Iraqis are going to handle things the way that they’re going to handle them. It’s their culture. It’s their country. We are allegedly giving them democracy, so let’s give it to them and let’s let them do what they want with their country and their lives.

At this point, given my experience working, living, speaking in Arabic with my Iraqi counterparts, getting to know them and getting to care about them, and with my military history and my friends who are in the U.S. military, I don’t think that it’s worth it to continue losing American lives, to continue what we now see in hindsight as a pretty big mistake. I just don’t think it’s worth it.