Kuwait City – Engaging Peace

[A continuing series from guest author Ross Caputi]

Operation Phantom Fury--bombing Fallujah — Operation Phantom Fury. Image in public domain

I remember an incident within the first week that we got back from Iraq. We flew commercial from Kuwait City to Cherry Point, North Carolina. Buses picked us up from there and drove us to our barracks.

As we stepped off the buses wives and mothers came running to find their husbands and sons and hug them.

My family could not make the trip to North Carolina, so when our command finally released us on leave I needed to find a ride to Massachusetts. There were several guys in my unit who were also from Massachusetts, and I caught a ride with one of them. His name was Brendan.

Brendan’s parents were very sweet and when we climbed into their minivan to begin the long drive home, Brendan’s mother told us how proud she was of us and that we were heroes.

It was not long before Brendan began to tell his parents about Iraq and the highlight of our deployment, the operation for which we were all so famous—Operation Phantom Fury, the 2^nd Siege of Fallujah.

Without a shred of embarrassment he began to describe the combat to his mother. He told her about killing insurgents, about firing his AT4 rocket launcher at them, and about the extent to which Fallujah was destroyed when the operation was finished.

Brendan’s mother, who had been so proud of us, suddenly became very uneasy, and I think for the first time she realized what she was so proud of us for . . . killing people, destroying homes, and forcing civilians to flee into the desert.

An awkward silence took over the van, and none of us said a word about what suddenly made us all feel so awkward. It seemed best not to speak about it, and no one did for the rest of the trip.

What I remember most about that ride is realizing for the first time how willing most people were to praise us, and how unwilling they were to acknowledge the gory details of what they were praising us for.

Ross Caputi, former Marine, founder of the Justice for Fallujah Project, and former president of the Boston University Anti-War Coalition

[A continuing series by guest author Dr. Dahlia Wasfi]

Finally, on Christmas Eve, I got a seat on a red-eye flight out of London and landed in Kuwait City on Christmas morning. Though I was tired, my excitement prevented me from getting any sleep. Exhausted and jet-lagged, I struggled through airport customs and the Kuwait border emigration process to get to Kuwait’s northern border.

Security post on Iraqi border. Image in public domain.

It was raining, and my kind taxi driver waited so I could have shelter until the bus arrived to carry passengers across the several-kilometer no-man’s land between Kuwait and Iraq.

I peered out my rain-streaked window to see a soldier (whom I remember to be British), standing over what looked like an oil barrel and brushing his teeth using a small hand-held mirror.

It was a bizarre sight, and I started to ask myself where the hell I was and what was I doing.

Finally, after what felt like a long wait, the shuttle bus creaked into the make-shift parking area. Upon its arrival, numerous travelers emerged from the cars parked nearby, moving hurriedly with their boxes and bags to climb aboard and escape the desert rain.

The bus was old and weather-battered, and in my sleep-deprived fog, I wondered if it was the same bus my parents rode when they made the commute in the early 1970s. There I was that day, alone, isolated, physically and emotionally drained, and unsure of what was coming next.

Somewhere along that anonymous road, in the sands of a nameless desert, I burst into tears. I thought, “This was the stupidest plan I have ever come up with…why didn’t anyone try to stop me?!” Of course, many friends and family had tried to alert me to the dangers and difficulties of this trip. I had ignored them.

Now, there was no turning back.

Fallujah was destroyed (A Marine remembers, Part 6)

There was no turning back (Liberate THIS, Part 13)