Tag: Justice for Fallujah Project

An Honorable Marine

Posted on by kathiemm
Ross Caputi in Iraq.

by Kathie MM

He doesn’t know it (yet), but on this Veteran’s Day, I am honoring a particular veteran, a former Marine, Ross Caputi, for his enduring courage.

It takes courage for anyone, in or out of military uniform, to face death, injury, terror, loss. It takes an extra dose of courage to speak out when you recognize that you have been duped by your government, tricked into participating in an unjustifiable bloodbath.

In November 2014, Ross provided a veteran’s perspective on Veteran’s Day: Inconvenient memories: Veteran’s Day 2014.” The message of that essay, excerpted here, is as crucial as ever.

“Most Americans believe Veterans Day is a day of remembrance; in reality, it’s generally a day of forgetting.

On Veterans Day, people applaud as veterans march in parades, wearing their medals and fancy uniforms. People who have never seen or smelt war’s rotting corpses bask in an atmosphere of pride and patriotism, suppressing inconvenient memories of hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq, millions in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands in Korea, and so on throughout our nation’s short and bloody history….

On Veterans Day, we are called upon to remember America’s wars, sanitized of the harm they brought to countless victims around the world, and abstracted from their historical and political context. We are asked to support our veterans while forgetting the reality of what they participated in…. But my experience as a Marine in Iraq [see series on engaging peace starting in May 2012] has forever changed the way I look at war and the way I feel about being a veteran.

Let’s change the way we celebrate Veterans Day. Let’s make it a day of learning, not forgetting. Let’s be sympathetic to the ways veterans have suffered without ignoring the suffering of civilian victims. Let’s teach and learn about the wars in which our veterans have participated…. Let’s end the reflexive support for popular mythology, the jingoism, the cheer leading, and the forgetting. Let’s refuse to encourage the next generation to follow in the footsteps of today’s veterans.”

Note from Kathie MM:  Amen.

Ross is the founding director of the Justice for Fallujah Project. He is also the director of the documentary film Fear Not the Path of Truth: a veteran’s journey after Fallujah

 

Swept up in the violent hysteria (A Marine remembers, Part 7)

Posted on by kathiemm

[A continuing series by guest author Ross Caputi]

I spent many nights on post or lying awake in bed, wrestling with my memories and trying to understand the links among them.

Bombing Fallujah
Second siege of Fallujah. Image in public domain

I remembered that it was because my command made me an unofficial translator that I spent more time in the villages and had more contact with Iraqis than most others. I heard their grievances and saw that we were not helping them.

I remembered that it was because my command hated me that they made me the captain’s radio operator for Fallujah, and because of that I was more isolated than most from the bloody, gory combat. I was able to witness what was happening with a clearer head than all the others who got swept up in the violent hysteria of those few weeks.

And because my command hated me and made me stand post at the barracks more than anyone else, I was there to witness the effect that Iraq had on all of us. I saw it every night when I was on duty.

Once everyone was good and drunk or stoned, the stories started to pour out of them. I listened as they told me about when they had pulled the trigger and wished they hadn’t, or had watched friends bleed to death in the street and weren’t able to go help them because they were pinned down by enemy fire.

I remembered the family man that we had arrested in the villages outside of Fallujah who was not presumed innocent until proven guilty, and who would not get a jury of his peers.

I remembered the family photos that clung to the bullet-riddled walls of the homes in Fallujah.

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

Fallujah was destroyed (A Marine remembers, Part 6)

Posted on by kathiemm

[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 2nd 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

It reminded me of Fallujah (A Marine remembers, Part 3)

Posted on by kathiemm

[A continuing series by guest author Ross Caputi]

The sequence of events of that year is somewhat muddled in my memory, but certain experiences are still crystal clear.

Marines in Fallujah, Iraq
Marines in Fallujah, Iraq. Image in public domain.

I remember one night sitting with a friend from my unit in the back seat of a car in the ghetto. We were clean-cut with fresh high-and-tight haircuts, waiting for our contact to show up with the promised drugs.

The two junkies in the front seats were dirty and their skin sagged limply off their bones. They had burn marks on their fingers from cigarette lighters and they were unshaven and sweaty.

Up the street there was a group of guys, all wearing white t-shirts, who looked like they were guarding a house. I heard police sirens from about two blocks away in that densely settled neighborhood.

I watched my friend desperately bargain for drugs. He begged one of the guys up front to give him a bag, promising that when our contact showed up with our dope he would give him two in return.

I saw a disaster coming, but said nothing. I knew that when our dope finally arrived my friend would not want to give up two bags, and I expected that we would have to fight those two guys, and that they probably had guns or knives on them.

I remember the adrenaline that rushed into my veins and the indifference that I felt toward the consequences.

It reminded me of Fallujah. If a fight happened, it happened. If I died, oh well. Whatever fate brought me would be. I wouldn’t lift a finger to cause it or stop it. My mind and body were just along for the ride.

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