I Have a Story to Tell

By Anonymous / Winter 2021

Dust and rock peppered my face as I followed my team leader onto the back of the helicopter. The noise from the turbines flooded my ears as I desperately pressed my peltors (headset) into my head to try and listen to the incoming radio calls – this mission was shaping up to be a spicy one. The broken transmission was meant to inform us of the current occupants of the target compound. It wasn’t good. Wide-eyed, I looked to my team leader with hopes that he was feeling some level of similar angst. He wasn’t. He was rapping instead. Headphones plugged in, zero attention to the radio calls being made, just bebopping away. “Surely if he’d heard that transmission he’d be feeling differently” I thought to myself, while I sat there anxiously fiddling with my equipment. Wrong again. I leaned in as close as could to scream at him over the turbines, “Corporal Jackson! Six plus inside the target building!” Not even bothering to take out one of his headphones, he stuck his fist out and yelled back – “Fuuuuucccckkkk yeah” – I rendered the necessary response. To this day I’m still unsure if he even heard me. Seeing the stress registered on my face he comforted me with yet another monologue that truly captured the gravity of the situation. “The flights about 50 minutes, wake me up when we are five out!” The helicopter jolted as it left the ground, Jackson was out cold about ninety seconds later. I spent the next forty or so minutes peering out the back of the helicopter and marveling at the vast emptiness of the Afghan mountains – thinking about all the decisions I’d made to get me there. Less than two hours prior I had been speaking to my girlfriend on the phone. She was back on the west coast, partying and having fun with our other college going friends. It was hard for me to grapple with, but oddly enough, in that moment, a sense of purpose and direction came over me that provided clarity. I was supposed to be there. It was my contribution to the country I had grown up loving so much. As long as they got to enjoy their college experience, I thought, the sacrifice was worth it. The loadmaster stomped on the floor of the aircraft and yelled “Six minutes!” I frantically reached over and slapped Jackson on the leg. He came to as if he’d been awake the entire time. He quickly prepped his equipment, like the seasoned Ranger he was, and then waved me in to exchange words. “When we hit the ground, full fuckin speed alright!?” I nodded. He grabbed me by the shoulder strap of my body armor and pulled me closer. “Hey! Watch your sector and stay in my hip pocket! Just do your fuckin job and trust the rest of the boys will do theirs.” I didn’t even really know most of these guys that well at the time, but I believed what he was telling me. I trusted that everyone on that helicopter, even though most of them were total strangers, would look after each other. Our mission was defined, and it was unachievable without teamwork, cohesion, and dependability. He pushed me away, cracked a smile, and gave me a brotherly head nod as if to say, “here we go!” The helicopter landed, the ramp dropped, and in solidarity, we all went sprinting into the night.

As a combat veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq, there are a myriad of questions I get pertaining to my experiences. However, the most common is: “What is war like?” A question that almost always leads me to respond the same way – “Hard.” While I realize that may be a bit of an understatement, the single word response seems to get the point across. Thinking back on that period of my life, it’s easy for me to understand why I left. War is hard, and I wanted no more of it. I was tired, maybe even burnt out. For me, living a life that revolved around uncertainty and dire consequences eroded my inner peace. Despite being constantly surrounded by heavy weapons, and men who knew how to wield them, it felt impossible to maintain a sense of security. As my military career came to an end, I found myself yearning for simpler times. Times where I wouldn’t have to worry about getting a phone call at 0200 telling me to load up and get on a plane to some distant land. Times where I knew the next time I’d get to go surfing with my friends. Times that didn’t cause me to wonder if that phone call with my mom would potentially be the last. As I drove off Fort Benning, I was overcome with a sense of liberation. I had witnessed war for the last time – or so I thought.

The current state of America is both divided and volatile. The majority of people live increasingly precarious lives, oftentimes with no end in sight. Suffering from issues like healthcare, education, and institutionalized racism. Working wages are increasingly insufficient as the cost of living continues to rise. Unemployment is at an alarmingly high rate due to the previous presidential administration’s misunderstanding of a global pandemic. A population that’s constantly at each other’s throat’s due to increased polarization in the media and further separation of socioeconomic classes. America has been involved in countless wars, but this is a new kind. A war waged by the people in power to continually disrupt and marginalize the greater population in order to maintain that power and increase wealth. We’ve effectively created an environment of class warfare. An environment where working class people simply can’t get ahead and will be condemned to financial instability for generations to come. This type of warfare has uprooted the fundamentals this country was built upon, and it’s time we address it properly.

Since my separation from the Army in 2017, this is an aspect of being a civilian I never would have anticipated being so troubling. While I have many personal qualms with this issue, the societal impact of class warfare can, and has been, detrimental to America’s modern development. Ironically, our constitution was written with the very concept of unity and equality heavily implemented. Our pledge of allegiance confidently refers to us as “one nation under god” which is “indivisible” and guarantees “liberty and justice for all.” If you’re anything like me, you cringed a bit when you read that. I can’t even remember the last time I felt the U.S. was actually “indivisible” or actively upholding “liberty and justice for all.” However, despite prominent periods of social unity in the mid 1900’s, it is my strong belief that a lack thereof has been one of the root causes of America’s changing social dynamic. We’ve created a system that makes it impossible for working class citizens to acquire wealth and elevate their social status, if they so choose. We’ve resorted to neglecting entitlements for the less fortunate, resulting in a massive quality discrepancy between services for the rich, and services for the poor. While this behavior may be beneficial for some, the vast majority experience the negative side effects of this – joblessness, food deserts, drug addiction. As these forces persist, the chasms that separate America’s citizens continually grow deeper and wider, furthering and exacerbating class warfare amongst the population.

Having grown up in a relatively affluent environment, social status or class were never at the forefront of my mind. Both my parents had gone to college and had well-paying jobs – that was the obvious route that had been laid out before me. Since most of my friends that I had grown up with were in a similar boat, a four-year university was the status quo. Arguably, the standard. At any rate, the key takeaway is that I had options – plenty of them. It wasn’t until my first day of basic training that I was quickly confronted with the reality that many Americans do not. I met guys from all walks of life, but the vast majority were from poverty-stricken areas and the military was perhaps their only means of escape. From day one I was labeled as the “rich kid”, the “hippy”, or one of the more colorful insults, a “communist tree-hugging bisexual.” I was no different, I’d react to their silly name-calling by referring to them as “rednecks” or “hillbillies”, oftentimes jumping at the opportunity to further knock them down when they misspelled or mispronounced words. Obviously, now I am able to see this was no fault of their own and perhaps why they’d feel resentment for my relatively posh upbringing. They had been unfavorably subjected to the side-effects of a system that was, more or less, restricting them from being able to climb the social ladder. While these insults were relatively trivial and can easily be chalked up to “barracks talk”, it created much division between the guys from communities like mine and the ones who grew up in less favorable environments.  Much like America today, the wealthy and poor alike naturally gravitate towards groups that feel the most relatable to their own circumstances. In this scenario, it was no different, and for the first time in my life, I was the minority. It wasn’t until the chaos created by Drill Sergeant Leveque were we able to bury the proverbial hatchet and unite behind a common cause. We had been stripped of everything, including our dignity, and the names that we had carried throughout our entire lives were reduced to numbers. We had nothing but each other, and for the first time in my life, whether or not I knew it, social status was completely eradicated and irrelevant. Through struggle came unity. Maybe even love.

America’s largest obstacle is the illusion that we are all on different paths – not trying to achieve the same goals. While I understand it’s easy to fall prey to that belief, it couldn’t be further from the truth. The American Dream is for everyone – whether or not they know it. FDR famously calls upon this notion in his notorious 1944 State of the Union address that’s commonly referred to as the “Second Bill of Rights.” He sternly confronts the issues of hunger and poverty, indecent living conditions, education, and healthcare, claiming that these are “rights” that should be enjoyed by every citizen “regardless of station, race, or creed.” (Roosevelt) Revolutionary words from a sitting president. In the wake of Pearl Harbor and a developing WW2, Roosevelt’s words were intended to rally the population behind a common cause. They did exactly that. The years following were complimented by mass collective efforts, from all corners of America, in support of the war – perhaps the greatest display of American solidarity since the Revolution in 1776. As a result, industry demands requiring large labor forces combined with rapidly developed technological advancements created a bustling economy that guaranteed employment for the majority of the population. Unemployment was at an all-time low (about 1.2%), we were winning the war, and America was united, making us more effective and influential than ever.

The years following the Progressive Era were usurped by a completely opposing mindset. Still ripe with fears of communism as a result of building Cold War tensions, the United States aggressively lunged towards absolute capitalism. The divisive concepts of neoconservatism that ran rampant in the Gilded Age were beginning to resurface. Additionally, business tycoons with neoliberal mindsets ran rampant, exploiting cheap labor and tax breaks at any available opportunity. Banks essentially handing out home loans without due diligence or accountability. Noam Chomsky does well to shed light on this phenomenon in Requiem for an American Dream, a film that documents the rise of neoliberalism in modern American society. Throughout this film, he provides and navigates the viewer through what he refers to as “The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth and Power.” Amongst these are ideas like “Shape Ideology”, “Attack Solidarity”, and even “Marginalize the Population.”(Chomsky) Obviously, all of the aforementioned would be detrimental to the unification of any country, and America is no different. Similar to the behaviors we read about in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History, the years after the late 1960’s were riddled with the exploitation of minorities and cheap labor, irresponsible banking practices, and a political system that “enhanced” free-market ideals at the expense of logical regulation. As Zinn phrases it “There was a human cost to this exciting story of financial ingenuity.” (Zinn) A second Gilded Age was, and perhaps is, upon us.

Neoliberal ideals have been embedded in American society for some time now, but they’re eating us alive. This mindset has resulted in the wealthiest 1% of Americans controlling roughly 40% of the nation’s wealth (Wealth Inequality in America). How’d they pull that off? They lobbied in government to make sure market regulation and corporate oversight remained low. Low regulation meant banks could lend at will and companies that delivered high demand products like oil or manufactured goods could continually decimate the environment. With minimal oversight, immoral businesses were able to spend less money on their employees and their working conditions, making profit margins larger. Unsurprisingly, the negative effects that coincide with this sort of behavior are not felt by the guilty party. Instead, it’s middle- and working-class American’s that are forced to not only endure but provide a safety net for when it all comes crashing down. Take the 2008 housing crisis for example. For their reckless behavior, the banks received a taxpayer funded government bailout and, despite stunting the global economy, only one person went to prison. Another excellent example is the assault we see on climate change in films like Merchants of Doubt. Special Interest Groups funded by large corporations continue to ruthlessly hinder efforts to combat the human contribution to global warming in order to increase profits and growth. Our planet and society are being abused and destroyed, and those least fortunate bear the brunt of it.

Catastrophes like these create angst and instability amongst the population, oftentimes causing people to lash out in desperation or fear. Not understanding the problem and why it’s happening to them. Blaming people that look or think differently for the circumstances that were in fact created by the powers at be. All of these contribute to a mindset of insecurity. An economic insecurity, which is arguably the worst kind. The type of insecurity where, much like the issues discussed by Adam Gaffney, exorbitant costs of an untimely health complication or accident can be “devastating” (Gaffney). Where massive student loans with high interest rates make it virtually impossible to get out from under, limiting a university education even further. These insecurities are eroding our country’s inner peace. American’s increasingly point their fingers at each other instead of the people responsible – playing right into their hand. As long as we allow the people with power to repeatedly manipulate the system and our mindsets, the war will continue.

After running off the previously mentioned helicopter, Jackson and I found ourselves laying behind a pile of dirt in an orchard about 30 meters from the entrance to the target compound. It was wet and smelled like shit. I tried not to imagine what I was potentially laying in. As one of our fellow Rangers moved closer to the door, he noticed something irregular – a spool of wires running into a 55-gallon drum filled with god knows what. The absolute last thing you want to see as you enter any building, especially in the middle east. Getting on his radio, he urgently used the designated callsign that essentially means – RUN. Still in the prone and well within the lethal blast range, Jackson leapt to his feet and screamed “Nacho, lets fuckin go!” Admittedly, I was moving slower than I should have been considering that I was about to be vaporized in my current position. Anxiously waiting for his slow private (me), Jackson grabbed me by the back of my body armor and expedited the transition to my feet. “Stay with me!” he screamed, and we both went tearing through that orchard as fast we could – trying to create as much distance between us and the building as possible. God damnit I was scared. Pitch black, in an Afghan orchard, running for my fucking life. Thankfully, I had Jackson, and all of the other Rangers that helped me through that very first mission. Instead of leaving me in the dust, he waited. At the potential expense of his own life. He waited.

Throughout my time in Regiment, Jackson and I spent virtually every day together. Today, If I asked him why he waited that particular time, I’m sure I’d get a smart-ass response that discredited the severity of that situation or his role in it. However, one time, after a generous amount of adult substance, I confronted him about it. “Hey man, why’d you wait for me that one time?” I said curiously. He looked at me the way any other older sibling would look at their younger counterpart with unwarranted disgust. With at least half of a can of Copenhagen in his lip, he spit onto the floor (of his own room) and continued to look at me. “What do you mean?” he said. Immediately, I knew that he knew what I was talking about. He broke eye contact and looked up at the ceiling. I wasn’t going to pry any further. “Because that’s just what you do” he said suddenly. “What?” I said back. “That’s what you do!” he exclaimed. “You take care of each other. Regardless of the consequences. That’s fuckin it dude. That’s all we got.” With the exception of my family, that was the first time I felt an unconditional love that was so uncontested. It all started to make sense. That’s what made units like ours so ruthlessly effective. A deep love that wouldn’t leave anyone behind, no matter what. A commitment to teamwork and solidarity that was virtually unprecedented. That was our power.

I reflect on that mission and similar ones frequently. As a former Ranger who fought for this country, it’s heartbreaking to return home, only to be confronted with a different type of war. One I never would have anticipated. A war waged on the people. However, thanks to my experiences in the infamous 75th Ranger Regiment, I know exactly how to combat it. Solidarity and love. It’s what got me through that mission, and all the rest of them. I know that sounds cliché, especially the latter, but it’s the truth. Through solidarity, the seemingly unimaginable are possible. Through love, we are able to commit ourselves to selfless behaviors in order to elevate and improve the lives of others. That’s what it’s all about – coming together in times of hardship to overcome, regardless of previous speedbumps or mishaps. We all have an incredible opportunity to come together and rise, like a phoenix born out of the ashes. We’ve all been experiencing troubling times, but we can’t give up on each other. We can’t let these evil forces prevail. We can’t allow them wage war any longer. We must either unite in solidarity, behind this common cause, or continue down a path of division and eventual destruction.

I never thought I’d find myself in another situation where I felt like I had to fight. But that’s where we are, and I’m surprisingly pretty okay with that. This is a war worth fighting. A war that will change the lives of so many, only for the better. First, we need to commit to not only ourselves, but one another. Unite behind commonality and struggle. Find a new productive outlet to focus our efforts and improve our conditions. I see much hope in a policy like the Green New Deal, which is designed to combat our countries contributions to climate change while simultaneously stimulating our economy, improving living/working conditions, and promote social justice. Much like Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights”, this addresses a unique opportunity that was born as a result of unfortunate events. The kind of opportunity we would be foolish to pass up on. It’s time to rally behind neighborly love and not only put the past behind us but look to the future. A future ripe with prosperity and opportunity. Not just for the wealthy, but for everyone, “regardless of station, race, or creed.” (Roosevelt) I love this country and everything we stood for. It’s time we reestablished ourselves as a beacon of hope, equality, and justice. After years of misdirection, the opportunity has finally presented itself. Take my hand, or that of a neighbor or loved one. Join me. Through solidarity and love, we have the power to change course, set the record straight, and create a country that shows the world we are still committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.  

Works Cited

Chomsky, Noam. “Requiem for the American Dream (2016).” Tubi, 1 Jan. 2016, tubitv.com/movies/451500/requiem-for-the-american-dream. 

Gaffney, Adam. “America's Extreme Neoliberal Healthcare System Is Putting the Country at Risk | Adam Gaffney.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Mar. 2020.

Kenner, Robert, director. Merchants of Doubt. Sony Pictures Classics, 2014. 

politizane. “Wealth Inequality in America.” YouTube, YouTube, 20 Nov. 2012. 

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. “State of the Union (Second Bill of Rights).” 1944. 

Zinn, Howard. “Chapter 11: Robber Barons and Rebels.” A People's History, Harper Collins, 2003, pp. 253–268.