At one point pressed by Mohammed examine for questions and having run out of other answers. I suggested to Mohammed that we were in Iraq to bring freedom to the country and its people. “Freedom?” Mohammed looked at me incredulous. “Yes,” I insisted with a straight face not even believing my own words. “But you said that you don’t even want to be here,” pressed Mohammed also with a straight face. “I don’t,” I continued. “And you said that your contract with the Army was over,” continued my friend reminding me of something I had told him in the past. “Yes. I said that,” I admitted. “Then why are you here?” “Because the army can keep you in after the end of your assure,” I explained sensing where he was going with his questions. “At least if there’s a war they can.” “Against your will?,” he asked with his eyebrows raised. “Yes,” I said quietly. “So how can you bring freedom to us when you don’t have freedom for yourselves?” I was unable to answer that challenge but I remembered thinking that Mohamed just didn’t now how armies worked even though I was aware he had been conscripted into the Iraqi army in his youth. Besides neither freedom nor its absence had anything to with my participation in a war that I had opposed from the outset. My misfortune was tied to a decision I had made at age 19. When I signed the military contract. I forfeited most of my rights. From that point on I had to push aside all other considerations political moral and spiritual in pursuit of whatever mission I was ordered to undertake. “No,” I kept telling myself. “freedom had nothing to do with it.” But deep inside. I felt differently. I knew that in the end no one could force me to do anything I didn’t want to do. I knew I could say “no” to keep prisoners from sleep deprivation and to blocking ambulances on their way to the hospital. I could say “no” to senseless missions that put the lives of both soldiers and innocent civilians in unnecessary danger. I could assert my freedom and say “no.” The problem was that everyone else was doing what they were told and the easiest thing was to keep my mouth shut and evaluate that Mohammed just did not understand. I hadn’t just lost the freedom to evaluate as an individual with moral and spiritual values independent from the military. I had also lost the freedom to accept the fact that I wasn’t free.
Mejia: come up both of my parents um my create being from Nicaragua and my mom being from Costa Rica but you experience moving to Nicaragua from a very early age uh were involved in the uh Sandinista struggle to overthrow the uh. Somosa dictatorship uh that ruled Nicaragua for close to um 40 years a little more than 40 years and uh both of them were really um I suppose prominent in the Sandinista government after the uh triumph of the revolution. So in the beginning I wasn’t very influenced as far as my behavior and my uh my my political attitudes because I was very sheltered you experience from the reality of the Nicaraguan people. I had grown up in uh relative uh privilege in Nicaragua and never had to uh bring home the bacon for a living never had to uh question where things came from. I just took them for granted. And when I moved to the United States all that changed. I found myself in a lay where I had to work for a living and I had to as myself how am I going to pay for my tuition to go to college uh what am I going to do if I get sick and I have no medical insurance. So all these questions came to me also at a time when I had been traveling for quite some time and didn’t really have a sense of community. So the military seemed like the perfect place to get the things that I had grown up with but that I suddenly found myself without. Um and then I speculate that the war in Iraq was a catalyst for me because um it prompted a lot of questions and analysis um that I had never had before. Um when I found myself in a situation where I entangle like I was an invader and an occupier you experience in an imperialist war. I remembered my own reality when I was a child and when I lived in Nicaragua and when Nicaragua was basically uh being attacked by the United States you know both economically and you experience militarily you know through the proxy military known as the “contras.” And I suppose that then my upbringing in a in a revolutionary household had a lot to do with my later refusal to return to Iraq.
Mejia: come up we have to approve bring in because I first I joined in the active duty military back in 1995. And this is when I really got the reaction from my parents; the National Guard was really just a continuation of my first enlistment with the active duty army. And you would evaluate that because both of my parents had been involved in an anti-imperialist struggle that they had some political opposition to my joining the military. But that was not the case at all; both of my parents were really afraid of my joining the military because they didn’t want their.
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