Interviewed by Jessica Shen and Matthew Wang
Edited by Ally
For what should’ve been my senior year in college, I volunteered to go to Iraq as an advisor to the newly-formed Iraqi army. The job I had was particularly tough because you never felt safe. Advisors were rarely on U.S. bases and most combat operations were with Iraqi troops as opposed to with American troops.
My time training the Iraqis was often frustrating because after the U.S. won the initial ground war, the decision was made to disband the Iraqi Army, so we were basically starting from scratch. And in addition to having to train new soldiers, there were numerous cultural and language barriers. I knew very basic Arabic, and some of the Iraqis knew basic English, so we were able to muddle through communication and coordination. My team and I went over to Iraq optimistic about the long-term stability and prospects for the Iraqi nation; we definitely left disillusioned. I think we underestimated the amount of time, effort, and resources it would actually take to get the entire government apparatus up and running.
My reintegration back into society was weird, to say the least. I left Fallujah, Iraq which was literally a war zone in early August of 2006, and I was back in a classroom in late August 2006. The juxtaposition in time of those two realities was just very odd. Also, talking about the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder is not something that happens in the military, but it’s real and has deleterious effects on the lives of a lot of combat vets. Mainly, it’s problematic because the rest of the U.S. population have never served in the military, and many of those who have did not engage in direct combat, so there’s a lack of awareness.
People might not realize that for many of those that enlist in the military, they’re enlisting because that is their best choice in life at that particular point. A lot of my friends who served came from lower income backgrounds. They couldn’t go to college, and their parents didn’t have a lot of money. Had they not chosen to join the military, they likely would’ve continued down a path of struggle. So, the military offers an opportunity out of a situation like that and for me, it was a way to pay for college. The veterans you see at Penn have worked incredibly hard to get to where they are now. Many of them got dealt a bad hand in life but managed to defy all odds and get here."