“I want to go back to Iraq and finish the job”

I wrote this article in Italian for The Post Internazionale and you can find it here, an abstract in English below:

“I want to go back and finish the job.” Jake is a 24 years-old veteran and he wants to fight in Iraq. He had been in the army for five years, 13 months of which he had spent in Iraq protecting the Golden Mosque at Samarra. He also trained the Iraqi army. Now he is trying to go back “to protect the people of Iraq and honor the ones [U.S. soldiers] who paid the ultimate sacrifice.” About 4,400 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in the 8-year long war. On June 7 when Jake saw Mosul falling into ISIS hands he immediately tried to re-enlist in the army, but the recruiters did not take him back. “I felt abandoned,” he told me.

All his team mates felt the same. The desperation, outrage and sadness has swept across the entire veteran community. They began talking about the situation and the conversations culminated into a Facebook group, U.S. Veteran Militia—an activist group of nearly 800 former U.S. soldiers, most of them thinking of returning to the battlefield. They are open about their stance—they don’t shy away from saying that they want to pick arms to eliminate ISIS. The group members are actively sending out emails to check who is willing to do more than just online activism and fence-sitting analysis. “This can’t be legal, can it, If it is I am in,” writes one user. And the group admin replies, “Working to make it all squared away and legal.” To do so, they are working on organizing themselves first, and then, form a security company, that could be funded by the Iraqi government. In other words, one may say that they are ready to become mercenaries.

A large part of the 1.5 million U.S. soldiers who’ve served in Iraq feel uneasy about where Iraq stands today. Some feel they have lost the war and others wonder why they went there in the first place. It’s not just about fighting, there are people who want to find other forms of redemption. One veteran told me he wanted to teach English to children in Kurdistan. The other one said he wanted to go as an aid worker. “If I could find a company that is going back, sets up an infrastructure, like if you give me ten Iraqi guys, I would train them to be tactical medics,” said Derek Gannon, a former Special Operations operator. Tactical medics walk with troops and are armed to defend themselves. “I would love to go back to Iraq, to Kosovo or Africa to try to do good,” Gannon added.