20 years ago I was boots on ground in Iraq for the first time. Roughly 1.5 million Americans can say something similar as veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
Many were in their 20s, and for many it was their first experience ever leaving the US.
I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to adequately put into words what deployment felt like. I write fun goofy articles. I don’t write about the fucked-shit. I don’t have the language.
I don’t have the nerve.
But I’m not writing about my experiences in Iraq. I’m writing about something that came before. Something I still to this day can’t get out of my brain. A bit of brainwashing that I don’t think any generation of US troops before could have ever imagined.
Moto Videos
If you’ve never heard the term before, moto videos (short for motivational videos) were incredibly popular within the military during OIF (and possibly still? I’ve been out for a while now). For the first time troops had readily available editing software and unprecedented access to cameras that allowed them to capture, share, and edit together videos of their day to day activities. Some of these activities just happened to involving killing people, it being the military and all. And so, the most “exciting” footage would be given a quick splice together, usually comprised of either grainy green hued aerial footage of bombs being dropped on people, on vehicles, or on buildings
or footage of troops storming or defending buildings shooting anyone presenting a target
or footage of troops with rocket launchers
or… you get the idea
often soundtracked with songs meant to get adrenaline pumping such as
“Bombs over Baghdad” by OutKast
“Bodies” by Drowning Pool
“Die MF Die” by Dope
That “boot in yer ass” song by Toby Keith
(I’m not giving that fucker the clicks, see Kris Kristofferson’s rumored assessment of Toby Keith and you’ll have my thoughts as well).
Explosions in sync with downbeats, sprays of red mist timed out to follow the lyrics. The deaths of innumerable Iraqis, (referred to in training by no shortage of dismissive if not outright dehumanizing slurs) as entertainment. While I was in training they played these during every waking moment between classes and exercises.
I’m talking hours spent with those videos playing, meant to hold our attention and keep us awake. Every day some Sergeant would show up with a hard drive full of the day’s lessons and whatever new moto videos they got their hands on. These were looked at and framed as a treat, something to be excited for between endless dry PowerPoint presentations.
And I wasn’t infantry, mind you. My first tour in Iraq I was a medic.
I spent months at Fort Sam Houston, Texas learning life saving skills, and they were feeding us this content in between classes on patient care.
A deluge of violence, human beings exploding into smoke and debris, literal atrocities set to hit songs.
Most of these videos seem to have been scrubbed from YouTube, likely more due to music licensing rights than due to the subject matter on screen, and you’ll forgive me for not wanting to put in effort to hunt them down there or elsewhere.
I can’t unsee them.
I live with them.
I’ve watched people die to OutKast more than I’ve seen the official music video.
And I ponder, these 20 years on, what did that do to me?
That these things live in my head, these connections I can’t break…
and I can’t possibly be alone.
1.5 million Americans served. 1.5 million Americans in their 40s and up, carrying the weight of having been sold a bullshit war, many with no shortage of ailments whether it’s the prematurely worn out joints from wearing 70+ pounds of body armor and gear, or the poisoned lungs from burnpits, or all of the innumerable ways limbs are lost, brains concussed. Many joined post 9/11 in the fervor of patriotism, but even more joined for the promise of bettering their lot in life- training, free college, life skills, get out of their small town or their crowded city, maybe buy a house some day. How many are now in the throes of middle age, dissatisfied, seeing no positive outlook for the future? How many are still being radicalized by propaganda, a steady stream of folks to blame, new enemies (or returning to the same ones) to target?
How many folks have images of war crimes set to nü metal burned into their brains, consciously or otherwise?
It doesn’t shock me that two veterans carried out two separate terror attacks on New Years Day. It doesn’t shock me that a fair percentage of mass shooters are military trained (I’ve seen estimates saying 31% or higher as of 2023). It shocks me that it’s actually not worse.
There have been a lot of pushes in right wing circles to cut veterans programs in order to save money.
I dread that day.
Not just selfishly as someone who receives veterans benefits, but as someone who worries what a generation of aggrieved middle aged men with training and a deep dehumanization of others burned into their subconscious might do if they feel inspired to “let the bodies hit the floor” should they decide they have nothing to lose, and without any of the mechanisms in place to prevent it before they get that far.
I worry how many more will take their own lives for all the fucked up shit in their heads and weighing on their hearts. Veterans suicides continue to be an epidemic to this day.
I don’t think any of us were left unscathed, we were all subjected to a steady diet of war crimes and told it was fucking awesome and we should be fucking psyched about it. And that’s before counting what we may have witnessed first hand, or the things we may have done ourselves.
I think about how fucked up it is to see echoes of those moto videos in the horrific footage of genocide that is streaming out of Gaza, let alone any other areas of conflict or revolution, whether it’s in the propaganda being made by those on the offense, or in the pleas for attention and assistance from those being pummeled by their local war machine. We’re not meant to see this 24/7, not in this fashion- this deranged distance that positions such horrors in the same window as any number of advertisements and influencers. This utterly bizarre dissonance.
I know there are so many factors at play as to why any mass shooting or terror event is carried out.
I know there are countless factors that make men specifically violent in our culture.
I have answers for none of it.
But I live in the wake of it the same as any of us, the looming shadow of the US’s particular brand of violence, at home and abroad, and I think about what it does to us, and I wonder if we’ll ever know a time without it, and I close my eyes and see pixelated green hues and know I never will.
Riki MJ Adams is a musician and FBC contributor
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