"You Have Not Lived Until You Tell a Man He Is Free and Feel His Joy"

Matthew Hoy blogs, yesterday, a remarkable "e-mail that has been making the rounds in military circles from SSgt. Parker Gyokeres".

.... When I left for Iraq I was ready to see a quagmire. A black hole of lost money, misguided efforts, a hostile populace, and broken morale. In short, I expected Vietnam. I haven't been able to find it, and I was looking. Every day I have been here, this country has gotten better for its people. And it's gotten safer too, for us, and them. We are welcome here as the people who are making a real difference. They know we aren't staying. In a month alone the difference has been staggering. And this was all before we found the guy painted on every public wall hiding like a bitch in a tiny hole, too scared for only his own skin to even fight back even with the gun in his hands. The Iraqis saw then that the "supreme leader" was, in their own words, "a shivering coward". They laughed at him publicly in their new free press. That's what I'm talking about. On that wonderful day, and I can't say it enough, everything changed.

There are many here who couldn't even mention his name. When we say it, all the locals cringe instinctively, like they had been struck, they then look furtively about them to see who else around them heard us blaspheme against the devil. It's not an amusing thing to terrify a grown man with a single word. It makes one feel horrible. For us that word is one of scorn and disgust, for them it could get you and your family killed by nightfall, and I'm not kidding. You just vanished. 30 years of that terror will change the psyche of a nation. It's going to take some pain to fix it. That process started with a hairy man in a rat hole being led away in handcuffs.

So for me, the realization that this was, and is, the right thing to do hit me like a lightning bolt; the second I saw our interpreter begin to cry tears of joy at the news that "we got him". He said one thing, hesitantly and very quietly, with a mixture of barely hidden fear and childish hope in his voice. "Are you sure?" I took him by the shoulders, and with a huge smile on my face and the excitement of a child, said; "Yes, Osama, its him! We got him!" He hugged me briefly and stepped back, didn't say a word, and a single tear rolled down his face. Then he took a deep shuddering breath, like a terrible weight had been lifted off his shoulders, and grinned broadly, the smile of a man looking at his bride coming down the isle, a smile of pure joy. At that second, Osama knew that he couldn't be punished for working with us. At that second, I knew that we could leave this country to freedom loving Iraqis, and not worry about our new friends being ok. We both knew it was almost over.

You have not lived until you tell a man he is free and feel his joy....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/23/03 10:02:20 AM
Categorized as War.