Young Writers Society

I can't believe twenty-two years have past since the horrible war in Iraq I was in. When the United States came and gave the incentive to Iraq to attack us. None of us knew about it. We were all puppets in it's scheme. As a fourteen year old I got used to crawling over dead bodies of Iraq and Iran soldiers.

Young and old alike gathered arms and pushed the Iraq soldiers out of our country. It was like the world was against us and we didn't know why. Our valiant soldiers fought and fought for eight years. I've lost a lot of good friends, some of them from my high school. I saw some horrible things in the war. After I escaped and came to the United States I thought that I would never have to deal with these images that haunted me, images that I saw in my dreams. Sometimes I wished and prayed it was only that, just bad dreams, but I knew better.

It's been twenty- two years and I haven't really told my story to anyone. All of us raised arms and fought together as brothers but we did not do it to save our oil and we certainly didn't do it for the ideals of these fanatic Muslims that are running our country. We didn't do it because we hated SadamHussainor the Iraqies.

We did it because we didn't want our innocent people dying, our innocent children being slaughtered and bombed. We did it because we are an ancient race, Persians, and we value our culture and thousands of years of history.

I came to the United States with a dream that I would never have to worry about that again, that I would never have to revisit those horrible times in the war but now the same thing is happening here. First we had 9/11 when I rushed over there and volunteered at ground zero. When I put my hand on the ground I still felt the heat and I remember what is was like when we used to get bombed. We had a 9/11 every morning for a long time when I lived as a kid. I didn't want the same to be here in the United States. Our soldiers being lost, fallen, and crippled for life. Why do we have to have such a loss? Our soldiers are working hard over there, I don't care who's war this is, I don't care why they are there. Where they were there for a righteous cause or where they were there to make some rich jerks even richer. Bottom line is that our troops are out there in some of the worst conditions, I should know because I've been there.

Situations are grim, fighting conditions are hard and the territories are unknown, the desert can be very unforgiving. The troops sighed up to protect their country, to protect their beliefs but I don't feel they sighed up for this. They had no clue that someday they would be fighting in this kind of condition in these territories, thousands and thousands of miles away from home where I fought when I was a kid. How many more hundreds have to lose their lives, how many more losses do we have to have before we finally get it.

How many more families have to bare the pain of losing their loved ones.

In desert lands, far, far away. How many more brothers have to fall.

Sometimes things can be good though. Sometimes, very few times our troops get to see the point of why they are actually there. When the universe decides to do something nice and to show them the fruits of they're hard work over there. After all, all of the soldiers in the world have something in common. We want to have something, something to hold and something to hang on to. A dream, a fantasy, where everyone lived in peace and that we have passion towards all mankind and then as soldiers, all around the world as veterans. We all agree we don't ever want to go back to the experience we've been through.

I was partially in charge of a project called "The healing field". We had 3,000 U.S. flags in the park, each flag representing a fallen officer or soldier, or someone we have lost during September, 11th.

It's a incredible feeling to stand in the middle of 3,000 U.S. flags and at the same time it's a very heavy feeling, very sad to each flag standing 10 ft tall represents a lost one. I realized that they weren't just from the United States, from every country that participates in our cause in Iraq. I know that we still have September, 11th and I don't care how it started and that it has nothing to do with the fact that we are in Iraq.

All I can say is support our troops, god bless them and bring them home safe.