COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Casualties
A star graduate from West Point, killed in Iraq, is laid to rest. But what does her death tell us about the price America is paying for freedom in Iraq?
NATHAN THORNBURGH, Associated Press
Sep. 28, 2006
U.S.
Army 2nd Lieut. Emily Perez, 23, was buried Tuesday at West Point, on a
high bluff overlooking the Hudson River, alongside two centuries of
fallen graduates from the United States Military Academy. She was the
first combat death from the 2005 graduating class — called "the
class of 9/11" because they arrived at the prestigious school just two
weeks before the terror attacks. She was also the first female West
Point graduate to be killed in Iraq.
She died an ordinary death in Iraq, at least by today's standards: a
roadside bomb exploded as she led her platoon in a convoy south of
Baghdad on Sept. 12. But what makes this death so difficult in a sea of
violence is just how extraordinary this particular soldier was.
I spent a month at West Point reporting for our May 2005 cover story on
her fellow cadets in the class of 9/11. I never met Perez in my time
there, but I recognize many of her qualities in the friends I made at
the academy. They are kids who could have chosen any path in life, but
instead turned down elite civilian universities to volunteer for the
privations of a military college and an ensuing five-year commitment to
the Army.
Even at a school of overachievers, Perez's friends and teachers say
that she stood out. She held the second-highest rank in her senior
class, and, as Brigade Command Sergeant Major, was the highest-ranking
minority woman in the history of West Point. She set school records as
a sprinter on the track team, led the school's gospel choir, tutored a
number of other students and even helped start a dance squad to cheer
on the football and basketball teams. Professors wanted her to be in
their classes, soldiers wanted her to lead their cadets, underclassmen
wanted to catch a little bit of the unstoppable drive that pushed her
to meet and exceed the many challenges the academy throws at its
students.
"People often say only good things about someone after they've died,
but none of this is hyperbole," says Morten Ender, her faculty advisor
in the Sociology Program at West Point. "Emily was amazing."
"She was a star among stars," is how classmate Meagan Belk puts it.
"You just never would have imagined this would happen to her."
Yolanda Ramirez-Raphael, her roommate at West Point, says that Perez's
accomplishments in life all stemmed from an unshakeable
self-confidence. "She didn't worry about whether someone liked her or
not," says Ramirez-Raphael. At male-dominated West Point, she says,
"women will sometimes try to change their leadership style, but not
Emily. She always got right to the point." Perez wasn't bashful about
her faith either. Every Sunday morning, she'd wake up by playing gospel
CDs as she read the Bible. Her roommate Ramirez-Raphael, always trying
to catch up on sleep, says Sunday mornings weren't safe until Perez
— and the tambourine she always took to play in the Gospel Choir
— were at church.
That faith drove Perez to envision a life of service beyond war. As a
teenager in Fort Washington, Md., she set up an AIDS ministry in her
church. And although her faculty advisor Ender says she could have been
literally anything she wanted to, she was most passionate about
global-health issues. "She could have been the next Paul Farmer," says
Ender. "That's the commitment, and the talent, that she had."
Roadside bombs are generally believed to be the top killer of U.S.
troops in Iraq (according to www.icasualty.org, almost a thousand U.S
troops have been killed by the devices so far). The threat has
persisted despite a multibillion-dollar U.S. campaign to neutralize it,
and more than any element in Iraq has spread the dangers of war evenly
from frontline soldiers to support personnel.
Perez understood those risks. She had chosen to go into the highly
selective Medical Service Corps and, even though it's not a combat
branch, she understood that she'd be in as much danger as anyone.
Because of the shortened officer basic training of the medical corps,
Ramirez-Raphael says that Perez "knew she would probably be deployed
before the huah! infantry set were. She told me, 'I'll be there and
back before those guys even get their boots in the sand.'"
Ramirez-Raphael says that Perez had already survived several previous
convoy attacks in Iraq. After one of those incidents, a mutual friend
from West Point happened to be in the Quick Reaction Force that came in
to secure the scene. "He told me that Emily held her own [afterwards],"
says Ramirez-Raphael.
But there is no holding one's own against a fatal IED attack. It comes
in a blast of dust and fire and, in an instant on Sept. 12, all of that
exquisite training, and all of that irrepressible vitality, was stilled.
Classmate Paul Lushenko, now an army intelligence officer at Fort
Huachuca, Ariz., says that the news of Emily's death hit everyone in
the Class of 9/11 hard. "I think that we were under some sort of
inability to understand that probably some of our classmates were going
to die," he says. "I don't know. You just don't think it's going to
happen to you." He brought in a picture of himself with Emily to show
his platoon, which is composed of army linguists' — support staff
who, like Perez, are not combat personnel. "I wanted to make clear the
dangers," he says. "We're all on the front lines in this war."
"We lost one of the greatest accomplishments of the academy," adds
Lushenko, who himself is itching to get into the fight in Iraq. "But
that motivates me even more to get over there and serve my country."
Leigh Harrell, a fellow classmate of Perez's, emailed me from Baghdad
to say that she ran into Perez in Iraq not long ago. "We talked for
probably an hour telling each other about the wild experiences we'd
already had as platoon leaders in combat," Harrell wrote. "We had some
laughs and both talked of how much we were looking forward to going
home and seeing our families again."
"There's so much I still wanted to experience with her," says
Ramirez-Raphael. "I wanted to have families together, maybe even send
our poor little kids to West Point some day."
But it is the question of why — why a roadside bomb that costs a
pittance to make killed a young officer with so much left to offer her
country — that undoes Ramirez-Raphael. Having buried her friend
on Tuesday, the question is still too much on Thursday. "I don't know,"
she says, "I don't know. I've asked myself that every day since she
died, and I cannot tell you."
While I was at West Point, the most impressive thing about cadets like
Ramirez-Raphael was the way they were able to safeguard their sense of
duty from whatever doubts or insecurities crept in about the mission.
In the classroom, I watched Perez's classmates debate the successes and
failures of the current U.S. occupation strategy. They learned about
the dangers of this particular war, from watching videos of an IED
explosion to discussing the fate of West Point graduate Gen. Eric
Shinseki, who was forced into retirement for contradicting Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's estimates about how many troops would be
needed in Iraq. But outside of the classroom, the cadets still mustered
on the plain and marched in unison, a physical reminder of their
willingness to accept and execute whatever mission they are given. On
one of my last days at West Point, I watched from the stands as the
class of 9/11 took the art of parading to its farcical zenith. A high
wind had blown a tall plumed hat off of one of the lead cadets, forcing
the hundreds that followed in box formation to try to step over it
without glancing down or altering their parade stride. As you can
imagine, this did not work out so well. Cadet after cadet ended up
stumbling over a hat that could have easily been picked up and tossed
out of the way.
Even the West Point parents in attendance couldn't help but snicker at
these proud ranks being decimated by a hat. But watching this, I
finally was able to articulate something that I had only vaguely sensed
before: This thing that West Pointers do — parading in unyielding
formation, shining already gleaming boots, enlisting to sacrifice their
lives on some unknown and unloved territory far from home — is
not done out of ignorance, but out of faith. They have faith that the
American values and resourcefulness do not lend themselves to
meaningless death. They have faith that not only is freedom worth
fighting for, but that we do not fight for any lesser end.
What do we owe them in return? An honest debate and some tough
questions that soldiers by definition cannot outwardly ask or answer.
Many of her classmates, like Lushenko, see Perez's death as a reason
for more resolve in the fight. And one imagines that Perez, who was not
given to second-guessing herself or her mission, would agree. This
election season has featured Democrats obsessed with blaming their
opponents for getting into the war and Republicans mistaking discussion
for sedition. Instead, we should be asking straight questions: Do we
have enough troops? Is the war winnable? Should we redeploy to safer
bases or should we be a more muscular presence on the streets of Iraq?
"Emily was just a problem solver," says one of her fellow cadets. Iraq
may have defied solution so far, but we owe her a continued, honest
effort.
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