Another Poster Child of the IVAW

It’s been a while since we profiled an IVAW member. They get real excited and you get to learn about the folks behind the black T-shirts. TSO is a little bored of burrowing into the research, but I kind of like it.

This week’s star is Zachary Findlay-Maddox. He’s been on my radar since Winter Soldier II back in March when he first emailed me. He began his email telling me that he was a Marine veteran and that he’d suffered from PTSD after his combat tour and that my treatment of his fellow IVAW members was  unfair and it was causing him some distress. He claimed my dismissal of their stories was causing him to suffer even moreso than usual from his bout of PTSD.

Normally, I’m sensitive to troops who suffer from PTSD, because I’ve had some problems myself…not the least of which was soon after being in WSII. So I asked him about his combat tour and I commiserated with him. Well, it turns out his combat tour was at the Marine barracks at 8th and Eye Streets…in Washington, DC’s Southeast neighborhood. According to Findlay or Maddox or Whatever, hardly a night went by that he didn’t hear the locals busting caps at each other in the ‘hood. Well, for those of you who don’t know, 8th and Eye isn’t even in the “hood”. It’s near the shipyard on the “safe side” of the Anacostia River. It’s barely part of the infamous Southeast at all.

Well, my sympathy pretty much dissipated by the time I finished reading that (did I mention, that he’s a bit of a blowhard who types endlessly). I tried to explain to the youngster that DC isn’t considered a combat tour by anyone’s standard and that he shouldn’t tell people that or they’d make fun of him (sorta like what I was doing). I just figured he was a mixed up kid.

Well, I found his profile on the IVAW site the other day (at the link above) and I see he didn’t take my advice. He tells of his brief taste of combat;

We found our platoon, and went down stairs to draw out our M-16’s and bayonets, and other gear. My platoon assembled on our platoon floor, which was on the fourth floor of Alpha company side of the living quarters for the Marines. I could see the Pentagon that day, only because of all the black smoke that was pouring out of it. It turned the sky partially black in that area, it was pretty horrific. I watched on T.V. President Bush coming back to D.C. in marine one with two gunships, and they flew right over us at roof top level. We stayed at the Barracks until that evening, when finally we were allowed to go home.

Terrifying isn’t it? As a reference, he was about eight miles from the Pentagon. Most of DC was between him and the danger. But that moment changed his life, apparently. He got to go home on leave a few days later;

Everything was kind of calm back home; it didn’t affect people as much. That has always been a weird thing for me to grasp, because being a marine, in D.C., you feel like Pearl Harbor just happened again, which it was in a sick sense. Even today, it’s hard for me to relate to most people, people who have no idea what is at stake in the world right now.

Well, to make the blowhard’s story short, he started hanging out with his car dealer, started smoking pot and drinking, came up hot on a piss test, deserted for the love of a good woman for a few days and got booted. Never left the States, never went to Iraq, never even packed his bags for anywhere except his trip home. He guarded his barracks, which was terrifying, too;

I was completely by myself at night, and I was unarmed. That’s right, our nations capitol gets attacked for the first time since the British invaded back in the eighteen hundreds, and I was completely unarmed. Oh, I’m sorry, I was armed, but with a twelve inch METAL POLE. The marine I had enitially relieved had given it to me with a smirk, when I asked him what we would be protecting our selves with. The normal marine security forces had pistols and shotguns, and I was an infantryman, so I was trained on how to use an m-16A2 service rifle, and among other weapons. So I was kind of shocked by it. Anybody by the way could walk up and through the post, the side walk for I street south east was right outside the glass doors. I also had at this time very “Osama Bin Laden” looking guys coming through my post, to deliver pizza.

Poor thing…all of these guys who like Osama bin Laden wandering around and all he had was a piece of pipe. One of them might have over-powered him with a meatball sandwich and he’d have been toast. There was probably a good reason they didn’t give this drug-adled adodolescent an M16 in downtown DC.

But it all piled up on him and he succumbed to the siren’s song of pot and beer. And of course, it’s Bush’s fault;

We got to stop Bushie and Tricky dick before they get away with this, as a victim of 9/11, I think its complete bull for them to use this as an excuse to terrorize the world….

Got that? He was five miles from the Pentagon (not to start a pissing contest, but I was two miles away) and chose to take drugs and lay up with his honey instead of going to work, he’s a 9/11 victim. You can find a common thread running through most of these IVAW members…a good number of them had a disciplinary problem in the military and the war (and Bush and Cheney) seems like good excuse.

Oh, and you can Google Zachary and find his comments posted on message boards at NORML and High Times. His problems aren’t just with the military.

Crossposted at Talon

Category: Politics