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Shoot to kill.

William Stewart had seen the deadly force of that concept before, but this time was different. As his unit’s medic, Stewart was obligated to provide aid for the man who now had no face, even though he knew the Iraqi civilian was beyond his help.

The driver of the man’s car hadn’t understood the checkpoint, and an American soldier had opened fire when the vehicle didn’t stop. It wasn’t the first time Stewart had been called on to help fatally-injured Iraqi civilians, but it was the first time he’d witnessed both the cause and effect of deadly force.

“Before then, everything I’d seen was justifiable, like they’d deserved it,” Stewart said. “This was the first time I questioned another soldier’s judgment.”

Watching the Iraqi civilian lose his life was the tipping point for Stewart, Lawrence senior, making him rethink his support for the war in Iraq. The fact that warfare in an urban setting creates an unavoidable danger for civilians is one of the reasons some veterans like Stewart are rethinking the actions of the United States military in the Middle East.

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William Stewart

The difficulty in discerning friend from foe was one reason civilian casualties were high during the Iraq campaign, said Dan Parker, McPherson senior and former Marine.

“Any time that there’s armed conflict, innocent people are going to die,” Parker said. Civilians are going to die, especially in urban warfare, and especially in modern times.”

Master Sergeant John Peacock, senior Army ROTC instructor at the University, said although soldiers and Marines tried their best to limit collateral damage as much as possible, not having an easily-recognizable enemy made the task more difficult.

Stewart’s typical day began with the crackling of a radio. The medics listened over the military’s frequency, catching the chatter and preparing the first aid station for the injuries that day’s operations would bring.

At the beginning of his 2004 deployment to Habbaniyah, Iraq, Stewart said he held the same view of war as many soldiers who hadn’t been exposed to combat: They were liberators, flushing out the enemy so democracy could flourish. But the bloody realities of warfare hit him hard, he said.

Stewart saw every kind of injury, from bullet wounds to lost limbs, but was never quite prepared for what would come next.

One day, the back hatch of the medic vehicle dropped to show what Stewart described as a bloodbath, and two of his comrades were in the middle of it all, stumps where their legs had once been. The unit had been on a foot patrol when an Improvised Explosive Device, or IED, had detonated, instantly killing the unit’s Iraqi translator and seriously wounding those around him.

“The medic who was sent out, he just started stuffing body parts into his pockets so we could try to save the limbs,” Stewart recalled.

As violence became more and more frequent in late 2004, Stewart said he and his men hardened, treating every civilian as a terrorist suspect and every movement as a possible explosion.

“That’s a scary place to be, when you throw out your compassion, and then you start doing some really fucked up shit,” he said, “and that’s the point that we were at.”

Felix Zacharias, former Marine and Wichita junior, said it was difficult to forget the reality of death while in action. He said the urban warfare setting put extra stress on soldiers and Marines trying to combat an enemy who hid in plain sight.

“There’s no uniform — they’re mixed in with the people,” Zacharias said.

The day the Iraqi man lost his face at the checkpoint, Stewart said the soldier at the checkpoint’s fear of a vehicle-borne IED overrode his fear of accidentally killing a civilian. Though Stewart later testified on the soldier’s behalf at a military trial, he said it was after the entire ordeal that he thought the war had turned into an occupation, and, initially, U.S. soldiers weren’t prepared to police the streets.

“A lot had to do with the fact that the soldiers’ jobs they were trained for were done,” Stewart said. “As crazy as it sounds, a soldier isn’t trained to provide stability.”

But many soldiers, such as Parker, think stability has become the military’s responsibility.

“We need to at least stay until we said we would, stay until we have a successful transition,” Parker said. “We can’t leave.”

Still, Stewart isn’t alone in his point of view. He works as the president of the KU chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War to increase awareness of American policies being put in place overseas. He kept his thoughts about his role in the war to himself until he heard members of IVAW speak out about their concerns.

“I knew I had to do something, and it made perfect sense,” Stewart said about joining the group.

He said that he wanted potential enlistees to understand what they were signing up for, and neither the national media nor the recruiters could tell them how their lives would change.

— — Edited by Andrew Wiebe