The concept of the suicide bomber is one that I have both seen in person, and been completely baffled by it as a tactic in war. It’s a tactic that I saw first-hand a number of times. The first thing that struck me was wow, how incredibly pissed off someone must be that they are willing to strap a bomb to their chest and blow themselves into a million pieces just to attempt to maybe kill or injure their enemies? That’s one of the complicating factors with the situation in Iraq and Syria. We just simply can’t comprehend the level of blind hatred those people have for us simply by sharing the same earth and refusing to be subservient to them.

We saw a number of different types of suicide bombs. Some of them got pretty close to us but to my knowledge no Americans were killed by one. The closest I was to a person wearing a suicide vest was about a block away and it was shocking, but unless you were the schmuck wearing it, it was pretty harmless. We saw it detonate as he was trying to get inside of an Iraqi Police station; instead he ended up as a fresh coat of paint on the outside wall of the base. It was just one of those things that made you stop and think for a moment, and they say, “Eww, watch where you step now, or, don’t lean up against that wall for a while.” Suicide bombers were always something that we had to be aware of, and we were as much as a person can be. I remember when we were briefed about being watchful for them they would tell us, be vigilant in looking for people who look nervous, or sedated, or pale, or sweaty. That’s not really an easy thing to spot for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s 110 degrees so everyone was sweaty, secondly, I have no idea what a pale Arab man looks like, and thirdly, when facing a 25 ton armored vehicle filled with a dozen heavily armed soldiers, everyone looked a little nervous and sedated. Hell, I probably met all of those criteria most of the time.

The other form of suicide bomber that we dealt with was the more effective car bomb. Those things were nasty because you could pack a LOT more explosives into a car than you could on a 5’8” beanpole of a guy. We were certainly much more vigilant when it came to car bombs since they could potentially level an entire city block, and because they were in cars, they could sneak up on you in a real hurry. This is part of the reason of the unwritten and understood rule that if you see Americans nearby, you stop your car and you get out until we pass you by. But this didn’t always happen, and since I wasn’t ever in a mood to take a chance on it being a false alarm, cars that got too close were given a stern warning with a burst of my machine gun into their engine block. If this didn’t work, the next machine gun burst found a softer target inside the car that would most certainly stop the car where it was.

Unfortunately, this happened from time to time and turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, or simply a person in a car that didn’t understand that what they were doing was wrong, but paid a dear price for their mistake. It was always unfortunate when something like that happened because when an innocent person dies it is a sad situation regardless of whether I knew them or not. But the one thing I know about myself and my actions is that I always followed our rules of engagement. I exhausted all other options including verbal and visual commands, warning shots, and only took the last step when those failed and it seemed evident that the driver had intent to blow us up. How I deal with that is knowing that I did the right thing in that situation. I fired my weapon only when I determined there was imminent danger to my friends, the innocent locals in the area, and myself. It’s not necessarily something I am proud or happy about, but I know I acted in accordance with our rules of engagement and did the right things at the right times.