Slain Soldier Speaks

Stephen Fortunato was killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday, along with two other soldiers. Their vehicle was hit by an IED. On August 30, 2008, he wrote a blog entry, which his mother forwarded to the Globe. Excerpts from the words of a soldier:

To all the pampered and protected Americans who feel it is their duty to inform me that I am not fighting for their freedom, and that I am a pawn in Bush's agenda of greed and oil acquisition: Noted, and fuck you.

I don't care if there are corporations leaching off the war effort to make money, and I don't care if you don't think our freedom within America's borders is actually at stake. I just want to kill those who would harm my family and friends.

Even if this is just a war for profit or to assert America's power, so what? Someone has to be on top and I want it to be us. There's nothing wrong with wishing prosperity for your side.

Our big scary government does way more than it has to to help complete fuck-ups get back on their feet.

Let me remind you of just how inhumane we COULD be in defending ourselves. Let me remind you that we have a warhead that drops multiple bomblets from the stratosphere which upon impact, would turn all the sand in Iraq to glass, and reduce every living thing there to dust. Do we use it? No. Instead we use the most humane weapon ever devised: the American soldier. We send our bravest (and perhaps admittedly craziest) men and women into enemy territory... to root out those whom we are after.

If you find yourself completely disgusted with the way America is being run, and how we handle things on the global stage, you can leave... No one will stop you!

If you insist on staying here and taking advantage of privileges such as free speech and WIC, keep the counter-productive [expletive] to a minimum while the grown ups figure out how to handle this god-awful mess in the Middle East.

"I didn't want [the Army] to have my son," said Fortunato's mother. But it did. What will be taken next?