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Christopher Raissi isn’t your typical anti-war protester.  In fact, he isn’t particularly anti-war at all; he’s just against this

war, in Iraq. Being against the war doesn’t mean he’s a liberal; he’s a

libertarian. And while he could have gone to college for free, this

suburban Atlanta kid decided after 9/11 to enlist in the United States

Marines. He may not think his government is doing its best to

faithfully uphold the American way of life our founding fathers

envisioned, but he wanted to defend it. The son of an Iranian

immigrant, Chris enlisted to protect the only country that has “the

American dream” that made his family’s story possible.

After serving his first deployment to the Horn of Africa, Chris

pushed his chain of command for an advance deployment to Iraq. He then

volunteered for an extended 12 month tour in al Anbar province instead

of the normal six month Marine deployment, from December 2004 to

December 2005. As a Combat Operations Center watch officer, he

coordinated intelligence and logistics on everything from rocket

attacks, “casevacs” (casualty evacuations), and deployment of

up-armored Humvees. When he returned from Iraq, he re-enlisted and was

sent to Recruiters School in San Diego to become a Marine recruiter in

Macon, GA.

And that is when things began to fall apart. Along with the rest of

the country, Chris began to reexamine the justification for the war and

compare the political rhetoric to his own experiences in Iraq. As he

became disillusioned with the war itself, he also could not accept the

disingenuous tactics that his superiors were recommending he employ as

a recruiter. And while he dealt with an increasingly hostile work

environment, he was also trying to deal with his own post-combat mental

and emotional stresses which, as a Marine, he was expected just to

“suck up” and keep inside.