We were celebrating. Having a great time, laughing and dancing. Then the night ended and it was time to go home. The freeway was practically empty. One car passed maybe every five minutes. Most of Florida had already gone to bed, but there were still a handful of youngsters enjoying their late night freedom. Unfortunately, for some reckless free spirits decided to take full advantage of their freedom, but pleasure comes at a high price. Traffic was stopped. Almost as fast as we could blink there were 10, 20, 30 cars slowed in front of us. Red lights illuminated the road. Then as we rounded the highway the red lights grew brighter. Then blue lights came. Then another set of red and blue. Red and blue. Blue and red. The two colors flashed and beamed faster and brighter as we got closer. We were forced to merge into the right lane by a snake of orange cones and fire red flares. Our heads turned left. A small grey car balanced like a see-saw on the wall separating the eight lanes of freeway, belly up. We could only imagine the mangled positions the bodies were thrown into after flipping over and landing so unnaturally. “They are dead”. We all thought it and we all knew it. As we drove away we looked back to see three policemen standing, hands on their hips, wondering what they could do now. This was an accident so severe that nearly 25 police cars and maybe 3 ambulance were called to the scene.

The next day, we found out that the driver who passed in the accident was Miguel Angel Tabora, one of Aileen Fortan’s best friends. Aileen sat in the back seat next to me. She had no idea when she stared at the accident that she was in fact staring at her friend, buried underneath thousands of pounds of twisted metal. It’s sad to find out that someone close to you has died. Just the other day you were talking about them or thinking, “I wonder what he is doing right now”. Then they are gone. On the way back to Ojai, I heard of another accident that took three other lives. Then at school the next day, another accident; this one involving motorcycles. How is it that so many people die in such a short amount of time? Every 13 minutes. That’s how often someone dies in a car accident. There’s 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day. Calculate that and tell me, will you be next?

Rolling Stone Magazine is the kind of reading that gets me excited about news. I love discovering new types of music and reading all the hilariously uncensored articles. But, recently in the latest issue a new, unsettling story was brought to my attention. I wish it had been censored.

Turns out that fighting for your country and what you believe in is not so glamorous after all. We have all this propaganda out there advertising how special it is to go to Iraq or Afghanistan and defend our precious America. Here’s my problem: while I am proud to live in a country where I am essentially free to do whatever I want and I can be free to be a woman who is not ashamed of my gender, I am ashamed of is this idiotic brain-wash belief that as Americans, we are superior to all races and all nations, meaning that we are allowed to take matters into our own hands and “lay down the law”.

Not okay!

Pictures were just released of a group of American soldiers who decided that the “American way” of fighting a war wasn’t eliminating the enemy and saving innocents, but killing and decimating any and all foreign creatures, even children, who got in their way. They depicted morbid scenes; dead bodies, a severed head, and a smiling platoon-member posing while lifting the lifeless face of an unidentified corpse.

“They were greeted by…destitute Afghan farmers living without electricity or running water; bearded men with poor teeth in tattered traditional clothes; young kids eager for candy and money.” (Mark Boal, Rolling Stone Magazine)

They didn’t care. They mutilated bodies of young men, unarmed and unaware of what they did wrong. Families who wanted liberation instead got bullets. In the article it describes how one of their victims was dragged across the desert from the back of one of their vehicles. There was even talk of how they planned to lure in children with candy and kill them as they ran in to collect it. It’s sickening.

It didn’t matter who the victims were. It didn’t matter how innocent they were or even if they looked to these men for protection. These “soldiers” killed everyone and they liked it.

The worst part about this story is obviously the lives that were taken long before their time, but it is also the fact that the people that took those lives are the very people that this entire country has trusted to take on the responsibility of keeping us safe. These men are not soldiers. They are not heroes. They are not worthy of being labelled as “Americans” because that is not what America stands for. We stand for freedom. These men are murders.