My name is Joy Metzler, and I am an active duty Air Force lieutenant, looking to gain a conscientious objector discharge. This decision is largely due to my horror over the continued U.S. support of the genocide in Gaza in direct violation of many of the same laws and values I was taught about at the Air Force Academy.
I am waiting for my package to be approved, but I have been vocal about my opposition to U.S. policy in Gaza. Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation a year ago started me on my journey, and on the anniversary of his death, I feel the weight of our country’s crimes more heavily than ever.
One of the pages I follow and interact with, About Face Veterans, posted an Instagram post honoring his memory. Aaron Bushnell’s actions were instrumental to my own evolution of thought, and I attribute any good I do to him and God. I wish I could say that seeing him remembered was a salve to my soul, but I found myself bracing for the inevitable comments condemning his actions.
Having struggled with suicide ideations myself, I understand trying to prevent copycats, and I hope that many of the comments come from the right space, but there is little to no acknowledgment that self-immolation is not suicide. On the contrary, Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation happened for a very explicit reason: Aaron refused to be complicit in genocide any longer. “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
Still, the fear remains every time someone tries to remember him, but this isn’t the right way to prevent further self-immolations. The answer is not to suppress or erase what has already happened, but to remove the catalyst! I fully believe that, had the U.S. government put a stop to the continued humanitarian crisis in Palestine, Aaron Bushnell would be alive and well with us today. He made the reason for his protest abundantly clear. Recall that Aaron died yelling “Free Palestine,” so it’s not hard to imagine that if he had seen a free Palestine before he died, he’d still be here.
Now, it is important to note that many people simply can’t empathize with such extreme feelings. I would venture to guess that many people are akin to those in Fahrenheit 451; no, not Guy Montag, but rather his wife and her friends. Staring at a screen while the world burns and violently throwing any mention of the truth away when it threatens to shatter their reality. For the rest of us, what does it feel like to bear witness to human suffering on such a calamitous level? For myself, I would describe the feeling as something similar to moral injury. It is a quiet but swiftly growing anxiety whenever I put on my uniform. It is the feeling of dissonance while I go to work every day after talking with a Gazan who has lost everything. It is the depression that follows me as I pretend that the world is okay, laughing about trivial things, similar to Guy trying to find companionship with his wife while his false reality crumbles. At the intersection of my desire to be a good airman (a credit to those I work with) and my faith – interwoven with my very being! – demanding that I not contribute to a system meant to bring death and destruction lies a simple question: how much more of this can I take?
When I think of Aaron Bushnell’s final message, I wonder if he was feeling similarly.
As I write this, I also imagine many people are already formulating their response as to why self-immolation is bad, and I will cut you off by saying that I agree! I would never encourage someone to self-immolate, nor would I encourage someone to take their own life, but our continued refusal to engage with the reality of what we are doing will only allow the atrocities to continue that people are protesting in the first place. It is hard to look upon a tragedy, oftentimes involving continued, severe human rights violations, that can drive someone to such extreme protest – but we must look. We must feel the pain that our fellow man is feeling, and then we must act.
The lack of empathy permeating our world today greatly disturbs me. Even after Aaron’s death, scores of people are apathetic or, even worse, telling other people that they should do the same. Some people in between say he “wasn’t right in the head,” or otherwise try to steer the conversation away from the very subject of his protest. I wish just as much as the next person that Aaron was still alive with us today to lend his voice to the movement, and I wish he could see what his actions sparked. In lieu of that, the next best thing – perhaps the only thing we can do – is make sure we carry on his message for him.