Meet Michael Prysner

Photo: Travis Wilkerson

Michael Prysner joined the U.S. Army when he was 17 years old, between his junior and senior year of high school.

Of his decision to join, Michael writes: “I was compelled to join the military for two distinct factors: the first was rooted in reality, realizing that I could not afford a college education, and my recruiters actively bolstered fears that nothing awaited after high school except economic hardship; the second was rooted in fantasy, believing that the U.S. government stood for freedom, justice and equality, and by serving in the U.S. military I would be a part of a heroic force for good in the world.”

Michael left for basic training in June 2001, and spent six months training at the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Academy, where he was taught to operate a radar system used to call air strikes and artillery barrages on vehicle convoys.

Of this experience, Michael writes: “Throughout the school, our instructors frequently referenced and praised the successful use of this system during the first Gulf War, which was actually the only time it had been used. It was used in the notorious massacre of the fleeing population, where the U.S. military destroyed every vehicle traveling on the highway, leaving behind hundreds of smoldering cars filled with families who were trying to escape the violence. This was the job I was trained to do in the military I had felt so honored to join: to use a computer to kill hundreds of innocent people. Our platoon’s motto was ‘Point, Click, Kill.’”

Michael was assigned to he 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, N.Y., and in March 2003 his company was attached to the 173rd Airborne Brigade to take part in the initial invasion of Iraq.

Of this experience, Michael wrote: “Once in Iraq, there was no computer screen separating me from the suffering civilian population. Because of the Bush administration’s failure to anticipate the resistance of the Iraqi people, there was an inadequate number of soldiers in my unit, and I ending up having to do a myriad of different jobs. I spent 12 months in Iraq, doing everything from prisoner interrogations, to ground surveillance missions, to home raids. It was my firsthad experiences in Iraq that radicalized me. I believed I was going to Iraq to help liberate and better the lives of an oppressed people, but I soon realized that my purpose in Iraq was to be the oppressor, and to clear the way for U.S. corporations with no regard for human life.

 “I separated from the Army in 2005, by which time I had begun to make sense of my experiences in Iraq, and understood that the occupation I was a part of was a crime against humanity. I understood that illegal conquering of Iraq was for profit, carried out by a system that serves a tiny class of superrich whose endless drive for wealth is at the expense of working people in the United States and abroad.

 “I left this Army with a new understanding of the system under which we all live, and the nature of U.S. foreign policy. But, I still had the same drive to fight for freedom, justice and equality as I did when I joined, and I understood that fighting for those things meant fighting against the U.S. government, not on behalf of it.”