It was 6:30 a.m. on Monday morning when I watched Aaron Bushnell pour accelerant over his head and light his military uniform and self on fire outside of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C.
My kids were still sleeping. My wife was upstairs preparing to start another week of teaching first graders. Water for oatmeal and coffee heated on the stove. The sun cast an unseasonably warm light through the window over the sink in our kitchen.
I learned of Aaron’s name via text from my friend Spenser Rapone, who famously opened his dress blues at his West Point graduation to reveal a Che Guevara t-shirt. Spenser then renounced the military and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His military career ended with the protest, his conscience fully intact. Spenser’s text that morning read:
Aaron Bushnell.
Now that’s personal courage.
Truly we are led by the most gutless cowards.
I Googled Aaron’s name. ”Active duty Air Force Member Self-immolates in Front of Israeli Embassy,” one headline declared. I found the video.
As Aaron walked down the street, his cell phone broadcasting through Twitch, I knew I was about to watch something horrifying and gruesome. “You owe it to Aaron to watch,” I told myself, trusting my ability to block out what I was about to see before my kids walked down the stairs that morning.
Writing about my time in the military, my experience as a war resister for the last fifteen years, and the deadly consequences of U.S. imperialism, I’ve grown accustomed to compartmentalizing my feelings around my kids and wife (although I’m sure they could point to many examples that contradict that). I thought I would be OK that morning.
I was struck by how calm Aaron was as he addressed the camera.
He talked about the genocide in Gaza and refusing to be complicit in it. He also spoke of the ruling class normalizing the kind of death he was about to show us.
It was a Sunday afternoon. The sun was bright overhead as he walked to his final destination. It seemed too sunny, too nice of a day, for what I was about to see. Aaron reached the Israeli embassy, placed his phone on the ground at an upward angle, walked up the driveway and stood in front of a black gate that looked like it was made of iron spears. Aaron then doused himself with a liquid stored in a large navy blue water bottle covered in bright stickers. The fuel looked like water. He bent over and had a hard time with the lighter. Yet his........