dear Aaron bushnell

Your death will not be in vain. Your death was an act of selfless compassion so beyond our understanding, it has already been mislabeled things I won’t write again. The truth is that many of us can’t understand the urge to use our bodies to protect others. And in your case, pardon me, cause, you used your body in the name of Palestinian liberation.

To sacrifice one’s life like this is unfathomable unless, of course, you do it in the name of the United States of America. Then you’re a hero, a patriot, and you’re honored with a flag on your casket when the body comes home from whatever land you were sent to ‘liberate.’ Servicemen here are expected to die for their country, but you chose to die for humanity, on your native soil, and protesting against your country in a uniform you were given to protect it — which you did. For what is the difference between dying on a battlefield and choosing your own time and place? You didn’t choose yours lightly. You stood in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. and you said these words: 

“I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit to genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers—it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."

Your sweet and calm way of speaking says nothing of insanity and everything about steadfast determination. The kind expected and admired in the bravest of servicemen.