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Other MTV Street Teamers had already done plenty of stories about the Iraq War. I hadn’t; no particular reason why.

I’m really glad I did. This is part 1 of what will probably be 3.

Christopher Raissi isn’t your typical anti-war protester. In fact, he isn’t particularly anti-war at all; he’s just against this war, in Iraq. Being against the war doesn’t mean he’s a liberal; he’s a libertarian. And while he could have gone to college for free, this suburban Atlanta kid decided after 9/11 to enlist in the United States Marines. He may not think his government is doing its best to faithfully uphold the American way of life our founding fathers envisioned, but he wanted to defend it. The son of an Iranian immigrant, Chris enlisted to protect the only country that has “the American dream” that made his family’s story possible.

After serving his first deployment to the Horn of Africa, Chris pushed his chain of command for an advance deployment to Iraq. He then volunteered for an extended 12 month tour in al Anbar province instead of the normal six month Marine deployment, from December 2004 to December 2005. As a Combat Operations Center watch officer, he coordinated intelligence and logistics on everything from rocket attacks, “casevacs” (casualty evacuations), and deployment of up-armored Humvees. When he returned from Iraq, he re-enlisted and was sent to Recruiters School in San Diego to become a Marine recruiter in Macon, GA.

And that is when things began to fall apart. Along with the rest of the country, Chris began to reexamine the justification for the war and compare the political rhetoric to his own experiences in Iraq. As he became disillusioned with the war itself, he also could not accept the disingenuous tactics that his superiors were recommending he employ as a recruiter. And while he dealt with an increasingly hostile work environment, he was also trying to deal with his own post-combat mental and emotional stresses which, as a Marine, he was expected just to “suck up” and keep inside.

This video is just a brief introduction to Chris and his story. Stay tuned for future videos about life after Iraq, what really saps troop morale, the challenges of recruiting for an unpopular war, and Chris’s ultimate departure from the Corps.