Eric East

Eric East was at a bar in Australia on Sept. 11, 2001. He knew then he was going to war. His unit deployed immediately to Afghanistan because they were the closest.
“When I was overseas when Sept. 11 happened, it very much seemed like a very important, very necessary war. But then after I got out I started looking into it a lot more in depth because I wanted to know why we’re fighting over there and why my buddies lost limbs and everything. And after what I found I have to say that both are completely unnecessary wars.”
East said he began questioning the war in Afghanistan soon after he got there. In one incident, the officers gave the pilot orders to shoot an unknown vehicle. The intelligence officers tried to argue against it because it could have been the allies from the Northern Alliance who had white crosses marked on the top of their convoys and requested that the pilot get a closer look, East said.
“The officers in charge said, ‘No, we don’t want to take the risk of putting this pilot in danger’ and wiped out the entire convoy. I still don’t know to this day if they were Taliban or Northern Alliance.”
At the time, East was shut off from outside information, including Internet access. He started investigating the incident and the war as soon as he got out of the military.
“The entire time between getting out of the military and going here to IU, I spent like seven years just devouring all this information on the Internet. I’ve come to the conclusion that the War on Terror is little more than the holy crusades just in disguise.”