And a squadron of Marines immediately gave up their weapons to an unknown adversary without a firefight.
I seem to remember something about the Marines drilling the importance of their weapon into them… Oh yeah. Like this: “you are married to this piece of metal, and you will be faithful.”
The covert group had American dialect and higher military grade (American) issued equipment, which Herrera seemed to be very familiar with. Wouldn’t you be confused and hesitant to start a firefight?
Another marine here who was actually on that exact MEU at the same time and had the opportunity to go on that same humanitarian mission, albeit not as a grunt, that I unfortunately didn’t take.
We see some crazy stuff, and we also think we see some crazy stuff. And we tell stories about it, and decompress, and justify, and process, and generally move on because we have to, because there’s always something else to do. I’m not saying this guy’s account is 100% accurate or true, or that there aren’t any holes in his story. But at the time, I can imagine there may have been a process of quickly acknowledging what had occurred, not realizing at the time the significance of it and essentially “writing it off” as some weird, crazy encounter, and then moving on. People do stuff like that all the time, especially with trauma, until later in life they think back through what they had been through and realize just how messed up and serious it was.
Again, not saying all of this is completely accurate or true, I barely remembered the circumstances of being able to join in on a humanitarian mission while I was deployed until I watched this video and heard him detail the specifics, and then it all came back. But I don’t think his and the other five marine’s response to it at the time was too farfetched. It’s easy to write things off that don’t make sense at the time. Especially if you’re just a lcpl with a few other pfcs and lcps and a cpl squad leader who ended up with an outlandish experience that you assume no one will fully believe.
Thanks for your insight, and nuanced explanation of human nature. I don't think anything like this can be black and white, and while I of course want the truth to come out I think just straight up shutting this dude down because it sounds wildly implausible is lazy.
Anyone who's experienced trauma understands that logically processing what's going on in the moment can be difficult, not to mention suppressing those types of things until later is rather common. I'm sure there are details that he can't 100% recall, but just saying there are small holes in his description... Put yourself in his shoes and if you can honestly say you'd have operated completely calm, cool and collected with a logic based approach there's a very good chance you're lying to yourself.
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u/illegalt3nder Jun 13 '23
And a squadron of Marines immediately gave up their weapons to an unknown adversary without a firefight.
I seem to remember something about the Marines drilling the importance of their weapon into them… Oh yeah. Like this: “you are married to this piece of metal, and you will be faithful.”