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“If you're close enough to need this bulletproof vest, then we've already lost the war.” That admonition was issued by an American Army ser geant to his squad members, a TV cameraman and me as we stood in the Saudi Arabian desert. We were all looking like cupcakes inside thick body armor. It was early 1991 and the first Gulf War was about to start. “If you're close enough to need this bulletproof vest, then we've already lost the war.” Almost 20 years later in anistan, those very same words could be considered a reality check after the unnec essary battle death of 31-year old Pfc. Gunnar Hotchkin, a Naperville soldier, husband and father. Pfc. Hotchkin and the other members of the 18th Airborne Corps’ 161st Engineer Bat talion, 20th Engineer Brigade were all close enough to the handiwork of enemy insur gents to need vests, rifles and sidearms. For tens of thousands of American soldiers and Marines on the ground in Afghanistan right now, that is the story of the longest-run ning war in US history. Who could have imag ined such a scenario back in ‘91, a decade before the Sept. 11 attacks? Then, conflicts were still straight up territorial and much simpler. In January of '91, an enor mous coalition of military forces gathered to soon begin an attack on Kuwait, aimed at dislodging Iraq and Saddam Hussein who had invaded months earlier. “Don’t worry,” the sergeant repeated to me and his fire teams. “If you're close enough to need this bulletproof vest, then we've already lost the war.” What he meant was this: The imminent battle would be won by military toys and tech nology intended to keep death at a distance. If there was close-in fighting with pistols and rifles where you could see the whites of their eyes, then we would have lost the advantage and the war. In 2010 Afghanistan, Pfc. Hotchkin’s death shows that we are still seeing the whites of the enemy’s eyes while war ending, high-tech attack tools gather dust in defense depart ment garages. Hotchkin and a buddy, Spec. Joseph D. Johnson of Flint, Mich., were doing some of the most dangerous, hands on work any soldier can do on a battlefield, looking for booby traps. Their unit was patrolling in Isa Khan in the Kunduz prov ince. They were looking for homemade bombs planted along the road so that Amer ican convoys could proceed safely. It wasn’t the kind of job that Hotchkin planned to do in his 30s to support wife Erin and their children, sons Tristan, 4, and Ethan, 7, and daugh ter Taylor, 10. He joined up in March 2009 when the home building company where he was a foreman went under. The '97 graduate of Hins dale Central High School cer tainly never considered that he would someday be threat ened by a man named Mullah Abdul Razaq. But it was Razaq, a Taliban field commander, who was behind the roadside bomb attack that killed Hotchkin and Johnson on June 16, according to US. intelligence reports. Razaq was well known to US. officials. Reports indicate they had arrested him in late 2001 but gave him immunity and let him go after he prom ised to behave and tamp down any Taliban resurgence. That didn’t go too well. So, three days after the deadly roadside bomb attack that ended Pfc. Hotchkin’s life, an Afghan-U.S. secu rity force hunted down Razaq and killed him. Razaq and numerous insurgent soldiers were taken out during a raid of their bomb-making com pound, battlefield command ers report. Too late for Hotchkin and family. A Hinsdale funeral was already in the works. According to one dispatch, villagers told American sol diers that Razaq had been using nearby mosques as safe havens for insurgents and weapons storage because they knew that international secu rity forces were not allowed to enter mosques. So, not only is the U.S. infan try still fighting close-in battles nine years after the war began, they also have one hand tied behind their back because the enemy is shacked up in build ings that have been made politically off-limits. In an interview with an Islamic website last February, Razaq even boasted about his “hit and run” war skills. “We have furnished all pub lic and private roads to Marja with timed mines,” Razaq said. “For the sake of the local civilians, we have appointed Mujahedeen to watch these roads. In order to target mov ing and mobile targets, we have distributed heavy and long-range weapons.” If the roadside bombs built in untouchable mosques don’t kill enough Americans, Mullah Razak said that he also estab lished “martyrdom-seeking squads” to attack “possible enemy assembly areas.” This would presumably include sui cide attacks on U.S. forward operating bases. Gunnar Hotchkin’s death, sadly no different from the hundreds of other fatal road side bomb attacks, does raise some angry questions: + How many other Razaqs are out there, once in our grasp, trusted and let go? ¢ Why doesn’t the U.S. start bombing mosques if they are being used as armories? When will Americans demand that the Pentagon use big-gun, high-tech tools paid for by billions in taxpayer money over the past decade? That is the least that can be done for Gunnar Hotchkin's children. ¢ Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ ChuckGoudie Chuck Goudie
Newspaper Details
Arlington Heights Daily Herald Suburban Chicago
Arlington Heights, Illinois, US
Mon, Jun 28, 2010
Page 83
Full Page
Clipped by
Christine H.
USA 16 Jun 2026
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