NotNormativelyHuman 293
members of the film crew, namely that the soldiers coming home had
beenbetrayedbytheircountrythatdidnotknowhowtodealwiththem
and the war they had been sent to fight in. In this context, Bob's
psychological and Luke's physical impairments are emblematic of a
generalsocialmalaise(Lembcke71).
ComingHomehasmanyparallelswiththereallifeofaveteranwho,
like his fictional counterpart, had started out on an idealistic mission to
defend his country. Two days after 9/11, Tomas Young had enlisted in
the Army; he was sent to Iraq and almost immediately after his arrival,
without having fired a single shot, he was ambushed and shots severed
his spinal cord (Body of Warn. pag.) Paralyzed from the chest down,
with a body in almost unbearable pain, Young became an anti-war
activist:"...IwasinjuredinanimproperwarandfeltIneededtospeak
out" (Body of Warn. pag.). Teaming up with other activists such as
Cindy Sheehan, he could be seen giving speeches at anti-war rallies,
using his body as indictment against a misguided and mishandled
military effort. In 2013, Young achieved some notoriety when he wrote
an open letter to former President Bush and Vice-President Cheney
blaming them for his own disablement and that of many others.^126
Young was also the central figure of the 2008 documentaryBody of
War:TheTrueStoryofanAnti-WarHero, which interlaces his personal
fate with the larger political process which led to the pro-war vote in
Congress, among them a vote by Hilary Rodham Clinton In 2014,
shortly after the tenth anniversary of the war authorized by that vote,
Youngpassedawayattheageof34(Scheern.pag.).
CentralforYoung'spublicpresenceasa"posterchildforthosewho
opposed the U.S. role in Iraq" (Basu n. pag.) was his body in a dual
(^126) This letter has been made public: "I write this letter, my last letter, to you,
Mr.BushandMr.Cheney...Iwritethisletterbecause,beforemyowndeath,I
want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans,
alongwithmillionsofmyfellowcitizens,alongwithhundredsofmillionsmore
in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done.
You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war
crimes,ofplunderand,finally,ofmurder,includingthemurderofthousandsof
young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole" (T. Young n.
pag.).