Colby Buzzell on Muck Rack

Colby Buzzell

California
As seen in: The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, TIME, New York Daily News, Rolling Stone, SFGate, The Daily Beast, VICE, VICE UK and
O.I.F. Veteran. $TSLA 🚀 📈
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10 Days with the Muslims of Irving, Texas-and the Armed Men Outside of Their Mosque

10 Days with the Muslims of Irving, Texas-and the Armed Men Outside of Their Mosque

Esquire — With armed protesters outside their mosque and freedom of religion and the right to carry crashing together on their doorstep, Lone Star Muslims just want to say howdy. Before somebody gets hurt. Outside the library in Irving, I notice that the clouds up above are getting a bit darker. A storm is gathering. The Christmas tornadoes will soon thrash this area. Off in the distance, there's an enormous brand-new house being built on a vacant lot. A Muslim couple stand in front of it with a man and a lady in a hijab going over blueprints.
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Welcome to Rio - Esquire Classic

Welcome to Rio - Esquire Classic

Esquire — Colby Buzzell's official slogan, "Live Your Passion," which, as it turns out, is also the official slogan of the 2016 Rio Games. Shortly after landing, on your way to baggage claim, a young Brazilian girl hands you a tourist map of Rio de Janeiro. A couple months from now, thousands of tourists from all over the world will be coming here to witness the Summer Olympics. I am here ahead of the game, to give the people back home a sneak preview of what to expect if they travel to Rio this summer. Will you have fun? Will you get robbed?
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What It's Like to Be an Iraq War Veteran on Veterans Day | VICE | United States

What It's Like to Be an Iraq War Veteran on Veterans Day | VICE | United States

Vice — These days I've relocated to a new city. There's a bar right around the corner that I sometimes go to, to pick up where I left off. Corner seat, by myself, beer and a whiskey, staring at the wall in front of me. Not too long ago, a couple patrons there approached me while I was doing my thing, and they asked if I was a veteran. I told them I was, deployed to Iraq from 2003 to 2004.
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How Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Help Veterans Deal with PTSD | VICE | United States

How Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Help Veterans Deal with PTSD | VICE | United States

Vice — Bobby Henline at the Uptown 78 Lounge in San Antonio, Texas, before performing his comedy routine. Henline, 41, is a veteran of four tours to Iraq and sole survivor of an IED blast that killed the other four soldiers in his Humvee in Iraq in 2007. He received burns over 38 percent of his body in the blast. Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos Like the ancient Greek story of Ajax itself, Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today is at times not an easy read. But it should be on all must-read lists and for all the right reasons.
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I Spent the Fourth of July Fighting in Iraq | VICE | United States

I Spent the Fourth of July Fighting in Iraq | VICE | United States

Vice — Firing lumination rounds in Iraq. Photo via United States Forces Iraq Fuck the Fourth of July. This was my attitude back in 2004, back when I was serving in the United States Army over in some country called Iraq, stationed in some city called Mosul. It was month eight of our year-long deployment and I was in no mood to celebrate. It was 110-plus degrees-in the shade-and all I wanted on the fourth was some goddamn air-conditioning. That's it. That's all I wanted. Nothing more, nothing less. The Army had other plans.
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My Life Driving Uber as an Iraq War Veteran with PTSD | VICE | United States

My Life Driving Uber as an Iraq War Veteran with PTSD | VICE | United States

Vice — Stuck on my dashboard where everyone can see is my Combat Infantry Badge. It's a medal given to soldiers "who personally fought in active ground combat... engaged in active ground combat, to close with and destroy the enemy with direct fires." It's supposed to be a conversation starter, a way to bridge the gap between the passengers who are constantly coming in and going out of my car. Almost no one notices it, or they notice it and just don't care. I've picked up countless fares and only two have asked me what it was.
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Keep on rocking in the free world

Keep on rocking in the free world

New York Daily News — Shortly after, I found out that Blickenstaff, just 23, and two other soldiers I knew were the ones in that vehicle. They didn't survive.
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My (Almost) Life as a San Francisco Vibe Coordinator

My (Almost) Life as a San Francisco Vibe Coordinator

The Bold Italic — After a three-year absence, I returned to the Tenderloin a cliché, another down-and-out veteran with no job and nowhere to live. Swords to Plowshares, a local nonprofit, helped me find a studio apartment, but a job proved more elusive. I designed my résumé using whatever software was on my Mac. Thanks to the post-9/11 GI Bill, I was able to attend college after the military, so in the education section I proudly listed my bachelor's degree and the fact that I'm currently enrolled in grad school, pursuing an MFA in creative writing.
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A Beloved Dive Bar Is Closing And Taking A Piece Of SF’s Soul With It

A Beloved Dive Bar Is Closing And Taking A Piece Of SF’s Soul With It

The Bold Italic — I've started looking for a place to move. The other day my landlord posted a notice on my door announcing that my rent is getting jacked up next month. The question is: Los Angeles or Oakland? I'm not sure, but staying here is illogical. Across from my room is another door plastered with eviction notices and Do Not Enter paperwork. And now there's this other news that 21 Club, this fucking second home to me that I love so dearly, is closing too. It reminds me of when I first moved into my luxurious Tenderloin efficiency early last year and decided to celebrate by visiting Frank at 21 Club.
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Colby Buzzell: 'This one time, in Iraq' - Brian Williams' BS

Colby Buzzell: 'This one time, in Iraq' - Brian Williams' BS

New York Daily News — Williams is no fiction writer, and no combat veteran, either. He's a journalist. His job is non-fiction.
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Chris Kyle and the Iraq war are more complex than American Sniper - or criticism of it | Colby Bu...

Chris Kyle and the Iraq war are more complex than American Sniper - or criticism of it | Colby Bu...

The Guardian — Americans love war movies - they always have - and they love their movies far more than they love going to war. I enjoy war movies too but, since serving in Iraq during the war, you would've all but had to point a loaded gun to my head to get me to watch a Hollywood version of the Iraq war. Not because the experience of war was that bad for me - it was - but because I'm deathly afraid the war movie that Hollywood is going to produce will be. But then the movie American Sniper seemingly divided our country far more than the Iraq war ever did.
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How I learned to stop worrying and love bombing the hell out of Isis | Colby Buzzell

How I learned to stop worrying and love bombing the hell out of Isis | Colby Buzzell

The Guardian — Even Iraq war veterans find out what's happening in Iraq on Facebook. A couple months ago, when the terrorists formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) re-invaded Iraq, the group's greatest-hits videos started flooding my feed again. Recreational beheadings, cold-blooded mass executions, Sopranos-esque executions, 2Pac-style drive-by's: the "Isis Gone Wild" YouTube videos are impossibly horrifying, yet somehow impossible not to watch. You can't believe what you're seeing because you saw it coming - because you saw it before - and so you click play anyway. Many of the videos are posted by my disgruntled former platoon mates.
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Iraq War Soldier 10 Years Later: What Was It All For?

Iraq War Soldier 10 Years Later: What Was It All For?

TIME — The Iraq War - what was it good for? Absolutely nothing? That's yet to be seen. As an Operation Iraqi Freedom combat veteran who spent most of his 2003-04 deployment on the ground in Iraq as an infantryman, I think about such things. Especially since I was with a combat unit assigned to win hearts and minds while "punishing the deserving" in Mosul. When reports first started coming out of Iraq that the black-flag-waving ISIS had completely taken over my unit's old stomping grounds, my first thoughts were with the people of Mosul and all those who worked alongside us.
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I remember Mosul, but Iraq 3.0 is what happens when you exit a war early | Colby Buzzell

I remember Mosul, but Iraq 3.0 is what happens when you exit a war early | Colby Buzzell

The Guardian — Only the dead have seen the end of war. -Plato An ominous Facebook message: So what do u think? I asked myself: is this person drunk? Think about what? Minutes passed. My friend answered: Mosul. I have many fond memories of my time there in 2003 and 2004 - getting shot at sometimes while going out on three or four combat operations a day, watching every last vehicle in our platoon get blasted by an IED or RPG (or both) - but the truth is I don't think about Mosul, my alma mater in Iraq. Maybe I should, but I don't.
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Thank You for Being Expendable

Thank You for Being Expendable

The New York Times — YEARS after I first returned from Iraq and started having thoughts and visions of killing myself, I'd call the Department of Veterans Affairs. They always put me on hold. First, an automated message would greet me to let me know there was an unusually long wait because of the large number of incoming calls. Then a recorded message played on a constant loop: "Welcome to the Department of Veterans Affairs ... The V.A. is here to serve you ... If this is a mental health emergency or you are thinking about committing suicide, please hang up and call 911 ...
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A War, Before and After, Part 4

A War, Before and After, Part 4

The New York Times — This is the fourth part of a six-part series. Ten years ago this week, on March 20, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. The war officially ended on Dec. 15, 2011 - eight years, eight months, three weeks and four days later - when the last American forces withdrew. In the days between, hundreds of thousands of lives were altered irrevocably. Home Fires asked 16 veterans who served in Iraq to reflect on how their lives changed on the two dates bracketing the war. Their accounts will be published in Home Fires on consecutive days this week.
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From the Iraq Desert to the Campus Green, Some Things Remain the Same

From the Iraq Desert to the Campus Green, Some Things Remain the Same

The Daily Beast — When I graduated from high school in 1995, I flirted with the idea of enlisting in the military but decided against it. Why would I want to sign up, receive all that training, and end up sitting on a base somewhere just killing time. Instead, I skipped the training and worked a series of nothing jobs. Then 9/11 happened, and I started hearing that the U.S. military was now hiring-and pretty much anyone they could. So I signed up, and after graduating from basic training studied abroad, spending 2003 and 2004 in Iraq, where our battalion commander sent us outside the wire several times a day "to locate, capture, and kill all anti-Iraqi forces."
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In the Shit: Despite Noble Effort, Jobs and Vets Elude Each Other in Detroit

In the Shit: Despite Noble Effort, Jobs and Vets Elude Each Other in Detroit

The Daily Beast — Eight years after returning from Iraq and leaving the U.S. Army, the Detroit Veteran Hiring Fair held last week felt something like coming home. With 25,000 jobs offered and employers hoping to fill many of them on the spot, in part to collect a tax credit for "hiring our heroes," the event at Cobo Center in downtown Detroit was the largest ever put on by the Department of Veterans Affairs and attracted every kind of veteran you can imagine among the 5,000 or 6,000 who came in search of work. Some are in military uniform, others in business attire or dressed more casually, and a few look homeless.
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My Father's War Pictures, and Mine

My Father's War Pictures, and Mine

The Daily Beast — I asked a couple co-workers, like me, Iraq War veterans, what they think of the photographs printed this week by the L.A. Times. You know, the ones with U.S. soldiers posing with the remains of Afghanistan suicide bombers. One of my colleagues shrugs: "Who didn't come back from Iraq with pictures like that?" I chuckled as I thought to myself, he's right. No, neither of us came back home with a scrapbook full of soldiers playing naked Twister with Iraqi prisoners or using Iraqi KIAs as human urinals.
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Don't throw us an Iraq victory parade

Don't throw us an Iraq victory parade

Washington Post — The Iraq war is over. Should we throw a parade? After all, the Super Bowl champion New York Giants got one this past week, complete with 30 tons of confetti falling from the Manhattan sky. The event made many wonder whether a similar celebration should be held in honor of our soldiers who served in Iraq. Some veterans groups started asking, hey, wait a minute, where's our confetti? But the top brass smacked the idea down: "We simply don't think a national-level parade is appropriate while we continue to have America's sons and daughters in harm's way," said a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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Down & Out in Fresno and San Francisco

Down & Out in Fresno and San Francisco

Esquire — From the ten-dollar-a-month tent by the tracks to the residence hotels of the Tenderloin, life at the bottom is new for some people, more of a permanent condition for others. And it's not all bad. A word to the wise: no pictures. On the edge of downtown Fresno, California, seven in the evening. The guy tells me that he is the spokesperson for this tent city, as well as a Pisces. He's sticking his chest out and says, "I kind of run shit here." And he tells me I don't have permission to be here.
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The Army Wants You...Again! (Yes, Really.)

The Army Wants You...Again! (Yes, Really.)

Esquire — Three years out of the army, diagnosed with PTSD, I recently got a nice letter from the pentagon saying they'd like me back in Iraq, pronto. They didn't even mind that I was a little sick. And I'm not the only one. Originally published in the September 2008 issue. Imagine that you graduated from college, and a couple years afterward your alma mater contacts you and says, Sorry, you didn't graduate from college. In fact, you have five weeks to drop everything that you're doing - quit your job, get out of your lease, put all your stuff in storage, cancel your Netflix, etc.
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Return to Sender - Iraq Veteran Gets the Call Again

Return to Sender - Iraq Veteran Gets the Call Again

SFGate — When I voluntarily enlisted in the Army, I remember asking my recruiter about the fine print on the contract about being called back up to active duty once my enlistment was completed. On way out of my building two weeks ago, I checked my mailbox and found a letter from the Department of the Army with "Important Document" printed in all caps on the middle. Rich, connected people will always find a way to evade mandatory service, but what about the rest of America? The middle class - people with good jobs and nice lives - would perhaps riot if the government even suggested that it expected from them what the Army expects from veterans.
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Colby Buzzell's State of the Union 2008

Colby Buzzell's State of the Union 2008

Esquire — The president will be giving his last big assessment of our country later this month. He's a busy man, not able to leave the White House or his ranch much. So we decided to send our man on a little drive, pay the union a visit, and offer him some help. While drinking beers in my friend Gabe's backyard, he tells me something I already know -- but haven't been told yet -- which is not that the state of the union is fucked, but that I'm fucked.
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