The Galveston County Daily News

TEXAS CITY — Olga Capetillo struggled Tuesday to make sense of her son’s death in Baghdad.

Sgt. Omar Mora, a U.S. citizen for just a few weeks, had struggled to make sense of the war for which he had volunteered.

Mora, who grew up in Texas City, died with six other soldiers Monday in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, Mora’s family said. The accident also killed two detainees, The Associated Press reported.

A military statement made no mention of hostile fire. The military had not released the identities of any of the dead on Tuesday.

Mora, 28, is survived by his 5-year-old daughter, Jordan; his wife, Christa; his mother; a brother; a sister; and his stepfather, Robert Capetillo.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

America’s Son

Olga Capetillo said she and Mora moved from Ecuador to the United States when he was 2 years old. He lived the rest of his life in Texas City and graduated from La Marque High School.

Capetillo said her son was well-liked by friends on a local soccer team. He spent much of his free time working on cars and activities at his church, St. Mary of the Miraculous Medal in Texas City, where he taught children in Sunday school. Capetillo said her son often asked people to mail him candy and other items he could give to Iraqi children.

While attending College of the Mainland, he decided to join the Army. His family said he always wanted to join the military and thought he owed it to his country — before he was even a citizen — to join the war effort.

“My son gave his life for his country because he loves his country, and because this country raised him like he was its own,” Olga Capetillo said.

Witnessing Pain

An infantryman, within three years he earned the rank of sergeant in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. A legal permanent resident in the United States, Mora wanted to join the Army Special Forces, which requires citizenship. He received his citizenship papers a few weeks ago.

November would have marked the end of his 15-month deployment.

The Capetillos last saw their son in April, when he was on leave after a roadside bomb damaged his ears and left one of his friends without an arm.

He eventually redeployed, and in August saw another friend shot in the head, a wound that later killed him, the Capetillos said.

Mora and six other soldiers were then in the process of writing an editorial that later ran in The New York Times. Six of the men were sergeants.

Questioning The War

“To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched,” the group wrote.

They said recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable simply didn’t jibe with realities on the ground. They then went on for paragraphs describing those nuances.

“We are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force,” they said.

The most important front in the counterinsurgency is improving basic social and economic conditions — the front on which the United States has “failed most miserably,” they said.

Robert Capetillo said Mora told his family the editorial had been misunderstood by many who have used it as political ammunition in calling for troop withdrawals.

But Mora and his comrades didn’t call for that. Instead, they said the United States should “increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.”

Olga Capetillo said that by the time Mora submitted the editorial, he had grown increasingly depressed.

“I told him God is going to take care of him and take him home,” she said. “But yesterday is the darkest day for me.”