SZ:
Of the 13 U.S. military personnel killed in the Kabul airport blast, 10 were based at Camp Pendleton.
And at least five had roots in California.
Here is what we know about the local service members:
…
Nikoui, 20, graduated from Norco High School in 2019 and served in the Junior ROTC, according to a statement by the city. He is survived by his parents and siblings.
Hours before he died, he sent videos to his family showing himself interacting with children in Afghanistan.
In one of the clips, he asked a young boy to say hello.
“Want to take a video together, buddy?” Nikoui said, leaning in to take a video of himself with the boy. “All right, we’re heroes now, man.”
Paul Arreola, a close family friend, told the Associated Press the videos show “the heart of this young man, the love he has.”
“The family is just heartbroken,” he said. Arreola described Nikoui as an “amazing young man” full of promise who always wanted to be a Marine and set out to achieve his goal.
“He loved this country and everything we stand for. It’s just so hard to know that we’ve lost him,” he said, crying.
US media does not mention that the dead US soldiers are primarily from lower economic classes. „Everything we stand for“ in the US includes 17-year-old students „serving“ the country by marching about in US military uniforms while still in high school. American soldiers are „heroes“ by virtue of appearing in front of cameras. Soldiers are more heroic yet when they are dead: dead soldiers are uniformly heroes. Not a single dead soldier was just yesterday a young person who had donned a uniform in order to receive money for college, now killed in a country whose language, history, culture they were unfamiliar with.
