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R. S. Refugee
Joined: 29 Sep 2004
Location: Shangra La, ROK
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 Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 1:36 pm Post subject: Inside the minds of Marines |
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Inside the minds of Marines
By A. Henry Hempe
Special to The Capital Times
June 3, 2005
Evan Wright's "Generation Kill," a compelling account of United States Marines in action in a difficult war, is more than just an adventure yarn of men at war.
It tells a story of young Marines in Iraq, all struggling to survive and be tough, but nonetheless affected by the horrors the war inflicted on the innocent. Both informative and insightful, the book offers a realistic account of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, as well as a glimpse of the futile attempts by the U.S. to impose order in the conquered country.
http://www.madison.com/tct/books/index.php?ntid=42184&ntpid=0
Last edited by R. S. Refugee on Mon Jun 06, 2005 10:19 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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bignate
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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I think this is the cyclic event of war in our and any time, this report reminds me of a book I read a while back "A Rumour of War" by Philip Caputo - and excellent account of Marines in the Vietnam War. Caputo chronicles over and over how young men are introduced to and made to accept their place as killers, when all (almost all) their instincts fight against it:
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"Some attempts were made to intill in us thos antisocial attributes without which a soldier fighting in th jungle cannot long survive. He has to be stealthy, aggressive, and ruthless, a combination burglar, bankrobber, and Mafia assassin. One of our instructors in these lessons was a beefy sergeant whose thick neck blended smoothly inot shoulders that looked as wide as an M-14 rifleis long. He was always stressing the need to anihilate every enemy soldier who entered the killing zone of an ambush. The first burst of fire, delivered at waist level, was to be followed by a second at ankle level, the object being to finish off whoever had survived the initial volley. To whip us into the vicious mood required for cold blooded slaughter, the sergeant bagan his first lesson like this:
He came into the classroom, let out a spine chilling war cry, and burried a hatchet into one of the wooden walls. With out saying a word, he wrote something on a small blackboard, concealing it with his V-shaped back. he stepped aside, pointing to the writing with one hand and to a marine with the other. "You, what does this say?" he asked.
Marine: "It says 'ambushes are murder,' sergeant."
Sergeant: "Right," shouts "AMBUSHES ARE MURDER," then returns to the blackboard, writes something else, and again asks, "What does that say?"
Marine: "And Murder is fun."
Sergeant: "Right again." Romoves hatchet from wall and brandishes it at the class. "Now, everybody say it, AMBUSHES ARE MURDER, AND MURDER IS FUN!" |
In military terms it is simple, as a soldier you are in the business of killing, and surviving, the essential means of staying alive is in killing - the paradox, though simple enough, is very stressful on anyone who has to live through it and participate. And most of all they learned to hate, because there was no way to know which one of those farmers was the enemy - so it became justifiable to hate them all and this came out in the Rules of engagement for the Marines in Vietnam:
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| "in guerrilla controlled areas, no firing [was to] be directed at unarmed Vietnamese unless they were running. A running Vietnamese was a fair target.... [and] if he's dead and Vietnamese, he's VC" |
But interlaced with the moments of savagry, there comes the realization of their compassion that proves that these men are human - not just killers and the conflict and internal pain that exists within them all. On finding a dead Vietnamese soldier:
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| "A small group of marines gathered and stared at the letter and photographs. I don't know what they felt, but I was filled with conflicting wmotions. What we had found gave to the enemy the humanity I wished to deny him. It was comforting to realize the Viet Cong were flesh and blood instead of the mysterious wraiths I had thought them to be; but this same realization aroused an abiding sense of remorse. These were men we had helped to kill, men whose deaths would afflict other people with irrevocable loss. None of the others said anything, but later back at basecamp, PFC Lockhart expressed what may have been a collective emotion. "They're young men," he told me. "They're just like us lieutenant. It's always the young men who die." |
And he is ofcourse right, it is mainly the young men who die and are changed:
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| "we saw enough to learn those lessons that could not be taught in training camps: what fear fells like and what death looks like, and the smell of death, the experience of killing, of enduring pain, and inflicting it, the loss of friens and the sight of wounds. We learned what war was about, "the cares of it and the forms of it." We began to change, to lose the boyish awkwardness we had brought to Vietnam. We became more professional, leaner and tougher, and a callus began to grow around our hearts, a kind of emotional flak jacket that blunted the blows and stings of pity." |
And finally on the dialectic of war, and each generation's refusal to listen to the warnings of the previous ones, he writes:
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| "So, I guess every genereation si sdoomed to fight its war, to endure the same old experiences, suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own." |
Just an excellent and heartbreaking examination of war and warriors. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 9:21 pm Post subject: |
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[deleted]
Last edited by Gopher on Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:51 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 8:46 am Post subject: |
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I enjoyed reading it. I found it very sympathetic to Marines, and to the men and women who have volunteerd to fight and possibly die. And as the above quote illustrates, it puts blame for both unnecessary civilian deaths and the unwarranted deaths of nearly 1700 American servicement right wher it belongs - with the idiots who make policy.
Not with the front-line soldiers.
ASnd there is resonance with a thread a few months ago - one that referred to a policy-making general in the Corps who had opined that "it's fun to kill some people" - largely because of these words, which I quote from the article in the OP :
Some were troubled enough to approach Navy chaplains with questions about sin and forgiveness. They were reassured that the killing was not a sin if the killers didn't enjoy the killing.
"I'm not saying I care (about the killing)," Wright quotes one confused young Marine as saying, as he attempted to reason with his conscience: "I don't ... but I keep thinking about what the priest said. It's not a sin to kill with a purpose as long as you don't enjoy it. My question is: Is indifference the same as enjoyment?"
It is rather a more deeply thought-out question than any statement I had made in that earlier discussion thread, and it deserves some thought from any of us who are in the mood to think at all.
And I'm grateful to have had the chance to read it, and reflect that people who have to make much more courageous choices than I generally do, also have heart and soul enough to reflect with seriousness on what it all means. |
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R. S. Refugee
Joined: 29 Sep 2004
Location: Shangra La, ROK
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| Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 6:11 pm Post subject: |
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I'm glad to see this thread return from the Mod Forum grave (or I guess purgatory, in this case). I was informed by my favorite mod who has intimate ties to the American military-industrial-political complex (when I asked he or she about it) that it wasn't because of the OP that it was pulled, but because of the inappropriate postings of others. I hadn't been following it closely beyond the posts of bignate and gopher, and I couldn't possibly imagine either of them violating any bounds of propriety that would lead to such drastic mod action. Glad to see that I was right.
Welcome back, thread.    |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 7:29 am Post subject: |
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| R. S. Refugee wrote: |
| I'm glad to see this thread return from the Mod Forum grave |
I plead guilty. In the original version of the post just above yours, I said one or two things that ought really have been done via the pm mode - though even in retrospect I do feel I was provoked, the possibility exists that it was not intentiaonal. Regardless, the comments were not related to the topic in hand, and were unsuitable for a public discussion thread both for that and other reasons.
But after the altercation was settled privately, I did feel it was unfair that my poor judgement - it was 3 AM posting, if I recall - resulted in the death of the entire discussion, and I did recall being honestly moved by one or two things in the OP's article, so I asked the mods to "clean it up" by deleting the offending posts, mostly mine, and allow me to repost those parts of the original (which you see above) that had nothing to do with disagreements between personalities.
The moderators are actually wiser than they sometimes appear - I know it's true because I used to be one, and I am actually just a little bit wise and I'm sure it usually appears that I have no wisdom at all ...
In any case, they lisdened to my entreaties and restored the thread in te manner in which I had asked.
To reiterate from what I posted before, just a while a while ago, the part of the artricle that did bring me to a bit of emotion was the knowledge - something I had long known in my heart - that individuals who are trained to kill with no hesitation nevertheless do meditate on the moral rightness of their actions.
It's summed up in these words, which I will quote just one more time :
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| "It's not a sin to kill with a purpose as long as you don't enjoy it. My question is: Is indifference the same as enjoyment?" |
I've thought so damn much about the human questions posed by the existence of war, and yet this particular question has eluded me. It is significant, though, because the notion of indifference is not relegated only to the soldier, but it is also very central to defining and describing what is and is not a good citizen. Therefore, it is something each of us needs to think about.
A lot. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 8:10 am Post subject: |
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[deleted]
Last edited by Gopher on Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:52 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 6:29 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| You have to really appreciate generals (and bird colonels), esp. in the Marine Corps, to comprehend remarks like these, however. They're meant for troop morale. |
I know about troop morale, but you might not know about the Marine general the discussion topic referred to. He was not talking to soldiers, others Marines. It was in San Diego, and the audience was mostly civilian.
A professional soldier does not take pleasure in destroying life - it's a job and you simply perform a function that is necessary - this kind of thing might be something useful to tell the young recruits in order to psych them up for battle, but it's inexcusable in a man with that many stars on his shoulders who is making policy. At that level, it is borderline psychotic. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 6:51 am Post subject: |
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[deleted]
Last edited by Gopher on Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:52 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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