Responsibility, Life, Death and War

Please don't generalize that all soldiers or all services are the same. And yet after I write that comment, I must be a hypocrite and say that almost every marine I have ever met can be described by your post. The marines are ... different. Those guys live and die by their service, it becomes their life, even more so than their immediate family. Do I base my statements on inter-service rivalry? No, unfortunately I had the displeasure of working alongside 3MEF for two months here in Baghdad.

While there are soldiers that are hating knowing we have a follow-up deployment two years from now, it is a different culture with the marines. They seek and petition to be deployed ahead of schedule, to attach themselves to deploying units or to generally cheat the system to get into the action. Am I saying the Army doesn't do that, too? Sure, there are diehards in the infantry and other combat arms, but not to levels found in the marines.

One thing that has not been successful here is having a marine unit making strides in public relations amongst the public. When it comes to beating down an insurgent uprising, America would be hard pressed to find a unit better than the marines for the task. But despite rooting out evil and liberating towns, the people never take kindly to the task. Whereas the army's less gung-ho approach takes longer, it generally does not incite the public against the coalition nearly as much as the marines.

I can relate somewhat to what they find amusing in those photos. Often the enemy gets himself killed in really stupid ways. In a sadistic way, I'll admit I chuckled a bit when I saw a video of a maimed Syrian missing his lower jaw, the bloody chunks of his upper jaw flapping as he breathed. He died because he was trying to kill us with a grenade ... one that he couldn't throw over a wall and bounced back into him. Sympathy for him? Fifteen minutes later a VBIED rolled in and exploded, killing three children and some women. I wasn't chuckling at the burning stuffed animal beside the HMMWV. Interestingly, though, the people of that neighborhood have been coalition friendly ever since - because we rooted out the Syrians that had them under death threats. I digress, there is some humor to soldiers in how awful our adverseries are at their craft. Wrapping RPG's in electrical tape to penetrate American force fields? Never aiming their weapons because Allah's Will is to guide their bullets?

There is also satisfaction to knowing you have the dead body of some fellow that killed your friend. Imagine having someone you work with closely blown apart by a rocket propelled grenade. A death because he was here and he was here because of an insurgency amongst other reasons. You feel smug standing over the insurgent. You feel glad when they are dead. You feel an even sicker satisfaction knowing the Iraqi Police captured one ... because they are allowed to physically abuse their own at will.

Generally speaking, the "upper crust" of the military is deeply rooted in ethics. Simply by experience, they have the time in service to have learned a hard knocks curriculum. Additionally, while it's not uncommon to find relatively uneducated soldiers, seniors NCOs and officers tend to be very well educated, often with masters degrees. They are not in a social vacuum, they have been in academic environments, social ideals and have life's experiences to build upon. Unfortunately, as you move up in rank, you tend to be removed from line units to fill staff positions at upper echelons where your influence on soldiers is no longer as great.

Joe sees what I described above - the scenario with the Syrians. A town will change that was once rife with IEDs, criminals and small arms attacks along with a population living in fear that if they inform, they'll be murdered. The people see you incarcerate these individuals and the fear begins to subside. They awake in the morning and find he that held a pistol to their head before is just ... gone. Next thing you know, they call in tips to get the rest picked up. The neighborhood cleans up, it's safe for reconstruction and life begins to improve. Joe sees this ... Joe see liberation.

Well, it already does ... I'd say it is no more successful than any corporation.

Does it? Maybe on a day to day basis, no. Outside the walls of our FOB, though? Most definitely. If it comes down to me coming home or some insurgents well-being than it shouldn't take more than one guess to figure out which of us is going to be in the body bag. Remorse? Out there, nah. Afterwards, maybe. Hence where all of America's future brooding veterans are born. And this circles back to your first question about the marines. When it comes down to having a large force of men who love the fight, love their cause and muck through the sh*t, there's almost nowhere better to look. Do you want your sons and daughters led forward by someone that will second guess a life & death situation when it matters most? Yes, soldiers need to be guided - but that is the domain of unit discipline and proper leadership. Leaders need to be versed in rights and wrongs so they can set the right example. But by and large, the war-mongering, bloodlusting, berserker rage barbarian age is well in the past.

Its a tough position to be in. We tell these kids from day one that we want them to be steely eyed killers and that their purpose is to close with and destroy the enemy. "Blood, blood, blood makes the grass grow green." Destruction on the modern battlefield can be pretty damn gruesome, as you've seen from your young Marine's pictures. But thats what he gets paid to do, and clearly, he did it well because he has pictures of dead Iraqis and he came home.

But since they were wee lads, Mom and Dad have been telling them not to kill people, and oh by the way, your average American faints at the sight of blood. And (no slight intended, Dereck) the civilians at home question their moral fiber when in fact, he did his duty and did it well.

In defense of our young marine, you do get numb to it after a while. The first time I saw a guy bleeding out, I was fascinated. After a while, it was just common place. Especially since its non-stop over there - not non-stop carnage, but non-stop work. You don't really get time to think about it while you're there. But give it a week or 3...unless he's a little sick, the young man is going to have some problems. Me? I got in a lot of fights when I first got back, with my friends, with civilians, with people that had really not done anything wrong. Just had to work some aggressive issues out. Other people can't sleep, or get nightmares. If its real bad, you get diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Personally, I say good for him that he adjusted and did his job well. Most of the guys that worked for me handled it differently, but everyone needs a way to respond. You can't cry about killing the enemy, but the situation demands some response. Your psyche demands it, and laughter is probably the most accessible reaction. The defense of this country relies on young men killing bad people, and we can't have them breaking down and crying every time they do their job.

Being a soldier is tough on a person, in every way imaginable. Physically, to be certain, but that is probably the least of it. Being the guy that everyone looks and hard as nails is cool - but it is not easy. And after a few years, it breaks you down.

My brother just got back from working down in Louisiana, coordinating some of the air evac operations. He walked into the FEMA Emergency Operations Center and lo and behold...all the civilians are spinning out of control, panicking, and were entirely combat ineffective. These people could absolutely not deal with the problems - they were overcome by the death and sheer volume of people and supplies that needed to be moved. It seems to me that the only people that can truly handle a crisis (I mean a real crisis, not your stock price going down) are soldiers. Suffice to say, when the chips are down, everybody looks at the Army boys (and really, the ones that know look at the combat arms guys, but thats a different subject.)

Can you imagine for a minute the stress of keeping yourself held together when everyone around you is falling apart? Now, lets mix in some people shooting at you and trying to blow you up, and oh by the way you haven't seen your family in 8 months and Lord knows the last time you had a drink or got laid.

Now I've rambled a bit in trying to explain my perspective, but the bottom line is this. Look at his pictures, say "Man, that looks really rough," thank the good Lord that he was over there doing that and not you, and go on your merry way.

Two notes: First, if at any point someone gets so numb to the carnage that they start mutilating bodies, or does not distinguish enemy casualties from civilian, then the leaders are not doing their job. Clearly, there is a limit to everything, but I think pictures of corpses, even mangled ones, is within reason. Second, I hope I didn't come off as overly aggressive and/or dismissive of your opinion.

After reading the two very excellent posts by Vnut and Roman, I though maybe it would also help to get the perspective of someone who spent a year in the combat zone, doing convoy ops as a hummvee gunner for nearly eight months out of that year, was literally from one end of Iraq to the other, was prepared to kill, yet somehow never had to.

None of the many convoys or cordons I was in were ever attacked, either by IEDs, VBIEDs, or standard ambushes. The closest I came to killing was when I was rear security of a convoy and I saw a group of teenage boys on a nearby corner. One of the boys cocked his arm back to throw something, and I had the safety of my M4 to semi, and a center- mass site picture when I realized it was just a rock. The boy was possibly very lucky that day- if it was somebody else with quicker or slower reflexes, or had been in convoys that were grenaded, the kid would've been dead- over a rock.

Truth is, I was very lucky during my deployment. Some of my unit's convoys did get hit, fortunately no one was seriously hurt. I seemd to have the anti- action mojo. I don't know what the statistics are for seeing enemy action during a convoy, so I don't know if my story is typical or not.

Here's the thing that ties into Dereck's post, and Vnut and Roman's replies- no one knows how they will react to killing. You might have an idea, like I have an idea that waxing that dumb teanage boy over a rock would've been hard to deal with after the fact, or I have an idea that I'd have no remorse for gunning down Zarqowi's followers with my Ma Deuce if they ever had stepped up, but I truly don't know. Maybe I'd just deal with it and drive on, maybe I'd become a basket case, maybe I'd get a taste for it. No one ever knows until the killing starts.

So, as the other two, far more eloquent posts have said, Dereck, don't judge your Marine too harshly. Maybe he deals with death and killing by staring at it in a picture, where it is a little less real, and can no longer hurt him

When you kill people for a living and you\'re surrounded by death and violence, you have to find a way to cope. Coroners tend to have sick senses of humor. It\'s a way to deal.

It's hard to understand. But trust me, you\'ve got to find a way to deal.