Sgt. Martin Smith: 'Bad apples from a rotten tree: Military training and
atrocities'

Sgt. Martin Smith, USMC (Ret.), CounterPunch

The mounting revelations of war crimes in Iraq have ripped the mask of
democracy and nation-building off of a fatigued and wearied Uncle Sam,
revealing the true face of U.S. imperialism. At least thirty U.S. servicemen
are being prosecuted or are under investigation for the murder of Iraqi
civilians. Twenty-one year old Steven Green, who served in the 502nd
Infantry Regiment, was charged with the gang rape and murder of a
fourteen-year old Iraqi girl in Al-Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

The accused, with the assistance of five other soldiers, allegedly
premeditated the attack and carried it out in broad daylight. After a
drinking bout, the soldiers changed out of their uniforms and Green covered
his face with a brown skivvy undershirt to avoid detection as they entered
the woman's house to commit the crime. After the sexual assault, they
murdered her and poured a flammable liquid over her body to destroy the
evidence. Afterwards, Green shot the victim's parents and sister in the
head, execution-style. The soldiers made a pact to never discuss the
incident.

Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg of the U.S. occupation's horror show
in Iraq. Out of revenge for the death of a fellow Marine, who had died from
a roadside bomb last November, members of Kilo Co, 3rd BN, 1st Marine
Regiment are accused of killing twenty-four unarmed civilians in Haditha.
Iraqis claim that Marines gunned down unarmed teenagers in the streets and
then stormed through homes, killing residents, including babies and the
elderly, in what can only be described as a blood bath. Likewise, in March
in the town of Ishaqi, witnesses claim that eleven civilians, including
children under the age of five and a seventy-five year old woman, were
forced into a corner of a room with hands bound and then brutally shot by
U.S. troops.

Explaining how U.S. soldiers could be capable of such ghastly deeds has led
to blatant distortions and false claims by the media punditocracy. The Fox
News and Limbaughesque loudmouths were quick to blame the anti-war
movement's criticisms of the conduct of the war as a scheme to demoralize
America's "will to win" and a ploy aimed to bolster the propaganda efforts
of "al Qaeda operatives." Some in the blogosphere even absolved U.S. war
crimes as a just response to an insurgency which has utilized beheadings,
kidnappings, and roadside bombs--even though the targeting of civilians is
in contravention of international humanitarian law or let alone the fact
that the Iraqi resistance is born out of the very presence of U.S. troops as
an occupying force.

Liberal analyses rely on two versions of the "bad apple" hypothesis that are
equally inept. On the one hand, it is claimed that the war crimes are the
result of a renegade president who flaunts international law. According to
such a view, the impeachment of Bush would be a step forward in remapping
what is merely a stray path on which the neo-con Republicans have
circuitously navigated U.S. democracy. On the other, many argue that such
incidents are the result of a few deranged individuals and that Steven
Green's discharge with a "personality disorder" is proof that his actions
represent an isolated incident by an unstable individual. The former
argument buys into the liberal myth that the U.S. military is somehow
capable of humanitarian interventions-if only Al Gore or John Kerry were
president, or so they say. Such an assessment fails to acknowledge that U.S.
imperialism has never been humanitarian nor has it been free of blatant war
crimes, as the history of military intervention under Clinton in Kosovo or
Somalia will attest. The latter is merely another version of the "support
our troops" sloganeering which holds that the U.S. military, as a whole,
represents the lofty ideals of honor, courage and commitment. While many
have loved ones or relatives in service; or may have served in the military
themselves, there can be no denial that the military is a tool of big
business--and comes at a cost to human life that is, as they say,
"priceless." In describing the interventions that he participated in during
the early decades of the 20th century--and the corporate interests he
served--U.S. Marine Gen. Smedley Butler said: "I spent most of my time being
a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the
Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

Some of the Bushies and the Pentagon war planners attempt to camouflage the
mounting war crimes and the staggering count of Iraqi dead by painting a
rosy picture of how troops are giving candy to Iraqi children or rebuilding
schools and hospitals in Afghanistan-even though the infrastructures of
these countries were destroyed by U.S. bombs and firepower in the first
place. Yet despite the deceptions and manipulations, the realities of the
war are coming home. With almost 2,600 U.S. troops now dead and thousands
more maimed and crippled, one thing is for certain. In this "dirty war,"
troops cannot tell friend from foe, leading to war crimes against a civilian
population. It is also certain that, with our government promoting a
campaign of lies and deception to justify its illegal actions (with the
complicity of both parties in Washington), and with U.S. troops fighting to
support a regime that lacks popular support and legitimacy, the war in Iraq
will increasingly resemble another immoral and unjust war from a not so
distant past.

The atrocities of Al-Mahmudiyah, Haditha, and Ishaqi resemble the war crimes
committed by U.S. troops in the American War, the Vietnamese name for the
conflict known in this country as the war in Vietnam. On March 16, 1968,
members of Charlie Company murdered 347 unarmed men, women, and children in
the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. Lt. William "Rusty" Calley became infamous
as details emerged of how he herded some 100 Vietnamese into a ditch and
machine-gunned them to death. When he saw a baby crawling away from the
dead, he grapped the child by the leg and threw it back in the pit and
opened fire. Vietnam is now infamous in the public memory as the "bad war,"
largely because a vocal anti-war movement opened a public space that allowed
the exposure of war crimes, such as My Lai. The Winter Soldier
Investigation, held in Detroit in 1971 by the Vietnam Veterans Against the
War, included the testimony of over one hundred veterans who testified about
war crimes they had either witnessed or committed, including rape and
torture.

Yet the comparisons to Vietnam extend beyond the massacre at My Lai. In
fact, the dehumanization of the enemy and the callous disregard for human
life exhibited in both Vietnam and Iraq travels in multiple directions.
Atrocities were not only committed "in country" to Vietnam but were also
exported to the U.S. from overseas. Recently, the finally released report by
a special prosecutor on systematic police torture exposed what African
American victims long knew, that Chicago police detectives during the
seventies and eighties tortured nearly two hundred African Americans to gain
coerced confessions. John Burge, the Joseph Goebbels of Chicago, practiced
torture techniques on African Americans in the west side of Chicago for more
than ten years and is now retired in Florida where he receives his full
pension. He was also a Vietnam Veteran who served in the Ninth Military
Police Company. Burge's instruments of torture included mock executions with
pistols, a cow prod targeting the victim's genitals, and a black box that
generated an electric shock when a crank was turned. In fact, this black box
technique was the same device utilized by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, a field
telephone that was jimmied into a torture method known by soldiers as "the
Bell telephone hour." It is likely that Burge first honed his skills as
master-torturer in the fields of Vietnam.

The barbaric acts committed by Chicago's "finest" are reminiscent of the
same incidents that took place at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. torture chamber in
Iraq, where at least twenty-seven military intelligence officers and
numerous military contractors humiliated detainees. According to the
military's own investigation of the abuse, there were at least forty-four
accounts of abuse which included sodomizing of detainees, stripping them
naked and leading them around on leashes, and attaching electrical probes to
their genitals. In one case, military personnel attempted to force two
teenage detainees to defecate by terrorizing them with aggressive and
snarling dogs.

Thus, given the massive scale of abuse committed by the U.S. from Vietnam to
the Middle East and even within the criminal injustice system; and realizing
the similarities between the inhumane conduct of the Steven Greens, the Lt.
Calleys, and the Jon Burges-all military veterans, it is far time that we
look far beyond the "bad apple" thesis. Because rather than a few bad
apples, it is clear that the contents of the entire wretched barrel are, in
fact, rotten. If the military is capable of producing "personalities" that
kill babies, rape women, and torture the innocent, then what is responsible
for the degradation and dissolution of these military personnel? How and why
do U.S. soldiers lose their humanity? A closer examination of military
recruit training may shed some light on these questions.

With the recent allegations of U.S. war crimes, many are criticizing the
standards for recruitment and training. Some are pointing to the fact that
in 2005 the Pentagon increased the number of admitted Category 4 enlistees,
recruits with low test scores, and is currently giving more waivers to those
with criminal backgrounds and drug abuse histories. Such adjustments are a
necessary response by the U.S. Army, which consistently failed to meet
recruiting goals due, in part, to the counter-recruitment efforts by
segments of the anti-war movement. Others fault basic training for the
increase in war crimes, claiming the military is in need of improved ethics
training. If only the military instilled proper values and respect for the
Geneva Convention, it is argued, then troops would behave with more
compassion, a sort of "occupation with a human face," so to speak.

Meanwhile, the Department of Defense boasts that is has modified recruit
training to teach the essentials of fighting in Iraq and the principals of
urban warfare. Yet returning troops report that none of their training
prepared them for what they experienced in Iraq. "You can train up all you
want, but you're not going to be prepared until you get here and mingle with
the culture," explained Spc. Travis Gillette, an Army infantryman who served
in Iraq.

Gillette's advice reveals the contradiction of U.S. occupation. Indeed,
learning about Iraqi culture and its people might, on the one hand, improve
relations between U.S. soldiers and the civilian population. Yet on the
other, the danger is that, as a result, soldiers may sympathize with the
Iraqi people and turn against U.S. war aims and its justifications. In fact,
keeping a greater distance between troops and the civilian population is one
of the lessons the military learned from the Vietnam War, a war in which
large numbers of troops turned against the war and discovered that the real
enemy was the military itself, particularly from 1968 to 1973.

But rather than blaming the Pentagon for the loosening of recruitment
standards and instead of boot camp needing an overhaul that would require
more lessons in core values, the overall design and purpose of recruit
training should be truthfully acknowledged. In fact, boot camp continues and
has long served the needs of U.S. imperialism all too well. Despite some
minor reforms during the seventies, the goals of recruit training have
changed very little since the Vietnam War. In order for the military to
avoid feelings of solidarity between their soldiers and the "enemy," it has
developed a tried and true method of conditioning enlistees to kill
efficiently and also, and most importantly for success, to dehumanize an
adversary. As the war whoop jingo printed on t-shirts and flags, and
attributed to the Green Berets in Vietnam, disgustingly puts it: "Kill 'em
all. Let God sort them out."

The Department of Defense structures basic training with the goal of molding
a singular and uniform killing machine. The notion of manufacturing
conformity was expressed openly in a 1968 U.S. Army publication for new
recruits about basic training, utilizing cartoon illustrations. On the cover
of the brochure is a motley crew of all-white individuals who represent a
range of stereotypes, including a cigarette smoking cowboy, a guitar
strapped and barefoot hippie, a beefy jock in a "letter sweater," and, of
course, the geek with glasses carrying a bulky briefcase. However, by the
end of the pamphlet, the image of the drill sergeant is presented as the
figure to which all recruits should aspire. Gone are the civilian markers of
individuality, replaced instead by the trim, piercing dark eyed, chiseled
facial boned, short-haired, and, again, white figure which the military
trains one to become.

The brochure explains ten learning objectives of basic training with humor
and cartoons. Lessons include "learning how to shoot and care for your rifle
or other weapons," "performing guard duty," and "getting in good physical
condition." However, one lesson, in particular, reveals a not so subtle
message about the projection of military conformity. Lesson nine is
"learning how to conceal yourself and your equipment." The picture is of a
recruit hiding behind a tree as he spies on three scantily dressed white
women as they frolic and splash in a pond. How three sprightly and smiling
civilian women managed to find a pond in the middle of basic training for
their merriment is a question the military must assume the average recruit
would not ask. Yet, the real purpose of the cartoon was to assert that one's
newfound military identity is to be based upon the affirmation of
heterosexuality. The cartoon was a not so subtle warning that real military
recruits long for and desire white women.

Lesson nine also reveals a more disturbing current within the military. Not
only is the smirking recruit hiding behind a tree, but he is also, as the
brochure explains, "concealing his equipment." One wonders what the sly grin
on the face of the recruit might also represent. Thus, not only was the
cartoon about affirming heterosexuality but it was also about confirming a
soldier's right to violate the privacy and space of women. Underneath the
surface of the cartoon is an implied predatory violence.

While the military projected the experience of basic training with
light-mannered humor in the brochure, the actual experience of basic for
many recruits is far from amusing. Taking away one's individuality during
training is based on a planned and structured form of cruelty. As Terry
Mullen, who served in the Americal Division infantry in Vietnam, explains,
"I remember going into basic and the first thing that hits you is that they
take away from you any individuality you had and put you in a mass. . .
.they tell you in this situation that you are the legs and they are the
head. You don't think. You don't do anything but act. From there on it goes.
You are in it."

Through basic training, the military molds troops into fighting members of
the Armed Forces. Key to the recruit training is the inculcation of
discipline. As the 1967 Guidebook for Marines, the bible of rules and
regulations for enlisted personnel, made clear, "when a Marine learns to be
a disciplined Marine, he has learned a sense of obligation to himself and to
his comrades, to his commander and to the Marine Corps. He has learned that
he is a member of a team which is organized, trained and equipped for the
purpose of engaging and defeating enemies of his country." The achievement
of military discipline is based on the ability to shut down any emotional
feelings so that one is prepared for the possible exigencies of battle and
the ability to overcome fear. "The individual must be able to recognize and
face fear because fear is the enemy of discipline. Fear unchecked will lead
to panic and a unit that panics is no longer a disciplined unit but a mob,"
according to the Guidebook.

Training recruits to be "disciplined" and not a "mob" is based on removing
civilian emotions of compassion so that troops accept their role of killing
during combat. John R. Fabian, who served in the 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam
from 1969-1970, explains how drill instructors taught recruits to quash
their feelings of compassion:

The day I went into the Army-I'll never forget that-I got to basic training
in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and the senior drill instructor said, "You are not
human being. You are animals." That stays with me. Everything they taught
you was not to be a human being, to have compassion, to have feelings. If
you had feelings and compassion, you are a shit soldier. As soon as you got
rid of those things, the better off you were, those emotions.

The process of basic training is part of a structured environment so that
troops replaced their civilian identity, which allowed a limited degree of
emotional feelings, with an idealized military masculinity based on the
denial of attachment and compassion.

Through ritual-like commands, recruits learn the acceptance of any and all
orders within the military rank structure. As soon as recruits arrive off
the bus, they receive their new buzz haircut, a ritual of dehumanization.
Throughout the training weeks, recruits live an ultra-regimented life, akin
to prison, participating in daily calisthenics, close-order drill, and
classes in first aid and military history and traditions. According to
Daniel Barnes, who served in an Army infantry unit from 1969-1970, "the main
word was, 'Kill. Kill. Kill,' all the time, they then pushed it into your
head twenty-four hours a day. Everything you said-even before you sat down
to eat your meals, you had to stand up and scream, 'Kill' before you could
sit down and eat." If for some reason, a recruit does not perform a task
efficiently, drill instructors punish the entire training unit or team. In
so doing, individual recruits learn to see their larger purpose as tied to
the other recruits and to the training unit as a whole. Thus, one's emerging
military identity is based on a doctrine of conformity constructed around
teamwork.

However, the military has larger plans for promoting teamwork beyond troop
morale and welfare. The process of breaking-down recruits and molding them
into future troops is based on building a team which was in opposition to
those who were outside of it. Drill instructors indoctrinate recruits to
dehumanize the enemy in order to train them how to overcome any fear or
prejudice against killing. The process of dehumanization is central to
military training. Before Vietnam, the Japanese and Germans were
derogatively referred to as "Japs" and "Krauts." The enemy in Vietnam was
simply a "gook," "dink," or a "slope." Today, "rag head" and "sand nigger"
are the current racist epithets of derision lodged against Arabs and
Muslims.

Steve Padris, who served in the Army infantry from 1969-1970, revealed that
he learned in basic that "the only good dink is a dead dink, and once you do
get over there you can't trust any of the people." Similarly, Guadalupe G.
Villarreal, who also served in the Army infantry during Vietnam, explains
how the racism learned in basic was tied to national identity as well:
They are indoctrinated and that is sort of a racist type thing that of
course the gooks are gook and they are inferior to us; therefore, you just
hear this statement. Well, if you kill ten gooks for one American that's all
right because that's how much they are worth. They would say that anybody
would go along with that because that's what an American was worth, was
worth so much more. . . .That their lives have really no meaning and this,
of course, is the attitude that is shown to you and the ones indoctrinated
with it, this is indoctrinated into you from the first time you get into the
Army until the time you leave. When you get there, this is the attitude that
you find.
Simply put by Daniel Barnes, all of the Vietnamese "were something less than
human." Military identity is based upon both learning solidarity with the
unit as a means to draw a demarcation between those who were inside the
boundaries of the unit and those who are outside of it. Drill instructors
enforce a dehumanization of the enemy that infects the entire training
process.

Yet the racialized "other" is not the only group targeted as the outsider. A
carefully crafted campaign of teaching recruits to despise and mistrust
women is also part of the training regiment. Future soldiers run in
formation through cadences based on the repetition of call and response
lyrics with their drill instructors. Cadence calls are in the lineage of
work songs utilized centuries previous by slaves and often chanted by
sailors on whaling vessels in the nineteenth century. However, a large
portion of military cadences degrade women.

Recruits sing "Jody Calls" or "Jodies" to encourage male bonding through the
homosocial space of the military. Jody is a mythical figure who stays at
home, avoids the military, and then steals one's girlfriend. Thus, the Jody
figure plays several roles. He represents the draft-evader or civilian
"outsider" who shirks his call to duty. Military culture teaches recruits to
hate and despise Jodies. Therefore, the "insider" status of recruits is
forged in opposition to all of the potential Jody "outsiders," civilians who
are not in the military. However, the assumption at the core of the call and
response verses is that if one were not in the military, one would also be
the womanizer that Jody embodies. He is, therefore, both despised and
valorized. The real purpose of the Jody figure is thus to reinforce the idea
amongst recruits that women are disloyal and two-timing. As the Jody figure
perpetuates, women will always leave a soldier at the drop of a hat. Only
military men and particularly those within one's unit can be trusted.

The following cadence is typical of the "Jodies" prevalent in today's
military and is representative of the general theme of those utilized in the
past:
When I was home on leave last time,
Found out the meaning of Jody rhymes.
My girl was running with another guy,
Had planned to write and tell me bye.
But I surprised her with this man,
You should have seen the way they ran.
The guy was a wimp, looked real weak,
My girl was alone, he took a peek.
While I was fighting to keep them free,
They got it on and forgot about me.
In fact, the above "Jody" is bland and mild-mannered in comparison to the
more vulgar and degrading verses of many cadence calls. The implication and
logical conclusion of such cadences are that women are to be used for one
purpose only-as repositories for sexual aggression. In Tim O'Brien's classic
Vietnam memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone, he recalls several "Jodies" that
expressed a profound hatred towards women sung during the Vietnam era.
Therefore, troops learn to forge an identity based on achieving a group
"insider" status in opposition to the feminine "outsider." The "other" is
not only the nation's so-called adversary but also the entire civilian
world, particularly women.

Producing conformity based on hatred of the "outsider" is just one purpose
of breaking-down recruits and molding them into troops. The training also
encourages one to lose their ability to think independently and to become
psychologically dependent on the officers and upper enlisted for all
decisions, including the very personal aspects of one's hygiene and
identity. It must be acknowledged, however, that the military is never
completely successful in this endeavor. Not all troops accept the
indoctrination of basic training whole-heartedly. Some bring a questioning
attitude into the military that no amount of "training" can erase. Still
others become bitter at the military as a result of the harsh treatment,
enforced regulations, and military discipline imposed by drill instructors.

The molding of a uniform killing machine, the convergence of the hippie,
geek, and jock into the perfect warrior, is far from uniform and less than
perfect. For example, in 1971, Garry Battle, who served in the Americal
Division in Vietnam, reflected, "I made it through basic training with
difficulty. I didn't like stabbing a dummy with a bayonet. I just couldn't
see it. I don't like killing." Likewise, Vietnam veteran Tim O'Brien
reminisces about the close friendship he developed at basic training at Fort
Lewis, refusing to reign in his feelings of compassion. O'Brien explains how
his camaraderie with Eric was built upon defiance:
It was a war of resistance; the objective was to save our souls. Sometimes
it meant hiding the remnants of conscience and consciousness behind battle
cries, pretended servility, bare, clench-fisted obedience. Our private
conversations were the cornerstone of the resistance, perhaps because
talking about basic training in careful, honest words was by itself an
insult to army education. Simply to think and talk and try to understand was
evidence that we were not cattle or machines.
O'Brien and Eric subverted the military training "to save our souls,"
relying on each other as a means to express their hidden protest.

Yet relying on a secret friendship should not be the only means through
which the men and women in uniform can hold on to their humanity. The
deterrence of more Greens, Calleys, and Burges depends on the strength and
tactics of today's anti-war movement. It should be our task to not only
"bring the troops home now" but to also give our soldiers the determination
and fortitude to refuse to participate in war crimes and atrocities. It is
no coincidence that the strength of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam
War and the dissension in the ranks, what David Cortright has called the
"soldiers in revolt," were mutually reinforcing. During the Sixties, many
soldiers encountered their first anti-war or civil rights protest at home
and some revolutionary socialists purposefully entered the military to
organize, carrying the ideas of social justice with them into the military
structure. Therefore, the "GI Movement," the widespread dissent and
rebellion by active duty troops and veterans during the Vietnam War, emerged
out of an organic connection between the organizing at home and the
resistance abroad. It is just such a connection that we should take heart in
from the past and aim to rebuild and strengthen in our anti-war tactics in
the present.

But our ideas are just as important as our actions. We can neither rely on
claims that impeaching Bush will end future war crimes nor that the actions
of a few individuals are merely to blame. Rather, the entire military
institution and its training are complicit in the project of U.S.
imperialism, including the war crimes of the past, and, if not stopped, in
the continuance and promotion of further atrocities. Moreover, individual
soldiers should never be viewed as cogs in a wheel or as mere simpletons and
powerless victims. The elemental truth is that generals and war planners
call the shots from air-conditioned building and bunkers far from combat,
but wars must be fought on the ground by working-class troops who, when
organized, can act on their own political principles rather than on those of
their commanding officers. As David Cortright argues, a new generation of
activists in solidarity with active-duty personnel and military families
"need not be helpless before the power of illegitimate authority . . . by
getting together and acting upon their convictions people can change society
and, in effect, make their own history"--a history that is free of torture,
far removed from war crimes, and rid of the likes of Steven Green, Lt.
Calley, and John Burge.

Martin Smith, a former sergeant in the US Marine Corps, is a member of Iraq
Veterans Against the War. He can be reached at: send2smith@yahoo.com

Source: CounterPunch
http://counterpunch.org/smith08052006.html

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson