COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: General
Learning to be a Lean, Mean Killing Machine
MARTIN SMITH, USMC, ret., Counterpunch.org
February 20, 2007
I will never forget standing in formation after the end of our final"hump," marine-speak for a forced march, at the end of the Crucible in
March, 1997. The Crucible is the final challenge during Marine Corps boot
camp and is a two-and-a-half day, physically exhausting exercise in which
sleep deprivation, scarce food, and a series of obstacles test teamwork and
toughness. The formidable nine-mile stretch ended with our ascent up the
"Grim Reaper," a small mountain in the hilly terrain of Camp Pendleton,
California. As we stood at attention, the Commanding Officer made his way
though our lines, inspecting his troops and giving each of us an eagle,
globe, and anchor pin, the mark of our final transition from recruit to
Marine. But what I recall most was not the pain and exhaustion that filled
every ounce of my trembling body, but the sounds that surrounded me as I
stood at attention with eyes forward.
Mixed within the repetitive refrains of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the
USA," belting from a massive sound system, were the soft and gentle sobs
emanating from numerous newborn Marines. Their cries stood in stark
contrast to the so-called "warrior spirit" we had earned and now came to
epitomize. While some may claim that these unmanly responses resulted from
a patriotic emotional fit or even out of a sense of pride in being called
"Marine" for the very first time, I know that for many the moisture
streaming down our cheeks represented something much more anguished and
heartrending.
What I learned about Marines is that despite the stereotype of the
chivalrous knight, wearing dress blues with sword drawn, or the green
killing machine that is always "ready to rumble," the young men and women I
encountered instead comprised a cross-section of working-class America.
There were neither knights nor machines among us. During my five years in
active-duty service, I befriended a recovering meth addict who was still
"using," a young male who had prostituted himself to pay his rent before he
signed-up, an El Salvadorian immigrant serving in order to receive a green
card, a single mother who could not afford her child's healthcare needs as
a civilian, a gay teenager who entertained our platoon by singing Madonna
karaoke in the barracks to the delight of us all, and many of the country's
poor and poorly educated. I came to understand very well what those cries
on top of the Grim Reaper expressed. Those teardrops represented hope in
the promise of a change in our lives from a world that, for many of us as
civilians, seemed utterly hopeless.
Marine Corps boot camp is a thirteen week training regimen unlike any
other. According to the USMC's recruiting website, "Marine Recruits learn
to use their intelligence . . . and to live as upstanding moral beings with
real purpose." Yet if teaching intelligence and morals are the stated
purpose of its training, the Corps has peculiar way of implementing its
pedagogy. In reality, its educational method is based on a planned and
structured form of cruelty. I remember my first visit to the "chow-hall" in
which three Drill Instructors (DIs), wearing their signature "smoky bear"
covers, pounced upon me for having looked at them, screaming that I was a
"Nasty Piece of Civilian Shit." From then on, I learned that you could only
look at a DI when instructed to by the command of "Eyeballs!" In addition,
recruits could only speak in the third person, thus ridding our vocabulary
of the term "I" and divorcing ourselves from our previous civilian identities.
Our emerging group mentality was built upon and reinforced by tearing down
and degrading us through a series of regimented and ritualistic exercises
in the first phase of boot camp. Despite having an African American and a
Latino DI, recruits in my platoon were ridiculed with derogatory language
that included racial epithets. But recruits of color were not the only
victims, we were all "fags," "pussies," and "shitbags." We survived through
a twisted sort of leveling based on what military historian Christian G.
Appy calls a "solidarity of the despised."
We relearned how to execute every activity, including the most personal
aspects of our hygiene. While eating, we could only use our right hand
while our left had to stay directly on our knee, and our eyes had to stare
directly at our food trays. Our bathroom breaks were so brief that three
recruits would share a urinal at a time so that the entire platoon of
sixty-three recruits could relieve themselves in our minute-and-half time
limit. On several occasions, recruits soiled their uniforms during
training. Every evening, DIs inspected our boots for proper polish and our
belt buckles for satisfactory shine while we stood at attention in our
underwear. Then, we would "mount our racks" (bunk beds), lie at attention,
and scream all three verses of the Marine Corps hymn at the top of our
lungs. While the DIs would proclaim that these inspections were to insure
that our bodies had not been injured during training, I suspect that there
were ulterior motives as well. These examinations were attempts to
indoctrinate us with an emerging military masculinity that is based upon
male sexuality linked to respect for the uniform and a fetishization of combat.
After the playing of Taps, lights went out. At which time, a DI would
circle around the room and begin moralizing. "One of these days, you're
going to figure out what's really tough in the world," he would exclaim.
"You think you've got it so bad. But in recruit training, you get three
meals a day while we tell you when to shit and blink," he continued. The DI
would then lower his voice, "But when you're out on your own, you're gonna
see what's hard. You'll see what tough is when you knock up your old woman.
You'll realize what's cruel when you get married and find yourself stuck
with a fat bitch who just squats out ungrateful kids. You'll learn what the
real world's about when you're overseas and your wife back in the states
robs you blind and sleeps with your best friend." The DI's nightly
homiletic speeches, full of an unabashed hatred of women, were part of the
second phase of boot camp, the process of rebuilding recruits into Marines.
The process of reconstructing recruits and molding them into future troops
is based on building a team that sees itself in opposition to those who are
outside of it. After the initial shock of the first phase of training, DIs
indoctrinate recruits to dehumanize the enemy in order to train them how to
overcome any fear or prejudice against killing. In fact, according to
longtime counter-recruitment activist Tod Ensign, the military has
deliberately researched how to best design training for how to teach
recruits how to kill. Such research was needed because humans are
instinctively reluctant to kill. Dr. Dave Grossman disclosed in his work,
On Killing, that fewer than 20 percent of U.S. troops fired their weapons
in World War II during combat. As a result, the military reformed training
standards so that more soldiers would pull their trigger against the enemy.
Grossman credits these training modifications for the transformation of the
Armed Forces in the Vietnam War in which 90-95 percent of soldiers fired
their weapons. These reforms in training were based on teaching recruits
how to dehumanize the enemy.
The process of dehumanization is central to military training. During
Vietnam, the enemy in Vietnam was simply a "gook," "dink," or a "slope."
Today, "rag head" and "sand nigger" are the current racist epithets lodged
against Arabs and Muslims. After every command, we would scream, "Kill!"
But our call for blood took on particular importance during our physical
training, when we learned how to fight with pugil sticks, wooden sticks
with padded ends, how to run an obstacle course with fixed bayonets, or how
to box and engage in hand-to-hand combat. We were told to imagine the
"enemy" in all of our combat training, and it was always implied that the
"enemy" was of Middle Eastern descent. "When some rag head comes lurking up
from behind, you're gonna give 'em ONE," barked the training DI. We all
howled in unison, "Kill!" Likewise, when we charged toward the dummy on an
obstacle course with our fixed bayonets, it was clear to all that the
lifeless form was Arab.
Even in 1997, we were being brainwashed to accept the coming Iraq War.
Abruptly interrupting a class, one of numerous courses we attended on
military history, first aid, and survival skills, a Series Chief DI
excitedly announced that all training was coming to a halt. We were to be
shipped immediately to the Gulf, because Saddam had just fired missiles
into Israel. Given that we lived with no knowledge of the outside world,
with neither TV nor newspapers, and that we experienced constant high
levels of stress and a discombobulating environment, the DI's false
assertion seemed all too believable. After a half-hour panic, we were led
out of the auditorium to face the rebuke and scorn of our platoon DIs. It
turned out that the interruption was a skit planned to scare us into the
realization that we could face war at any moment. The trick certainly had
the planned effect on me, as I pondered what the hell I had gotten myself
into. I also now realize that we were being indoctrinated with schemes for
war in the Middle East. Our hatred of the Arab "other" was crafted from the
very beginning of our training through fear and hate.
Almost ten years since I stood on the yellow footprints that greet new
recruits at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, I express
gratitude for my luck during my enlistment. I was fortunate to have never
witnessed a day of combat and was honorably discharged months after 9/11.
However, joining the military is like playing Russian Roulette. With wars
raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the likelihood of military action
against Iran, troops in the Corps today are playing with grimmer odds. In
these "dirty wars," troops cannot tell friend from foe, leading to war
crimes against a civilian population. Our government is cynically promoting
a campaign of lies and deception to justify its illegal actions (with the
complicity of both parties in Washington), and our troops are fighting to
support regimes that lack popular support and legitimacy.
With over 3,100 U.S. troops now dead and thousands more maimed and
crippled, I look back to the other young men I heard sobbing on that sunny
wintry morning on top of the Reaper. The reasons we enlisted were as varied
as our personal histories. Yet, it is the starkest irony that the hope we
collectively expressed for a better life may have indeed cost us our very
lives. When one pulls the trigger called "enlistment, " he or she faces the
gambling chance of experiencing war, conflicts which inevitably lead to the
degradation of the human spirit.
The war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, such as the brutality
exhibited at Mahmoudiya in which soldiers allegedly gang-raped a teen-age
Iraqi girl and burned her body to destroy the evidence, are, in fact, part
and parcel of all imperialist wars. The USMC's claim that recruits learn
"to live as upstanding moral beings with real purpose" is a sickening ploy
aimed to disguise its true objectives. Given the fact that Marines are
molded to kill the enemy "other" from TD One (training day) combined with
the bestial nature of colonial war, it should come as no surprise that
rather than turning "degenerates" into paragons of virtue, the Corps is
more likely capable of transforming men into monsters.
And yet as much as these war crimes reveal about the conditions of war, the
circumstances facing an occupying force, and the peculiar brand of Marine
training, they also reflect a bitter truth about the civilian world in
which we live. It speaks volumes that in order for young working-class men
and women to gain self-confidence or self-worth, they seek to join an
institution that trains them how to destroy, maim, and kill. The desire to
become a Marine-as a journey to one's manhood or as a path to
self-improvement- is a stinging indictment of the pathology of our
class-ridden world.
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