Returning To Class
"
If you ladies leave my island, if you survive
recruit training, you will be a weapon, you will
be a minister of death, praying for war. And
proud. Until that day you are pukes, you are
scumbags, you are the lowest form of life on
Earth. You are not even human. You people are
nothing but grabastic pieces of amphibian shit."
"
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."
Learning to be a Lean, Mean Killing Machine
Structured Cruelty
By Sgt. Martin Smith, USMC, ret.
02/20/07 "Counterpunch" -- -- [
http://www.counterpunch.org/]
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. 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. 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.
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."
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. Every evening, DIs inspected our boots
for proper polish and our belt buckles for satisfactory shine while we
stood at attention in our underwear ... 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. 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!" 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.
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 ... Our hatred of the Arab "other" was crafted from the very
beginning of our training through fear and hate.
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.
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.
Martin Smith is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and can be
reached at send2sm...@yahoo.com
