by Larry Minear
On occasion, family members discovered commonalities for themselves. Myrna E. Bein, whose son Charles, a twenty-six-year-old Army infantryman, had been seriously wounded in an ambush near Kirkuk on May 2, 2004, shared her thoughts in correspondence with friends as she visited him over a period of months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “I’m not a sage, or a politician, or anyone with answers to all the hard questions,” she wrote. “I’m just a mother. I know what I’m feeling down in my soul is what countless other mothers have felt over the centuries. I know the mothers in Iraq and Afghanistan feel the same thing. It’s a timeless and universal grief.”59
The task of getting to know the local people and discovering common bonds was complicated by the limited interaction between troops and nearby communities. The constraints were often dictated by the security concerns reflected in the rules of engagement. “We were confined mostly to the main roads and weren’t allowed to go to the villages,” recalled Sergeant Flanders. “We were segregated from the population.” Constraints on normal intercourse were tighter in Iraq, particularly in the later years of the occupation, than in Afghanistan, although troops stationed there also become more wary over time. “It would have been nice to have a little more interaction” with local people beyond those who visited his camp in Iraq on business, observed Capt. Ralan Hill, “but there is an associated risk with that.”60
Stephanie Corcoran, an MP whose Army unit, the 988th Military Police Company, deployed from Fort Benning, Georgia, to Iraq for a year beginning in late 2005, articulated the trade-offs between important but competing objectives: reaching out to local people and maintaining troop security. “What a great privilege it was,” she reflected, “to have been able to escape the fortification of Camp Kalsu and explore the Iraqi way of life. Traveling outside ‘the wire’ has made me gain new appreciation for things I never thought twice about before now. I know this is true for others that have seen different walks of life. I’m very grateful to the military for this opportunity.” Describing the country as “a classroom,” she noted, however, “everything over here has an invisible ‘approach with caution’ sign on it. Not realizing this could compromise the mission and duty to protect others around you.” She found herself challenged to find “an enjoyable balance between experiencing a new culture and staying as safe as possible in a war zone.”61 She also came to view good working relationships with local people as themselves an investment in security.
In a wrap-up e-mail to family and friends, Corcoran commented on “the most disappointing part” of her deployment: the “hate toward the people of Iraq” expressed by members of the U.S. military. She was repulsed by the “racist and ignorant views held by people expected to promote great things like the rights of life, liberty, and property. I’ve learned that it’s very easy to hate everything about Iraqis if you let yourself.” To guard against that attitude, she concentrated on “the simple things. Receiving a genuine smile from someone whose country we’re occupying is always nice and has the power to light my day. Seeing compassion and pain through someone’s eyes is moving, and really helps you grasp how tough life is for the Iraqi people. Seeing a mother hold her child with the same nurture and love that an American mother holds her child makes me understand that these people love the way we do. This is the chip that I take from an iceberg that’s complex, complicated, and exhausting to understand at times.”62
Kelly Dougherty, a Colorado National Guard sergeant deployed to Iraq from February 2003 through February 2004, expressed revulsion at having to search Iraqi women for weapons. “In their culture,” she explained, “you can’t touch a woman who is not your wife, and they would get upset. There was a lot of misunderstanding. What we are doing now is racist and goes beyond that,” she concluded. “It’s like they can’t take care of themselves. The only way to live is how we tell them to live because they’re not capable of doing it themselves. They are too uneducated, savage and poor. That feeling really permeates the military,” including those whom she liked and otherwise respected. Dougherty sometimes even caught herself saying that she hated Iraqis.63
To what extent did soldiers feel adequately prepared for the unfamiliarity and violence they would experience? Second Lt. Eric Giles, who served in military police units in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2004, commented on the complexity of the wars and their settings. Given the myriad historical and political dimensions of the situation, he said, “the army is pretty good about training for cultural factors.” His sixteen months of exposure to Iraqi culture, he felt, “enriched my own personal knowledge,” even though he was aware that there was still much to understand.64
Other veterans were more critical of the lack of pre-deployment attention to cultural and other factors essential to the success and safety of their mission. “If the United States is going to be engaged in the endeavor of dealing with countries and helping reconstruct countries,” noted one New Hampshire Guardsman, “then we really do need to understand them in a much deeper way than we did in Iraq.” The military sought to provide advance training regarding what to expect. Soldiers carried a wallet card confirming that they had received sensitivity training and reminding them of the basic dos and don’ts. But the military, many felt, had limited success in preparing them for what they would encounter.
Reflecting upon training received at Fort Drum in northern New York prior to deploying to Afghanistan, one officer noted that the focus had been on “basic soldiering skills,” combined with “some very sparse training on what you could expect in theater.” The trainers, he said, were more familiar with Iraq than Afghanistan. “We didn’t go over anything that we used in Iraq. Our training was just completely a waste of time.”65 He and others believed that the on-the-job learning during actual deployment far exceeded the value of any orientation provided in advance.
Some troops had the benefit of prior experience, whether in civil society or the military, that helped prepare them for the assault on their sense of humanity experienced in the two theaters. Sgt. Gregory Mayfield, whose earlier work as a policeman had “somewhat inoculated” him to the carnage of Iraq, was nevertheless taken aback by the scale and intensity of what he witnessed. In his thirteen years as a policeman in the States, he had seen two people die “in front of my face.”66 In Iraq, he recalled, “we sat and watched three people die in an hour.” Damian Budziszewski, a Nebraska Guardsman who saw duty in Iraq, believed that he was adequately prepared to kill an enemy in self-defense. Doing so, in his judgment, would not “mess me up psychologically or any other way.” Nevertheless, he expressed relief that he never actually had to do so. “I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with that.”67
Lt. Col. Rick Mayes, an Army reservist who had enlisted in 1977 and served during Operation Iraqi Freedom in an MP unit, had been exposed to violence as a police officer in Arkansas. “I never really remember terrible things,” he said, or, if he does, they have “no impact on me whatsoever. God blessed me where I don’t have recurring nightmares.” However, he was alert to the emotional backlash experienced by members of his unit from a “friendly fire” incident and from having to guard mass gravesites. In the latter instance, he was particularly concerned about female soldiers who “have never had to deal with anything like that, and they’re out there trying to pull pieces of people away from dogs and keeping the dogs from dragging off different parts. They remember that stuff.” He called in a post-traumatic stress team to help.68
In sum, most of those interviewed found soldiering in Afghanistan and Iraq to one degree or another unnerving and disorienting. The scene seemed vastly different from what they were accustomed to in terms of geography and climate, language and customs, culture and politics. Many soldiers remained isolated from local people and institutions, interacting primarily in carefully structured situations and with heavy reliance on local interpreters. Some reached out to bridge the isolation, forging friendships with interpreters and local people. However, there were also undercurrents of animosity towa
rd the locals in both theaters. While pre-deployment orientation sought to prepare troops for what they would encounter, most found the shock of the realities well beyond what they were prepared for. Their reactions to the volatile circumstances they confronted are the subject of the following chapter.
FIVE
Wrestling with Ethical Issues
U.S. troops operating on the front lines of the global war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq experienced major problems in conducting military operations within traditionally accepted normative frameworks. First, the violent and dangerous situation on the ground led them to put a premium on their own survival at whatever cost. Second, efforts to observe the established rules of war seemed to put them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis a ruthless enemy. Third, enforcement of the rules of war by U.S. authorities, military and civilian, was uneven. The troops came to behave—and to be seen by others as behaving—in ways that robbed them of their humanity and undermined the stature of the U.S. and its military. In interviews and writings, veterans recount the ongoing struggle to survive and to function within accepted parameters.
SURVIVAL
U.S. troops found the situation on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq maddeningly fluid and confusing. Multiple actors and agendas made it difficult to identify “terrorists,” the target of U.S. and coalition military action, and to differentiate them from non-combatants, who, according to the rules of war, were to be shielded from attack. “Civilians and insurgents looked the same, and insurgents often fired at convoys from crowds,” reported one observer. “Sometimes children waved, and the soldiers threw candy. Other times, children threw rocks.”1 With even children not beyond suspicion, how would soldiers recognize the enemy and make the requisite discrimination between combatants and civilians?
“That was the really hard part about it,” observed Army Sgt. James R. Welch of Toledo, Ohio. “A lot of what we did as infantry is, we’d go into cities and towns, but we didn’t know who the enemy was. Civilians and the enemy looked exactly alike. As far as what our soldiers on the ground knew, if they were a bad guy, they were a bad guy.”2 Yet the political and human geography of the landscape was complex and the categories “good” and “bad” murky. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. and coalition troops were killed and wounded not only by uniformed soldiers, but also by insurgents disguised as such.
Tyler Mueller, a tank driver in an armored cavalry unit in Iraq, told his interviewer in a matter of fact way of his twenty-six kills during his time in Iraq. “Six of them,” he said without apparent emotion, were “under the age of ten.” It wasn’t that he was devoid of sympathy for children, he was quick to point out. “I’ve got sisters and brothers, and it’s not pretty. But what are you supposed to do when you’ve got somebody walking at you with a hand grenade and it’s either you or him? It doesn’t matter how old they are. I’ve got a family to come home to. It’s me or that kid. I’m sorry, but that kid is catching one [gunshot] between the eyes. I’ll take care of business.”3
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War is a phenomenon of organized violence that affects either the relations between two or more societies or the power relations within a society. War is governed by the law of armed conflict, also called “international humanitarian law.” Throughout the ages, rules have been written and accepted by states to limit the use of force to protect societies from the long-term effects of war, by attempting to prevent conflicts from reaching a point of no return. International law does this by regulating war and prohibiting specific acts and behavior…. It also stresses the importance of distinguishing between civilians and combatants.
—Francoise Bouchet-Saulnier*
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In such a dog-eat-dog environment, the survival imperative trumps all else. “You see people out there walking around on the road and automatically you assume that they may have something to do with an IED going off,” said Sgt. Steve Pink of New Hampshire. “It’s unfortunate for Iraqi civilians, but any guy will tell you that it’s gonna be our safety before theirs.”4 “On a practical level,” added his cohort Sgt. Zack Bazzi, “when I’m on the road, it’s my guys versus them. To hell with the immorality of it.”5 “When you go to war,” said Derek Sutton, a first lieutenant in an Army engineering battalion, “nothing matters but coming home. You do what you have to do.”6
As the wars continued and deployment time on the front lines was extended, the urge to survive grew stronger while the ground rules eroded. As noted earlier, some who had misgivings initially about the appropriateness of the U.S. mission became more persuaded over time. As the Iraq war wore on and the violence intensified, however, others became more conflicted. For some, violations of international law—for example, in the treatment of detainees—undermined the case for staying the course. “You know, I supported the mission,” said Sgt. Mike Moriarty of the New Hampshire National Guard, “but I’m starting to say to myself, ‘What the fuck?’ If the problem isn’t going away, then kick it up a notch! And I don’t give a fuck if that means nuking this fucking country! Meanwhile there are fucking innocent fucking U.S. soldiers getting killed.”7
“We were there when the prison abuse took place,” recounted Sgt. Dave Bischel, a member of the California National Guard of his presence at Abu Ghraib, “but we didn’t see any of it. We worked twelve-hour days with no days off for four months…. There was a point at Abu Ghraib—I didn’t realize it [at the time] but I just started deteriorating mentally. I was like, ‘Fuck Iraq. I want to kill these mother fuckers and go home.’ You get to the point you lose it. It’s like, ‘Fuck it, fuck them. They don’t want us here.’ It drove me crazy.”8
Specialists in military ethics confirm that such attitudes are neither uncommon nor without a certain apparent logic. “Research has shown that individual servicemen and women are not driven by high-flying ideals when under tension in the areas of operation,” notes Cees van der Knaap, Netherlands state secretary for defense. “In that situation, they operate within the context of a small combat unit. Moral choices under those circumstances reflect loyalty to comrades [and] solidarity with the combat group. On the battlefield, the combat group operates as a kind of surrogate family. Threats to one are seen as being a threat to all of the members of the group.”9
U.S. troops operating under duress in Afghanistan and Iraq came to place a premium on survival at virtually any cost. “When you’re over there and people are trying to kill you,” commented New Hampshire National Guardsman Sgt. Benjamin Flanders, “your survival trumps everything else: kill them before they kill you.” In Pink’s view, the assumption that the troops’ behavior should be exemplary belies the nature of the war and the weapons at the soldier’s disposal. “Why the fuck are we there?” he asked heatedly. “The U.S. Army is not the fucking Peace Corps. The Marines are not the Peace Corps.”10 The point is not that the troops were unsympathetic to the plight of civilians, whether Afghan or Iraqi. Indeed, some would agree with Marine Sgt. Travis Fisher that “seeing civilian casualties and deaths” was their worst experience of all.11 The dynamics of desperation, however, placed a higher premium on troop survival than on avoiding civilian casualties.
Given the perceived vulnerability of U.S. soldiers to the no-holds-barred tactics of the enemy, a number of soldiers expressed the view that the U.S. rules of engagement, particularly in Iraq, were too restrictive. In the case of one of the New Hampshire units escorting convoys, “Insurgents fired bullets and rockets at their trucks, shelled their camp and left bombs along the roads they traveled. But the soldiers weren’t allowed to chase down and kill those who fired on them. Their mission was to deliver supplies; if they were shot at, they fired back but didn’t stop.”12 A number of those interviewed expressed frustration that, effectively, their hands were tied.
Moreover, the rules of engagement themselves evolved over time and were subject to varied interpretation. Reflecting a lesson learned from Vietnam, for example, mosques, which were occasionally used as launching pads by insurgents, were not to be attac
ked. Yet, as Army Sgt. James Maddix explained, his own commander defended those who fired on the enemy in such circumstances. “If you feel you need to shoot, shoot,” he instructed his troops. “Do whatever you need to do to get yourself home alive.”13 Other commanders were less supportive, as one soldier who was disciplined for shooting in those very circumstances discovered.
Many soldiers, it appears from the interviews, simply did not comprehend or accept the rationale for the rules of engagement. “We’re thinking: we’re at war. We’re away from our families. We all have jobs on the outside and you’re worried about whether or not we should have shot?”14 Sgt. James Welch disagreed with the court-martialing of a soldier for having shot and killed an Iraqi civilian who refused to stop his vehicle at a checkpoint. “I have to shoot to protect myself,” he reasoned, as did the person on trial. “He was a guy who wanted to go home to his family.”15
Second Class Petty Officer Eric Heath, an Arkansas native, served in a Navy unit managing a prison in Kuwait in which U.S. service personnel were confined. Some were accused of violations of the rules of engagement, others of breaches of military discipline. Heath had a running dialogue with his father back home about some of the detentions of Americans. “Dad, I’m having a hard time adjusting to the fact that some kid is in my prison for beating up an insurgent for trying to ascertain information about an individual who killed one of his buddies. I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing. I probably would slap someone around, too, if I knew that was going to get the information.”