To Pee Or Not To Pee...

My brother-in-law, Ken Millman, served in and retired from the US Navy several years ago.  This weekend he asked me to weigh-in on the controversy surrounding the picture that surfaced this past week showing a group of Marines urinating on the corpses of deceased Taliban fighters.

I assumed it was because he knew I had served in the Marine Corps many years ago.  Both of us have a different point of view from the general public when it comes to matters of military, our opinions of those photos will differ as well, as our experiences have been very unique.  But I must write this from my perspective as this is my blog, right?

The first thing to consider is that these Marines were doing nothing unusual in a wartime situation.  When I was in the Marines the Vietnam War had long since ended, but it didn’t mean there weren’t any veterans of that war still serving in the Corps.  I’d met many veterans of Vietnam and had the opportunity to hear an overwhelming number of stories of their battles and their exploits.  I can tell you that none of them were pretty. 

There were stories of soldiers collecting fingers, ears or teeth from the dead in order to make a necklace.  Posing next to the bullet-ridden body of a North Vietnamese soldier was more common than not.  I doubt there was one person who left there without at least one photo.  There were also the stories of torturing those who feigned friendship while leading these Americans into a Vietcong trap.  Many of these evoked memories compelled vivid pictures in my mind that were less than inspiring. 

As I listened I realized that I couldn’t understand what they were feeling and probably never would.  I had never been in a war and there was no chance I ever would be.  

At that time in American military history, women weren’t allowed to deploy.  Yet, I was one of the first women Marines to go to combat training while at Boot Camp.  It was early in 1981 when I enlisted and at that time they were still sensitive about how women Marines were treated.  While in combat training, a controversy arose when some of the women were treated for hypothermia after rappelling in wet camouflage uniforms on a day when the temperature was below freezing.  It also happened to be the day when all the top brass and major news stations were there.  Needless to say, they immediately scrapped the program and pretended like it never happened.

Men were less of a concern to the Corps.  They were trained to be fearsome killers who could slit another man’s throat while dying of pneumonia.  And although women Marines were meant for more professional positions—free a man to fight, they said—we were still trained to kill if necessary.  When patrolling the flight line on guard duty, we were reminded often that you don’t shoot to wound, you shoot to kill. 

We were also reminded regularly about the battles in which the foes of Marines were so frightened because of the nearly animalistic way they fought.  It was during the battle of Belleau Wood that they were given the name Devil Dogs for the way they growled as they charged into the woods.  The Germans were so afraid of these hounds from hell that some ran in the opposite direction.

During combat, it’s fear that causes the enemy to hesitate and creates an opportunity for victory.  This is driven into the heads of each and every Marine even prior to them enlisting.  So you may be asking me at this point: What does that have to do with them desecrating the dead?  And I would answer: It has everything to do with it.

During a time of war our soldiers and Marines endure the most degrading and infuriating of circumstances than anyone can imagine.  At times they are forced to sit in the filthiest of conditions and wait to be shot at or blown up by a home-made bomb.  They watch as their best friends and their respected leaders are being killed in inhumane ways.  They hear of their comrades being kidnapped and then murdered by the enemy.  The only way for them to survive is by swallowing back the fear because they are fighters, killing machines, created and sanctioned by the US of A. 

In our current style of mechanized war, it isn’t often they get to see the faces of those they killed, who were trying to kill them, and who may have killed many of their fellow service members.  And you must understand, in a time of war, one of your own fallen Marines becomes very personal.  It isn’t just a friend or a leader, but a brother or a father.  It’s a sister who was blown up in the hum-vee.  It’s a mother figure who used to make sure you took care of yourself, ironically, before you went off to risk your life once more.

As our ability to kill in more efficient ways evolves, our inability to detach ourselves from the animalistic instincts that help us to survive stay static.  We can’t expect them to do the unthinkable—take another person’s life—while maintaining the decorum of a person whose hands have never been dirty.  We don’t stand in line any longer, waiting for the other side to volley, before taking our turn at cutting down rows of soldiers.  War isn’t a gentleman’s game.  It’s a vicious battle that strips the human side of anyone who experiences it, sometimes for a moment, many times forever.

So my opinion is that you can’t send our men and women into battle such as this and expect them to remain civil.  After all, this is war we’re talking about.  If the worst thing that happened to the corpses of those Taliban members was that they were whizzed on, they should consider themselves lucky.  I'm sorry, but that's my opinion on it.