pissing on counter-insurgency

(guest post by Dave)
 

The public response to peeing marines has been largely predictable. And while I think some politicians it can be seen as posturing, I suspect that in most cases the shock is genuine. Since the first Gulf War, much of the American public, and certainly much of the American political leadership, has developed a wholly inaccurate view of war.

One of the unfortunate consequences of the First Gulf War was the fostering of an idea that war can be clean. Sure, thousands of Iraqis died in the conflict, but I suspect that the public developed a post-war view that war can be waged and won without any negative consequences, be they financial, physical, or moral. That is, most of the war’s costs were funded by others (Japan comes to mind), there were few friendly casualties, and, perhaps most notably, the conflict was easily digested as a moral crusade by a public largely uncomfortable with concepts such as spheres of influence and realpolitik. Indeed, the 1991 Gulf War had an air of unreality to it; Jean Baudrillard was onto something when he wrote The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, noting that the whole event had the feel of a video game or a television drama (most of the night-time bombing corresponded to prime time in the US East Coast) and thus had no real moral impact on the public. 

Fast-forward to 2012 and ubiquitous cameras and the public’s view of clean war runs headlong into the brutal reality that “limited war” is a term that only functions at the operational and strategic levels; at the tactical level war is always nasty business. And the public also faces the reality that the American way of war involves an annihilation tradition that involves the fostering of dehumanizing tendencies.  One of the obvious critiques of the Iraq War involves the clear lack of consideration given to the unintended consequences of regime change. I would suggest that the public pause and consider the long-term consequences of overreacting to a video of tactically victorious marines. For all the parades, and toys for tots, and uniforms that (supposedly) make women swoon, the public needs to understand that at its most basic level, marines (and other military members) are trained killers. And releasing trained killers, especially ones inculcated with the annihilation tradition, is not and never will be a surgical event. War is not surgical, it is a blunt object whose use is full of unintended and undesired consequences. Those leaders who would readily use war as a means of foreign policy would do well to remember that.

Of course the sight of marines urinating on corpses is unpleasant. People are not hard-wired towards such behavior. People are not hard-wired to kill other people, especially when they can immediately see the consequences of their actions. (I’m sure it is much easier to launch a missile that kills hundreds than to stab someone with a knife … read On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman) But to judge that scene through the lens of polite society is to wholly ignore what we actually ask of these people. These four marines, apparently scout snipers, have been conditioned to kill individuals. And that has consequences. More importantly perhaps, we should remember that curtailing such behavior, while perhaps superficially noble when viewed from afar, almost certainly affects the potency of the annihilation tradition that has more or less served this country well for over 200 years.

The immediate strategic consequences of this video are certainly negative. But the country likely benefits in the long run from having a military composed of people who will wade into the enemy, spilling their blood. So while I certainly understand that a counter-insurgency effort is not aided by such displays, I would argue that this incident is not per se an indictment of the military culture. Rather, it calls into question the strategic plan itself. Sure counter-insurgency looks great on paper, but it seems highly suspect to rely on trained killers as the means to implement that strategy.

“Dave” is an officer in the United States Navy. His opinions are his and his alone.