A “lean, mean, killing machine” tells his tale

I don’t have much to add to this tale by Sgt. Martin Smith, USMC, ret. It’s difficult to read, but it is the modern fighting force and this force is being deployed to “defend your freedom”.

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.”

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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.

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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.

And remember, these men will come home eventually and “integrate” themselves back into society. Multiculturalism and respect for women is not part of the training.