Mistah Charley:
Just curious. Do you think even a relatively small percentage of the troops(say 20%) over there love killing people?

Posted by: FlashHarry | Feb 3 2005 14:20 utc | 3

And B, since you served up this tainted kettle of fish at breakfast time(here), I wanted to ask you one question.
You seem inquisitive; don’t know how old you are. When I was teaching secondary history in mid-late 70s I spoke with a lot of American WWII veterans(sec history with me never got past ’45), and never met a Mattis type. If the guys I talked with are any sort of representaive sample, then most everyone was scared shitless and just hoping to get home in one piece.
Did you ever talk with German veterans of that war? If so, how many Mattis’ did you meet?

Posted by: FlashHarry | Feb 3 2005 14:38 utc | 5

Some WWII vets in my family, though most are dead by now. They would do about everything to avoid another war. They had seen hell.
During my army time there were very few Mattis type people. For those I had a book with survived head shoot wounds from WW I and II. Usually it made them shut up.

Posted by: b | Feb 3 2005 15:08 utc | 7

The big-mouths are invariably chickenshits.

Posted by: DM | Feb 3 2005 15:34 utc | 9

at least he recognized them as “people”. i assume that’s a sign of progress on the military front. will be interesting to watch for any public reaction, esp in re to ward churchill controversy.

Posted by: b real | Feb 3 2005 15:52 utc | 11

“Fun is fun. Boys will be boys, blowing up frogs, pulling legs and wings off dragonflies. No big deal.”
Never did any of that. My cousin and I were once night catfishing in our teens. He (older) poured 2 0z of bourbon down the gullet of a 1 1/2lb catfish he had just caught.
Ole catfish he lay on top of the water passed out for about 2 hours, then woke up and took off like a scalded dog.
Probably had a helluva headache the next morning.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Feb 3 2005 16:24 utc | 13

My last comment was directed at alabama two posts up.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Feb 3 2005 16:31 utc | 15

Lt. Gen. James Mattis should be added to this list:
What I Heard about Iraq

In 1992, a year after the first Gulf War, I heard Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad and get ‘bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq’. I heard him say: ‘The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is: not that damned many.’
In February 2001, I heard Colin Powell say that Saddam Hussein ‘has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.’
…..

Posted by: b | Feb 3 2005 17:18 utc | 17

FlashHarry:
i don’t know what proportion of the troops in iraq enjoy killing people. some do, it’s clear. on the other hand, others find it very disturbing. Here’s a true anecdote: my dad is a retired army officer who now longer drives, and recently (before christmas) i took him to a local military base so he could buy some cheap liquor at the exchange “package store”. when i told my wife about this, she asked why tax-free alcohol is considered an important part of military benefits. my reply – it could be because the alcohol is used as part of a coping mechanism, to deal with the fact that “defending liberty” means, in practice, killing people – which is repugnant to some, although attractive to others. the relative proportions of these two groups probably vary from time to time and place to place. the wwii vets you mention were a cross section of society – whereas today’s soldiers are volunteers, with a self-selection bias. no doubt it also helps to dehumanize your enemy – as the general says, “they ain’t got no [hu]manhood left anyway.”

Posted by: mistah charley | Feb 3 2005 17:25 utc | 19

OT We id know this, but now its official
Documents: U.S. condoned Iraq oil smuggling – Trade was an open secret in administration, U.N.

Documents obtained by CNN reveal the United States knew about, and even condoned, embargo-breaking oil sales by Saddam Hussein’s regime, and did so to shore up alliances with Iraq’s neighbors.
The oil trade with countries such as Turkey and Jordan appears to have been an open secret inside the U.S. government and the United Nations for years.
…
Estimates of how much revenue Iraq earned from these tolerated side sales of its oil to Jordan and Turkey, as well as to Syria and Egypt, range from $5.7 billion to $13.6 billion.
This illicit revenue far exceeds the estimates of what Saddam pocketed through illegal surcharges on his U.N.-approved oil exports and illegal kickbacks on subsequent Iraqi purchases of food, medicine, and supplies — $1.7 billion to $4.4 billion — during the maligned seven-year U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.

Posted by: b | Feb 3 2005 17:47 utc | 21

One solution to compartmentalization: respect for evidence before rhetoric
So to me, this, more than anything, is what being an atheist means, an ongoing devotion to exploration, a giving of pride of place to evidence. And much to my dismay, religion often is at odds with the evidence-based portrait of reality that science has begun, yes, only just begun, fleshing out. The biggest example of this is in the ongoing debate over evolution. This is like Rasputin, or the character from the horror movie Halloween – it refuses to die. The statistics are appalling. This year, according to the Washington Post, some 40 states are dealing with new or ongoing challenges to the teaching of evolution in the schools. Four-fifths of our states. According to a recent CBS poll, 55 percent of Americans believe that god created humans in their present form – and that includes, I’m sorry to say, 47 percent of Kerry voters. Only 13 percent of Americans say that humans evolved from ancestral species, no god involved. Only 13 percent. The evidence that humans evolved from prehominid primates, and they from earlier mammals, and so on back to the first cell on earth some 3.8 billion years ago is incontrovertible, is based on a Himalayan chain’s worth of data. The evidence for divine intervention is, to date, non-existent. Yet here we have people talking about it as though they were discussing whether they prefer chocolate praline ice cream or rocky road, as though it were a matter of taste.
Center for Inquiry, Dec. 14 speech by Natalie Angier
Angier explains how she’s bringing up her daughter to think for herself.
Wonder what would’ve happened to Mattis if he’d got the same? Do you think he’s even capable of actually asking himself, “But how do I know this Iraqi beat his wife?” Bet he “just lets God sort it out.”

Posted by: Citizen | Feb 3 2005 18:46 utc | 23

Seeing the exchange between B, Flash H and Mistah Charley at the top, I wanted to make the same point as Flash H at 9.38.
I have known WW2 vets (both sides), internees, prisoners, and ordinary victims, read diaries, etc. etc.
Nowhere did I see an attitude like the one expressed in the header, either as a personal statement on the agressor side (not acceptaple so would probably be kept back), or as a report of the mind set of others. Never expressed in public at the time, or afterwards, as reported.
The discourse uniformly rests on war is madness – the guilty, or the loosers, depending on your point of view, invoke their blindness, lack of knowledge, comprehension; the desire, need, or obligation, to follow, do their duty, do what was ordered; their lack of choice. The power of authority. The system. Second generation Germans use such arguments plentifully.
Victims (all survivors, of course) often fix blame on Hitler himself (which has always surprised me…) and (after the fact) also present a picture of humans caught up in a maelstrom beyond their control. Anecdotes about the humanity of prison guards, soldiers, etc. are common, and very real, not just isolated incidents hyped up to gloss over horror.
I was told, as a child, that I owed my life in part to a SS officer who loved Schubert, and thought my mother was a cute girl (she was musical.)
This family myth – outrageous and ridiculous really – is typical.
Stories emphasise humanity and the throw of the dice. Fate, luck, helplessness, a feel of we were all in it together. Public discourse evacuates personal hate, or at least, dampens it and muzzles its public expression.
Statements like the one reported in the header are new – not new in human history – but new in the West, post WW2, as made in public and reported world-wide. (With some exceptions.)
So, we are shocked. I am.

Posted by: Blackie | Feb 3 2005 18:57 utc | 25

anna missed,
your theory of evaporation is making perfect sense.
our soldiers are well and truly screwed. Does anyone know of community efforts that really worked well at re-integrating Vietnam vets as neighbors, friends, family members. Every time I hear a Vietnam vet sticking up for neconderthals I feel sick inside. How can we actually welcome people back?

Posted by: Citizen | Feb 3 2005 19:29 utc | 27

@dan
All of the other things I mentioned are not available to them.
Afghanistan is massivly back in producing heroin but the markets are far away. The borders to Iran and from Iran (which already has a youth heroin problem) to Iraq are open and the roads are good. In Iraq there is a huge demand to forget the daily shit and lots of money the GIs can not spend elsewhere.
Expect capitalism to work its way like it always does in unregulated areas.
There will be a many highly edicted GIs coming back to the states. Only the reporting will lag.

Posted by: b | Feb 3 2005 20:40 utc | 29

I doubt the all volunteer forces are slamming dope. They seem to me to be Wild Turkey types. I’d like to know for sure.
One thing is certain: There’ll be herds of Timothy Mcveighs in this crop of veterans.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 3 2005 20:53 utc | 31

I think all of you who say that Mattis’ comments represent something new are wrong. Although, who ever said it was unusual that he said it in public maybe right. But even generals take their cue from above and this all started with our Callous-Bastard-in-Chief when called those our soldiers were sent to kill “evil doers” and smirked and swagered in his 2003 SOTU proclaiming, “lets just say they’re no longer a problem.”

Posted by: stoy | Feb 3 2005 21:03 utc | 33

That first sentence is b’s and should have been in a block quote. Doh!

Posted by: stoy | Feb 3 2005 21:09 utc | 35

Thanks Flash. Not that that doesn’t suck too.

Posted by: stoy | Feb 3 2005 21:19 utc | 37

b
you should know that there is a very effective drug testing program in the US armed forces. If you get caught you are discharged, always. They have random sweeps all the time. If you use, you will get caught.
slothrop
alcohol has been de-glamorized in the military as well. Maybe once these guys get back home and have time to reflect and think about what they have done the demons will come. Right now I think most of the combat guys are too busy staying alive to worry about it very much.

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 3 2005 21:38 utc | 39

@dan – in a warzone different rules may apply

Posted by: b | Feb 3 2005 21:56 utc | 41

yeah. Where is Pat, anyways?

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 3 2005 22:09 utc | 43

I totally agree with Jim IRT the bornagains. They are everywhere and have this heavy duty buzz on all the time. Reminds me of the Jesus freak in one of the Cheech and Chong skits who said “I used to get messed up on drugs, now I get messed up on the Lord”

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 3 2005 22:53 utc | 45

Well, if i was stuck in iraq i would be scrambling to get some drug in me and my pee.

Posted by: stoy | Feb 3 2005 22:57 utc | 47

doh! guess i would have to shoot my foot then.

Posted by: stoy | Feb 3 2005 22:59 utc | 49

or act crazy and do what Brewster did in “impossible vacation”: stuff my briefs w/ choc pudding and then reach in and eat it (in front of an officer). rip spalding grey

Posted by: stoy | Feb 3 2005 23:03 utc | 51

training ditty from boot camp:
throw some candy in the school yard,
watch the children gather round;
take out your M-50,
mow them little bastards down
a lot of military indoctrination — like the “seasoning” of girls by pimps and madams — is about breaking the social defences of the personality by making the appalling normal, repeating gross violations of the subject’s moral code or upbringing until the individual “moral compass” is lost and the subject is re-oriented to the new prevailing reality. I don’t think this technique differs much in its essence from “re-education camp” or other brainwashing methods — the purpose is to sever emotional and moral ties with the prior community or family and force a kind of bonding (in subjection) to the authoritarian hierarchy in which the subject is now located.
forcing the subject to “piss on” (figuratively or literally) cherished icons or standards of civil behaviour is one step in severing him from those icons or standards, causing him to feel either “tainted” so that there is no going back to previous family/community ties, or (depending on the sociopathy of the individual) to feel “liberated” from “all that sissy stuff” and happy to be free to kill and hate without remorse.
it generally works, too, thanks to Stockholm Syndrome and primate needs for group/tribal approval. it is a rare human being who can resist and preserve authentically individual or familiar values when repeatedly forced to violate them, symbolically or actually, in a context where conformity in this violation is rewarded and stubbornness is punished and derided. the chant above serves to bend, in words and by coarse laughter, the ultimate taboo against killing children — and to invoke the reptilian or mammalian enthusiasm for killing “the Children of the Other.”
what would be the response of the squad leader and squaddies to the soldier who spoke up to say, “Sir, permission to speak Sir, I think that is a very cruel and barbaric chant Sir! and I didn’t sign up to slaughter children Sir!”…? how much misery would that troop be put through over the rest of the boot camp experience? I don’t know and can’t tell, but my guess is that it would take more courage to challenge the brainwashing than the average person could muster.
the brutal misogyny/homophobia of “drill sergeant” language tells its own tale.
we are malleable, heaven help us…

Posted by: DeAnander | Feb 3 2005 23:34 utc | 53

@dan of steele:
I was reading Max Hastings book Armeggadon recently. It is about the last 9 months of WWII. Neither the Allied armies in NW Europe in 44-45 or the German army had any respect for the masters of the head shot(snipers). Scopes were primitive, and the recoil tended to leave a bruise around the eye.Nobody took these guys prisoner alive. If they surrendered with the mark, they were dead.
In what I have seen of interviews and articles about our people using the sniper rifles in Iraq, they enjoy their work a very great deal. It is vey sad if people really get to the point where they enjoy killing other people.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Feb 4 2005 0:17 utc | 55

I am considered a bit of a tinfoil nutter by some of my friends because I honestly believe there is covert gov’t support for increasingly realistic militarised video games — actually not so covert any more as the military is actually commissioning and releasing its own branded games (do I get to say I told you so yet?). the boot camp process is starting earlier and earlier, or perhaps we should say that parental attempts at socialisation and civilisation of boychildren is being actively sabotaged…?
“The battle of the Gulf was won on the playing fields of Nintendo” as someone quipped back in Bush War I. nothing new under the sun: most British boys’ schools during the heyday of Empire were military training academies in all but name, modelling a quaint C19 paramilitarism in the organisation into sports teams, dormitories, and age hierarchies, focussing obsessively on Roman military history in Latin class, etc. it wasn’t just Sandhurst. Kipling’s “Stalky” stories give an insight into the era, and I think there is a scholarly book called The Games Ethic and Imperialism or something like that. the literature is full of the tears of mothers watching their sweet and loving little sons carted off to “have men made of them,” to be turned into the officers and functionaries of Empire.
I say again that children in all cultures learn by doing smaller versions of the adult activities they will be expected to take up later in life. we teach our children to play video games, to watch hundreds of hours of TV, to play with toy cars and other consumer goods, to play at war with elaborate war toys and shooter games (if male) and to play at being comfort-girls (makeup and “Porn Star” brand clothing for 7 year olds) if female… by what we train our children for, what we allow and encourage them to practise, we reveal what we plan for our society’s future, what we expect for our kids. different families will emphasize different toys and games for kids, some will have very different aspirations. but the dull dead centre of our culture increasingly moulds our little boys as future cannon fodder or stormtroopers, and our little girls as future hookers — or willynilly breeders of more cannon fodder (mustn’t let them have access to abortion, that would reduce the number of poor and unwanted kids for the recruiters to collect)… it’s all so drearily Spartan, with the additional layer of plasticky corporate cheapness overall… [gloomy here]

Posted by: DeAnander | Feb 4 2005 1:30 utc | 57

Christians in Combat Boots
A few quotes:
“We take the basic principles that are Christian and basic principles of warfare and we merge them,” he said. “Our enemy is Satan. Our weapon is not an M-16, it’s the Bible. We’re trying to get them to be warriors for God.”
“One of the reasons I chose the Marine style over other military branches is that almost anything they say you could replace the word ‘Marine’ with ‘Christian,'” Hestand said.
The idea that Christian men must be reshaped is straight from Eldridge’s “Wild at Heart,” which argues that man’s wild heart is a mirror of God’s and that man’s three natural and worthy desires are to: fight a battle, live an adventure and rescue a beauty.
I wonder whether Jesus would have made it through boot camp.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Feb 4 2005 1:55 utc | 59

Oh sorry! I thought this thread was about….
Never mind.
I’ll just leave…….

Posted by: John Wayne Bobbitt | Feb 4 2005 2:02 utc | 61

My two cents: I grew up in middle-class America. I’m still in my twenties now—I wasn’t around for the last draft, and neither was anyone else in my generation.

I don’t know anyone who grew up poor and joined the army because it was the only option. Everyone I know of my generation who went into the military, without exception, went into it because they were borderline psychotic. Not a single normal one in the batch. Every last one of them was Mattis in miniature, ready to go to Abu Ghraib and join in the fun. Although some of them were probably filtered out, some of them must be progressing through the ranks. And you can bet that they won’t promote anyone who doesn’t share their perspective, either. The U.S. military is filled with mentally damaged people, and it’s probably only going to get worse.

The one coherent argument in favor of a modern draft is that it would dilute the supply of these pinheads.

Posted by: Blind Misery | Feb 4 2005 3:20 utc | 63

Juan Cole has an excellent comment on this.
T.E. Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia,” was tortured and almost driven mad when he realized he got a thrill from shooting a man dead. His sadistic pleasure in killing Ottoman troops in Syria seems to have been wrought up with his rape by an Ottoman officer who thought him a Circassian Jordanian rather than a British secret agent. At one point he writes in Seven Pillars of Wisdom about how beautiful the dead Ottoman soldiers looked in the moonlight, lined up straight, after a battle.
One of the reasons that the Neoconservatives are wrong that unilateral war can be used for good, for spreading democracy, is that war brings out the worst in human beings, making some of them sadists and racists. Sometimes it is necessary to fight a war to defend oneself. An elective war is always a mistake. It twists one’s own society, and someone else’s as well.
Just as few priests are pedophiles, few soldiers are sadists. Mattis has brought dishonor on the US Marine Corps with his words. Killing is never appropriately called “fun.” I think he should resign.

Posted by: DM | Feb 4 2005 20:55 utc | 65

@mistah charley – yeah, thanks a lot! read Billmon’s quotes, then his link to the script for Apocalypse Now. Never get any work done these days. Now I’ve got to got to the video store.

Posted by: DM | Feb 4 2005 23:01 utc | 67

retired cia operative george white years ago shared his own personal sense of hoot (or some call it candor) in personal letter to boss sid gottlieb:

I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steak rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest? [source]

Posted by: b real | Feb 4 2005 23:21 utc | 69

@ Clueless Joe,
Ender´s Game is a good book.
Totally unrelated, my brother is named Mattis. It is a rather uncommon first name in swedish (derivative of Mattias) which can be given to both girls and boys. How it ended up as a last name of an american Marine Lt. Gen. is unknown to me, but I bet it is some scandinavian ancestry somewhere in his family tree.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Feb 5 2005 3:15 utc | 71