Junger writes: "As a society, we may be disgusted by seeing U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters, but we remain oddly unfazed by the fact that, presumably, those same Marines just put .30 caliber rounds through the fighters' chests. American troops are not blind to this irony."
Author and 'Restrepo' film director Sebastian Junger at the Restrepo outpost in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan in 2008. (photo: sebastianjunger.com)
We're All Guilty of Dehumanizing the Enemy
14 January 12
he video that emerged in recent days appearing to show four U.S. Marines urinating on several dead Taliban fighters has outraged many people in this country. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have condemned the act, the military has promised an inquiry, and some experts are even suggesting that the act could qualify as a war crime.
Mainly, however, people seem simply to not understand it. Why would America's warriors - for that matter, why would anyone - urinate on a dead body?
I spent a year, off and on, with a platoon of U.S. soldiers in the Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan. There was a lot of fighting, a lot of casualties and an enormous amount of stress on the men I was with. I never saw anyone do anything like this, but then again, I never saw any dead Taliban fighters - the enemy always recovered their casualties before we could get there.
Nevertheless, the things the soldiers shouted during combat were very revealing of the state of mind that war produces. (For the record, I'm sure the Taliban was screaming pretty much the same things about us.) At one point a Taliban fighter had his leg shot off during a firefight and was crawling around on the hillside, dying, and the men I was with cheered at the sight. That cheer deflated me. I liked these guys tremendously, but that celebration was just so ugly. I didn't want them to be like that.
Later, I asked one of them about it, and he explained that they had been happy because they were that much closer to all going home alive. They weren't cheering the enemy's death; they were cheering their own lives. That particular fighter would never again be able to kill an American soldier.
In a statement issued Thursday, Gen. Jim Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, said that "the behavior depicted in the video is wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history."
Yet, I can't imagine that there was a time in human history when enemy dead were not desecrated. Achilles dragged Hector around the walls of Troy from the back of a chariot because he was so enraged by Hector's killing of his best friend. Three millennia later, Somali fighters dragged a U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu after shooting down a Black Hawk helicopter and killing 17other Americans. During the frontier wars in this country, white Americans routinely scalped Indian fighters, and vice versa, well into the 1870s.
The U.S. military should be held to a higher standard, certainly, but it is important to understand the context of the behavior in the video. Clearly, the impulse to desecrate the enemy comes from a very dark and primal place in the human psyche. Once in a while, those impulses are going to break through.
There is another context for that behavior, though - a more contemporary one. As a society, we may be disgusted by seeing U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters, but we remain oddly unfazed by the fact that, presumably, those same Marines just put bullets through the fighters' chests. American troops are not blind to this irony. They are very clear about the fact that society trains them to kill, orders them to kill and then balks at anything that suggests they have dehumanized the enemy they have killed.
But of course they have dehumanized the enemy - otherwise they would have to face the enormous guilt and anguish of killing other human beings. Rather than demonstrate a callous disregard for the enemy, this awful incident might reveal something else: a desperate attempt by confused young men to convince themselves that they haven't just committed their first murder - that they have simply shot some coyotes on the back 40.
It doesn't work, of course, but it gets them through the moment; it gets them through the rest of the patrol.
There is a final context for this act in which we are all responsible, all guilty. A 19-year-old Marine has a very hard time reconciling the fact that it's okay to waterboard a live Taliban fighter but not okay to urinate on a dead one.
When the war on terror started, the Marines in that video were probably 9 or 10 years old. As children they heard adults - and political leaders - talk about our enemies in the most inhuman terms. The Internet and the news media are filled with self-important men and women referring to our enemies as animals that deserve little legal or moral consideration. We have sent enemy fighters to countries like Syria and Libya to be tortured by the very regimes that we have recently condemned for engaging in war crimes and torture. They have been tortured into confessing their crimes and then locked up indefinitely without trial because their confessions - achieved through torture - will not stand up in court.
For the past 10 years, American children have absorbed these moral contradictions, and now they are fighting our wars. The video doesn't surprise me, but it makes me incredibly sad - not just for them, but also for us. We may prosecute these men for desecrating the dead while maintaining that it is okay to torture the living.
I hope someone else knows how to explain that to our soldiers, because I don't have the faintest idea.
Sebastian Junger, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of 'War' and the director of the 2010 film 'Restrepo,' both of which chronicle the experiences of U.S. troops fighting the war in Afghanistan.
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The only way to get rid of this crap mentality floating around the Mulim world now is to let them have their crap government and when they get good and sick of it...it will change...and if the US interferes we will drive them right back to a crap government. The crappy world we live in now is the result of stupid Americans that want instant good government in these places. We need to quit pretending that Islam is not screwed up right now AND we need to quit pretending that we can fix it.
Some years ago, I tried to watch a video of marines training. I could not sit through it.
The first thing they do is destroy whatever that person holds sacred and rebuild them. They are deliberately and systematically dehumanized themselves after which it becomes much easier to dehumanize the other. A few do survive that process.
In WWi, only one-in-ten soldiers deliberately shot to kill. In WWII it was 1: 7. In Korea , 1:5 and in Viet Nam i:3. In Afghanistan today it's nearly 1:1.
These increases are due to two primary factors;
1, A DOD command has been formed in which PR scientists (propagandists) are used extensively to condition our soldiers (read: sons, brothers, boyfriends, fathers, etc) )for the horrors awaiting them in combat. "Killing is just a game and everyone can be a winner. (These men are NEVER de-brainwashed,)
2. Our video games which emphasize the violent annihilation of both humans and non-humans IS a game, and winning is a virtue. Current DOD training methodically transposes this pre-existing "it's only a game" mentality into the "real world" wherein anyone who does not instantly blow away a perceived threat is a threat to himself & his unit.
In this "real world", boo-boos - one's misjudging friend-for-foe or women & kids for combatants - are written of as "collateral damage due to friendly fire", hidden from our pussy-whipped press and officially forgotten.
Those who do not forget these incidents are called tragic survivors: parents, friends, loved ones . . . or in the case of the soldier who realizes what he has done, another suicide.
morality, and spiritual evolvement has been superceded by our advances in technology, weaponry and mass media, and by our nation's obsession with material goods and power and begins and ends with greed.By placing a higher value on external objects of desire rather than innate ideas abd intrinsic values and benefits; the people are becoming more and more dehumanized which happens when you dehumanize others,
We are not going to survive when the oil runs out, millions, indeed billions will die when that happens, simply because the energy required to maintain our support systems, will not be available then. So why are we wasting our time and resources, fighting over dwindling resources which will only continue to dwindle, even if deployed for western benefit?
We need energy, plainly and simply! The energy we need is available from the sun, but to collect it efficiently, we need to put the solar collectors in space. Not on earth where they subtract from the environments energy supply, while gathering energy less efficiently.
Energy is the most critical problem we face, whether anyone wants to believe it or not. We have the means and sufficient resources to start increasing our energy supply, but the clock is ticking. That capacity will sunset all too quickly if we do not move.
...And we need a new form of governing ourselves which does not include military force, except in the rarest of occasions, in the most circumscribed circumstances, such that no dehumanizing need be done much at all.
Why can't our military trainers do the same?
Ah well, since it's only an ugly little part of human nature, why not look the other way? Is it a good idea to let hurtful behavior go unchallenged, particularly in those who represent our country abroad? But you ask: what's so hurtful about what they did? What if your dead son was in that picture?
And just to keep you informed: we still kill and butcher animals to eat.
We are not doing a very good job of it, for a very good reason. Our leadership can't see giving those people rights like ours, when those people have no idea about them, and it would cause the cost of production there to rise.
Capitalism is geared to take maximum advantage of ignorance, since that produces the largest/easiest profits. So you don't "pull the coats" of the ignorant, because they are seen as resources. Since we advantage ourselves of the same thing here, why should there be any different? As long as war and killing is seen as an affordable cost of doing business, we fight!
I object to the degrading, gender specific pejorative. Better the press were big dicks that would "stand up" against the propaganda?
De-humanization takes many forms, doesn't it.
Just remember the creature in the prison photos from abu Gareb. And the "Bitch of Belsen." (nice leather lampshades anybody?), and Liz 1 from bloody ole....? One can go on about these folk, but I've made my point.
Some people refuse to become soldiers, and some soldiers refuse to dehumanize others. That a great many young people are led astray by the propaganda of the empire is not to say that everyone is.
The 'we are all guilty' line, regardless of the sort of horror or inhumanity referred to, is just an excuse for not thinking critically and paying attention to ethics and morality -- just the sort of thing I would expect from the Washington Post, mouth of the empire.
Certainly many people with mostly good intentions can be led astray through deception, or by carelessness, but when awareness penetrates their minds they need to deal with that, not nestle in comfy excuses provided by that imperialistic propaganda.
If you do wrong, recognize it, and find a way to prevent doing it again -- "Go and sin no more" as the religion says. Lacking that we shall never grow or escape this horror.
That's because NEITHER action is OK. It's sad that the lesson STILL needs to be learned.
When, indeed, will the American People wake up... to the reality of what Our Government, controlled by Corporations and Banks (Those 'Legal People') has perpetrated, for decades, upon this planet, in the name of 'Freedom', 'Spreading democracy', etc.
It is High Time for this Horrific Tide to turn.
When will we see, recoil in Horror, and throw all these SOB's out of office and out of Power.
Pissing on the dead? Irrelevant, in the face of Murder and Mahem
But a good analysis nevertheless, especially for the likes of me who has never been in a war for capitalism and have been an anti-war activist all my life, ironically getting into some scraps with cops and been jailed for it -I got my scrapper instincts out partially on the rugby field and in some stupid bar and other brawls but have never suffered post-conflict desire to desecrate anybody.
For a supreme example of this, read about the Sand Creek Massacre of a sleeping band of peaceful Cheyenne men, mostly women and children by a certain Colonel Chivington's Colorado volunteers and of course Wounded Knee (1).
And Vietnam, and so on.
As pointed out, history is littered with this kind of thing but the supreme irony is that the US, UK and allies "of the willing" always take the moral high ground to justify invasions and Empirical ambition over other nations and when "Pax Empirica" is resisted, murder the local population indiscriminatel y in massive quantities -including non-combatants, women and children- to subdue the invaded before taking over their lands and resources for their capitalist masters.
Go to a Veterans for Peace meeting for further truths by those who have faced this and turned against the whole concept of war and invasion. Historical ref', Major General Smedley Butler's "War is Just a Racket".
Exactamento, Bev! No one in the DOD or government cares about a few wet corpses, the problem is that someone took pictures which went viral worldwide . . . and embarrassed our DOD & its neocons.
Why do you think that the DOD has an "embedded press" which keeps on a very short leash? Just to prevent jut this sort of thing from happening.
Two sort-of-similar situations come to mind:
1. The first man tried and convicted for the Abu Grahab scandal wasn't a participant! He was the man with with the camera. Clearly, if it weren't for m him, all of this could hav been avoided! As it was, hey threw the book at him!
2. Bradley' Manning is said to have released the brutal, obscene video of unarmed men and their would-be rescuers being mercilessly gunned down in the street. The video went viral and as a result, DOD went ballistic. He was later charged w/releasing a large catche of relatively inane (embarrassing) diplomatic memos. For all of this Maning has already been tortured with cruel & unusual punishment and he is now facing a General Court Martial which could sentence him to death . . . for embarrassing the military & its neocons.
Daniel Ellsberg won because he was a PhD w/connections. Not so with poor enlisted Bradley Manning!
prayer where they ask GOD to forgive them not only for their own wrongdoing but for the sins of humanity.
It's true enough that everyone individually, is responsible for acting morally, but to say 'we are all guilty' is to absolve any and all individuals, where no one is more guilty than anyone else -- and that leads to anomie, which is where we are fast going.
The 'relativistic ethics' (mis-characterized here) you worry about is what happens when 'we are all guilty' because 'we are all human'. 'We are all guilty' is anathama to individual responsibility, or any possibility that a person can mindfully lead a moral life, and resist evil -- it is the excuse of 'everybody does it'. Well, not everybody DOES do it, but even if everyone else did that doesn't mean you or I have to (like Mom traditionally says about jumping off the roof).
Thank you, Sebastian Junger
And how about the fact that Junger admits he "liked these guys tremendously", thereby admitting to liking mass-murderers (and liking mass-murder whether he knows it or not)?
Talk about cognitive disconnects! Most people, particularly "Americans", don't put two and two together properly or fully; or they won't do so, or put it verbally or in writing at least, because they don't want to be called "unpatriotic", etc.
So, by not putting that "two and two together", or by remaining silent about it, we condone mass war crimes and war criminals, and are complicit in those war crimes.
Well, I for one will NOT remain silent about it, in any way condone it, and/or be at all complicit in it, no matter how much I am condemned by the brainwashed and the falsely "nationalistic" and/or "patriotic".
The last 4 paragraphs of his essay are an attempt to explain the state of mind of soldiers, but also the way they are raised, which he might not have been capable of had he not joined in with them and paid attention to the lives of kids in the warring climate of the U.S. Why does that make him "disgusting"?
Yes, we have an all volunteer military, but consider how it is most of those kids end up in that military. That does not excuse immoral behavior, but it does explain it and the fact that the U.S. is breeding an endless war machine for an agenda beyond all of us.
I was a year younger when I went to Germany for the last 7 months of combat and managed to escape the dehumanizing. Maybe because I could never accept the reality of my situation and the situation in general and was fortunate enough to be able to shoot over the Germans heads without being close enough to get shot
If you believe that & support that view, then every Nazi soldier who ever committed a war crime after Germany illegally invaded and occupied various countries prior to & during WWII also must be forgiven for what they did.
This is all BS. If one were to sit down and think long & hard enough, one can almost always come up with some twisted & perverse & warped rationalization as to why a soldier (or soldiers) would, at least in their own minds, rightfully commit such heinous acts in a theater of war.
Why RSN would allow such an article like this to be posted in the 1st place, one that attempts to fully justify these acts of cruelty & vindictiveness & hate, an article whose author won't even admit or concede that these acts are wrong & immoral, is beyond me.
If you accept the arguments in this article, then the U.S. could commit genocide on a massive scale in Afghanistan and Iraq and it would all be okay.
The question is whether a person has the ability -- the personal power -- to act morally in the face of pressure. The related question is whether a person is to be subjected to collective guilt -- and collective punishment -- for whatever acts other who may be designated as 'his group' commits.
What of the whistleblower, for example? Is he to be condemned as much as those who acted badly because he was part of the group, at some point, who acted badly? Must someone leave a group rather than speaking out and seeing to his own behavior (love it or leave it)? Is it futile to resist evil, since one is to be appropriately judged guilty regardless of his actions?
For me, it's not even a question of being punished or forgiven, but of being able to act independently, think for oneself, dissent and resist evil, and be responsible, and learn and grow, as an individual, even in the face of conditioning and propaganda by imperialistic power.
If people are to be assumed to have free will and the ability to do evil, then they must also be accorded the ability to resist evil and do good.
I know, beyond the shadow of any doubt, based on the actual evidence collected on 9/11 in the form of photos & videos among other evidence, that 9/11 was a false-flag event perpetrated by the Bush admin in order to justify every criminal act perpetrated by this country since. Having said this, I have to state the following:
Every death of an Iraqi or an Afghan or a Pakistani as a result of these illegal acts of aggression by the U.S. for world empire, whether it be a militant fighting us or an innocent victim of so-called collateral damage, is murder, pure and simple. The people who are fighting us are simply doing what we would be doing if we, the U.S., were illegally invaded & occupied, fighting to rid themselves of an illegal occupying force. And, as far as the innocent victims of these illegal wars are concerned, what can I say? These are war crimes and crimes against humanity.
For U.S. troops to piss on the dead bodies of people who are actually indigenous to these countries or remove their body parts in order to collect trophies to show proudly to their friends, there can be absolutely no excuse for it at all. These men who pissed on these bodies must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law in the very same way we would prosecute foreign fighters for pissing on American bodies.
My comments about Sebastian Junger were tongue in cheek concerning being a traitor. It was an illustration of perception: with the Marines maybe makes one too sympathetic. With the local citizens, perhaps makes one a traitor to the U.S., as happened during Vietnam.
I disagree totally with all that has ensued as a result of the advent of the neo-con agenda, most especially under George W. Bush, but the likes of Sebastian Junger does not represent that agenda.
At least, the people that planned and executed that invasion are still on the loose and living the good life.
1. Deprive of human qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility: slaves who had been dehumanized by their abysmal condition.
2. Render mechanical and routine.
I argue it is not only the soldiers fighting these wars that are dehumanized; it includes us, the citizens of the United States, deeply afflicted with this grievous and tragic and destructive tendency of our species.
The U.S. of America has been dehumanized by it own wars, forcing us to barley pay attention to all the killing and dying. I say dying because this article - Piss on War: Death, Desecration, and Afghanistan - http://gawker.com/5875468/piss-on-war lists the names of the nine additional dead soldiers the Department of Defense announced during the same week the urination, hthat outraged everyone happened. I was outraged at the urination story until the above listed article gave me a reality check.
We’ve been (dehumanized) to believe that we cannot do anything about wars but accept a fantasy it will go away and not involve us too much. Or worse keep some contrived fear stuck in the back of our subconscious rendering us a most pathetic group of citizens unable to do anything but just survive.
We are not powerless to stop this bullshit; the force of politics and war that presently keeps us in an abysmal condition and lumbering toward the destruction of our ability to be what every sane human wants to be; human.
But soldiers are trained to view the enemies of the US as "sub-humans." Thus all of the dehumanization is in the heads of the soldiers and political leaders who are doing the brutalizing, killing, and pissing.
The analogy here is rape. The victim in not de-humanized, but the rapist is. His actions are felt to be anti-human or less than human. We expect better from human beings. It is the same with racism and the use of racist epithets. The word "ni**er" says nothing about an african american. But it says a great deal about the person who uses it. It is what he thinks.
So the actions here don't say anything about the Taliban. They are all about the marines. They are what is in the minds of the marines, and it is not very human or humane. It is sub-human. Someday when they are no longer marines, they will recover their humanity. Let's hope so.
It's longer than most documentaries but you can stop it any time. It's a great start. It's the way 99% of the people think & feel.
It's only maybe 1% who rationalize they are acting for the rest of us? They are only fooling themselves for a short time in their lives. As soon as the false patriotic adrenalin wares off they begin to understand.
Give to the 99% this election season. Every time you feel the need to donate, make it a donation to the OWS movement in your area. Rational people need your help.
Think of what all the trillions used for war can do for poor disaffected youth. We can have a world class education system but instead these kids end up in prison or as cannon fodder for the rich who sponsor these wars.
Probably if you had told any of these US soldiers they would someday urinate on dead "enemies" they would have not believed you. Lee Loe, Houston, TX Grandmother for Peace
I think it starts with the oxymoron that there can be such a thing as a "lawful" war, an "ethical" war or a "moral" war. Bullsh.. when people quit trying to sanitize the inhumanity of war, we'll stop having wars.
I hope they court martial the lot of them. Or give them dishonorable discharges. I don't care how much you hate Taliban members (the enemy), every soldier/guerrilla, etc. is some mother's son. The desecration of one person's life only diminishes the humanity of the perpetrator.
Bless you. There are a few among us who still celebrate this, and have the courage to think and act this way.
Jared Loughner did a horrible thing - while under the influence of his psychotic mind. He is a victim of an inept mental health system where it someone to the brink of killing someone else before they are treated - and often it has to cross the line to have committed an actual act of violence before they get treated. Rep. Giffords understands this and was seen comforting the Loughners. This is how we should be, more like Rep. Giffords..
www.paulslegacyproject.org
BUT NO MATTER HOW MANY AFGHANIS ARE KILLED WE AREN'T LEAVING ALL OF THAT MINERAL WEALTH TO THE AFGHANIS.
"Achilles dragged Hector around the walls of Troy from the back of a chariot because he was so enraged by Hector's killing of his best friend. Three millennia later, Somali fighters dragged a U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu after shooting down a Black Hawk helicopter and killing 17other Americans. During the frontier wars in this country, white Americans routinely scalped Indian fighters, and vice versa, well into the 1870s"
1. Have we stooped as low as that? Isn't it enough that we already won the "war" years ago and are now merely occuppying a non-cooperative country filled with mineral wealth and subhumans?
2. Ancient warriors killed their enemies face to face with blades, not from miles away. They smelled the enemy's blood and heard the enemy scream as it died, up close. They didn't have such an overwhelming military advantage.
CONT.
3. We don't crucify people, impale people, burn people at the stake, capture slaves, or gather by the thousands to watch them be eaten by lions anymore.
I'm suggesting that's a good thing, and probably a step in the right direction. Yet, by your logic, we could justify ALL of those things once again.
I guess the real mistake was in having the Nurenburg Trials, right?
Oh yea you were doing absolutely nothing......
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