THE ENTIRE PHILOSOPHY OF FORMING MARINES RESTS ON THE
CONCEPT OF DOUBLE-THINK, A LA ORWELL'S 1984. THIS CONCEPT FOLLOWS THE
RATIONALE THAT IF ONE CAN BE CONVINCED TO ACCEPT TWO SIMULTANEOUSLY
CONTRADICTORY CONCEPTS, THE RESULT IS A CONTROLLABLE PERSON. FOR
EXAMPLE, MARINES ARE TRAINED, AS HAVE SOLDIERS SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL,
TO SEE THEMSELVES AS KNIGHTS IN SHINING ARMOR, WHOSE SOLE PURPOSE IN
LIFE IS TO DEFEND HUMAN LIFE, WHILE ON THE OTHER HAND, THEY ARE
CAPABLE OF COMMITTING, AND INDEED, ARE ENCHANTED WITH THE IDEA OF
COMMITTING, THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF ATROCITIES AGAINST OTHER HUMAN BEINGS.
THEY CALLED US "NATURAL BORN KILLERS", AFTER THE OLIVER STONE FLICK
ABOUT TWO SERIAL KILLERS WHO EXHIBITED A LUST FOR KILLING AT RANDOM.
WE WOULD SING SONGS THAT RELISHED IN THE POSSIBILITY OF KILLING AND
RAPING NONCOMBATANT WOMEN AND CHILDREN, WATCHING KIDS BURN ALIVE FROM
NAPALM, AND LURING SCHOOL CHILDREN TO THEIR DEATHS WITH CANDY. WE
ANSWERED EVERY COMMAND WITH THE WORD, "KILL!!" WE WATCHED MILITARY
BATTLE FOOTAGE IN FAST FORWARD WITH METALLICA'S "FOR WHOM THE BELL
TOLLS" (IRONICALLY, AN ANTI-WAR SONG) IN THE BACKGROUND, ALL THE WHILE
STOMPING OUR FEET AND SCREAMING WITH BLOOD LUST.
My friends warned me prior to boot camp that I would be "brainwashed,"
a concept I feared, with ideas in my head about kidnap victims being
mentally warped into submission. Boot camp was not like that at all. I
felt little fear during my "brainwashing" (or, for our purposes here,
my double-think indoctrination). The process is indeed gut wrenching
for some, but for me (and most others, I believe), the mental process
of submission was relatively painless. Boot camp is controlled chaos,
with the all-powerful drill instructors at the helm. They control
everything you do, from the order and speed of getting dressed, to the
way you eat, sleep, and use the bathroom, to the way you walk, to the
way you talk, to the way you sit, to the way you stand, to the way you
worship, to the amount of water you drink, and so on, until you only
do and think what is ordered of you, which usually comes in the form
of shouts and shoves. At a certain point, you lose that nasty civilian
trait of individuality mentioned by your recruiter, and you accept,
nay, enjoy, the fact that you under their control. You signed on the
dotted line, you came here of your own free will, it makes sense to go
along to get along. It's as simple as that for most of us who joined,
whereas many of those who didn't make it could not rid themselves of
that burdensome consciousness that told them something wasn't right
with this.
I submit my first experience as a Catholic as an example of the
arbitrary nature of control exhibited over recruits by drill
instructors, which serves the function of reinforcing submission to
authority during indoctrination. I was not a Catholic before boot
camp, and am not a Catholic now. In fact, I have never been religious,
save for my twelve weeks of boot camp. This was not of my own
volition, mind you, but the day came when the platoon was told divide
into Catholics and Protestants (no room in our platoon for Jews,
Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or any other religion), and I was left
standing by myself in the center of the squad bay. A muscular, ugly
drill instructor with horrid breath charged at me and yelled, "What
the fuck is your religion, White?!!" "This recruit is not religious,
sir!" I responded. "Is that right? No wonder you're so fucked up (He
had selected me as the platoon leader, or, "guide", two days before)!
You know what?! You're a fucking Catholic! Now get your fucked up ass
over there right now!" Military explicitly states that you can
exercise whatever religion you choose, and if you are not religious,
you can spend your hour of worship in the squad bay. That did not
exist in our platoon, and although I have met Marines who were able to
go to other services outside of Christianity during their boot camps,
I have also met others who have been discouraged or hassled about
being non-Christian.
This is only a small issue, but it represents much of Marine Corps
culture. Don't stray from the mainstream. You are not you anymore. You
are part of a machine. The young Marine no longer needs to submit to
authority after indoctrination precisely because they have achieved
double-think, which works primarily as a mechanism for control on the
battlefield. This does not necessarily translate into a submissive
mind outside the realm of battle. The Marine Corps is full or troops
who despise their military as well as political leadership, but
because double-think has succeeded in boot camp, they are controllable
during battle, regardless of their political or moral views, on the
whole. Witness the soldiers interviewed for Michael Moore's new film,
Fahrenheit 9/11. In one seen, soldiers are playing with a dead Iraqi
body, and in the next, you have a soldier asking for Donald Rumsfeld's
resignation.
Indoctrination techniques come in many forms, usually unnoticed by the
recruits because of the chaos surrounding them as well as the fact
that they actually desire to become Marines, just as they come to
desire being under the control of the Marines. For example, just as
slaves were often forced to refer to themselves in the third person,
so are Marine recruits. Marine recruits in my company had to say,
"this recruit", in place of "I". So, instead of saying, "May I use the
bathroom?" we would say, "This recruit requests permission to use the
head, sir!" Whenever one of us would say "I", we were ordered to jab
our eyeballs with our fingers over and over, repeating the word "eye".
There was your physical "eye", but no longer the personal "I". Thus,
one of the same techniques used for keeping slaves subordinated lives
on in the United States Marine Corps, who are the "first to fight" for
the defense of the "free" world.
The Marine cannot be produced in any other way than to have this
double-think mentality embedded in his/her psyche, especially in
today's world of aggressive imperialistic militarism. Without it, how
else could they convince people to risk their lives for such
unnecessary wars, such as has not only been the case for the vast
majority of our nation's history, but throughout human history as
well? One can always argue that certain sides of wars have been
justifiable in the past, but the amount of times state militaries have
invaded for false or downright imperialistic reasons surpasses the
"justifiable wars" by many multiples, and will continue to stain human
societies until we begin to confront our values as human beings, with
the goal of avoiding war until it is a last resort.
Chris White, a former Marine Sgt who served from 1994-98, is currently
working on his PhD in history at the University of Kansas. He is a
contributor to CounterPunch's new history of the last decade of war,
Imperial Crusades. He can be reached at:
juliopac@swbell.net
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