Nowhere did I, nor would I ever depict US Marines, Airmen, Seamen, Solders, Seals, Green Beret, etc.... as rabid baby killing moleters or anything close to that. I have more respect for a person who dons a military uniform than just about any other occupation. Don't confuse my regrets for the thoughts I had in my AirForce days for regretting serving my country (even though I'm a Canadian, so it's not technically 'MY' country). Oh contrair, I was proud to serve in the military, and continue to take pride in that fact.
My regrets stem from how low I aloud my respect for certain ethnic groups to get during that time. When I mention the 'hate machine', I'm not accusing the US military or the President or a secret group of Generals behind closed doors somewhere plotting a campaign to turn us into zombies ready to put a bullet into anyone with a towel on their head. There is no one source that I would ever point to and blame for the way we thought... the way I thought. I'm not making accusations of Dr. Evil brainwashing all of our troops. Its far more subtle then that, and a lot less intentional I guess... it comes from the general atmosphere we lived in. First of all most of us were 18, 19 & 20 years old and in the military. So at the base of the fire you have a bunch of young men full of testosterone, ego's, pride, and all that hyper energy that comes with being 19 years old and just coming into our own as young men. No more home made breakfasts from mommy or living under daddy's roof. We were on our own, eager to prove ourselves. Prove that we were worth our salt. All we needed was a little direction.
Some of the kindling on the fire was the alcohol we had access to. On base if you had a military I.D. you could buy alcohol. For most of us this wasn't our first experience with alcohol, but none of us had drank LIKE THAT!!! Right along with all that testosterous driven desire to prove we were men, came the drive to prove we could hold our liquor... and not let anyone drink us under the table! When I got to Tinker AFB they had just recently integrated the base with the Navy's AWACS squadron. So every night we went to the NCO club or the Airman's lounge we had to prove we could out drink them Navy boys! To put it plainly, the vast majority of us had high BAC levels most of time, day-in and day-out. So we weren't usually thinking quite as clearly or logically as we could/should have been.
One month after I graduated Tech school and arrived at Tinker Iraq invaded Kuwait. Footage of the atrocities immediatelly flooded the network news stations. American as a nation was shocked, those of us at Tinker AFB (I won't speak for anyone else since I wasn't anywhere else to witness the aftermath... Although I would assume the effects were fairly consistent throughout most military intallations) by and large developed an intense hatred for not only Saddam Husane (or 'So-Damn Insane' as we affectionally called him) and his military, but for Iraqi people in general. But it wasn't just the network news fueling the fire. We were shown much more graphic material. Very disturbing images of unthinkable things happening over there. Our opinions of those who were responsible for those images we saw fell lower and lower. Anytime we talked about the situation over there, which was constantly, our disission was always that sending a few nuclear warheads over there and obliterating every living thing in that vacinity was by far the best move our President could and should make.
All of the conditions I listed are components of the 'hate machine'. It isn't any 1 thing, or anyone's master plan that creates this fury. Its the entire environment we lived in that took people like me who went into the Military without an ounce of hate for anybody, anywhere... into someone so enraged and bent on avenging those poor victims in Kuwait, that I, along with everyone I knew personally, eagerly voluntered to go over to Saudi Arabia to do whatever we possibly could do to help exterminate any and all Iraqi citizens.
That kind of enthusiasm is invaluable in a war effort. We were ready and more than willing do anything and everything we were asked to do to aid in the war effort. Two weeks after the invasion, we started mobilizing. The official stance of the US for months was that we were 'considering' military action in response to the invasion of Kuwait. However those of us in Air Transportation anyway, knew two weeks after the fact that military action wasn't just being considered... It was immenent. For the next five months we worked 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week. I voluntered for 'mobilization' four times. During a 'mobilization' drill they work you up to 36 hours straight loading C5 Galaxy cargo planes. C5's were landing every 5 to 10 minutes. We would bust our asses loading them with everything our military needed over there to launch a sucessful military campain. And like I said, the complete distain we held for the enemy fueled the fire to work as hard as we could, for as long as we could. When we added up all the hours we were working divided by our pay scale, we were making less than $2 dollars an hour for our service. But you could not have paid a group of people $100 dollars an hour and gotten any more production out of them. Our attitudes had nothing to do with money.
Was our enthusiasm towards our duties in part paid for with images that brought out so much emotion in us that we would do just about anything to make sure they got what was coming to them? I can't speak for anyone but myself of course. But looking back I would say in part, definately.
Now, don't take that to mean that I no longer feel the people responible for the atrocities I was shown didn't deserve to die. I just wouldn't lump every man, woman and child from the same country as deserving the same fate as the soldiers who commited the unspeakable acts in those photo's/video's. And now it strikes me as being just a little on the odd side that of all the crimes against humanity being waged against citizens just as innocent and undeserving as those Kuwaities during that same period of time around the rest of the world ... Those were the only innocent people we seemed to give a shit about. Yes I do still support our actions during that campaign... I just wonder we never even heard about some of those other atrocities. That was before the internet, or 24 hour news channels. I never heard about the situation in Rwanda until the movie came out. And while watching that movie I wished we could have sent a peace keeping force to keep those children safe while fleeing the violence that erupted around them. Hell I know our military can't be all places at one time, it just makes me wonder how we choose which innocents to save and which to ignore.
My comments about soldiers being trained to follow orders came from the Marine recruitor that trained me while I was in the Marine depo program during high school. At the start of my senior year I actually enlisted with the US Marines and went once a month to the depo training programs PT. The machine gun nest example was the example he gave us in describing the way (as he told it) military training in basic training stripped away everything we'd basically learned all of our lives, and reprogramed us to react to commands more like a robot would than a normal citizen.
"Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to do and die".
As he explained it by midway through basic we would/should be completely relient on our D.I.'S every command to function. Only in the last two weeks did they build you back back up and give you back your ability and confidence to make decisons on your own again. This was the fall of 1988, spring of 1989. But I can't confirm that this was necessarily the way things went down in Marine basic training because I ultimately switched over to the AirForce. And AirForce BT isn't nearly as intense. They definately do break you down in AF boot camp, but not to the same degree.
So, without pretending to know what goes through every soldiers mind, that was exactly how the hate machine spun my own personal beliefs around on me during my military days. I can remember having conversations with my parents about my opinions that we should just make the Middle East a nuclear wasteland instead of sending out troops over there and putting them in harms way. They were shocked, reminding me that I'd been raised better than to make such large gerneralizations about any ethnic or religeous groups. All I could think to myself was, "oh if you only knew what I knew. If you had seen what I've seen, THEN you would understand". But I have since put things back into perspective. I let my youth, my impressionability, my misguided eagerness and a whole lot of tequila and beer confuse my feelings towards a select few people and spread those feelings over an entire ethnic culture.
For that, I am sorry.
