thedrifter
06-11-06, 08:32 AM
June 11, 2006, 3:15AM
HoustonChronicle
Stress, rage, lack of sleep may have set off Marines
Experts try to explain why war atrocities occur
By DAVID WOOD
Newhouse News Service
WASHINGTON - While the specifics have yet to emerge in the alleged killing of 24 civilians by U.S. Marines last fall, it is clear that troops in Iraq are laboring under enormous stress that can intensify feelings of helplessness and rage and sap their ability to make moral judgments, military psychiatrists say.
Typically, there are too few Marines for the enormous job of providing security, meaning they endure long bouts of extremely high-risk operations with insufficient sleep.
Ethical and moral judgments are performed by the brain's frontal lobes, where the emotions are centered, said Dr. Jonathan Shay, a Veterans Administration psychiatrist who advises top Marine Corps leaders on issues of combat stress. "And sleep is the gas that makes the frontal lobes go."
Marines often lose friends in ambushes or bombings by unseen insurgents.
And in contrast to past conflicts, they suffer casualties in unpredictable clusters: a sniper's bullet or suicide bomber can as suddenly strike a seasoned and alert sergeant or colonel as a greenhorn private.
At issue are reports that members of 3rd Battalion 1st Marine Regiment, led by an experienced staff sergeant, went on a killing spree after one in their unit was killed in a bomb blast during a routine patrol in Haditha, a dusty town in Al Anbar province west of Baghdad.
None of the experts who agreed to discuss the incident said the extreme conditions in Iraq could excuse the killing of innocent civilians. But they sought to understand how such an atrocity might happen.
A lesson on values
The military's first response was to dispatch senior leaders to lecture soldiers and Marines in Iraq on what Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who commands all U.S. and allied ground forces there, called "core warrior values," including "moral and ethical standards on the battlefield."
In a message to all Marines, Gen. Michael Hagee, Marine Corps commandant, acknowledged that counterinsurgency operations in Iraq have been difficult and bloody.
"The effects of these events can be numbing," he wrote. "There is the risk of becoming indifferent to the loss of a human life."
Hagee urged Marines to recognize that honor means "uncompromising personal integrity ... the moral courage to do the 'right thing' in the face of danger or pressure from other Marines."
But such messages may be off the point and even insulting to troops who know right from wrong, expert observers said.
"There is clear evidence that young Marines today do not want to be murderers," said Shay. "The question is why sometimes does this happen?"
U.S. forces have endured years of vicious attacks in Haditha, including one in August in which insurgents wired together three 155 mm artillery shells and blew up a 28-ton armored amphibious vehicle, killing 14 Marines.
That same month, insurgents ambushed and killed a six-man Marine sniper team, later boasting of the attack on a video that featured shots of the Marines' weapons and dog tags.
Carrying 'shame, guilt'
Among combat Marines, "there is always a significant load of shame and guilt," said Navy Capt. Bill Nash, a psychiatrist who heads the Marine Corps' combat stress program. "A Marine feels guilt over surviving an event when someone close to him didn't, self-reproach for not having done something, not having raised his weapon faster or seen the sniper in the window."
Lack of sufficient sleep can exacerbate the reaction to these stresses.
"I would bet you will find the footprints of extreme sleep loss in not only the junior enlisted Marines but especially in their leaders at all levels," Shay said.
Discipline and devotion
The Marine Corps is legendarily tough on discipline. From the first seconds of a recruit's collision with his drill instructor, uncompromising discipline is the single recurring principle that runs through a Marine's life. So does the concept of brotherhood or love, the bond that binds Marines and is so strengthened in combat that some refer to it as a mothering instinct: the willingness to sacrifice oneself so the other will be safe.
When that drive is frustrated — when a Marine believes he failed to protect the comrade killed by a remote-detonated bomb — there can be an explosive impulse for revenge and to recapture lost honor, Shay said.
"If you have killed my buddy, you have stolen my honor, and the only way I can restore it is to kill you," he said. "This is a very widespread and strongly conserved cultural pattern, and many people either just feel it or are led to it by their leaders."
Ellie
HoustonChronicle
Stress, rage, lack of sleep may have set off Marines
Experts try to explain why war atrocities occur
By DAVID WOOD
Newhouse News Service
WASHINGTON - While the specifics have yet to emerge in the alleged killing of 24 civilians by U.S. Marines last fall, it is clear that troops in Iraq are laboring under enormous stress that can intensify feelings of helplessness and rage and sap their ability to make moral judgments, military psychiatrists say.
Typically, there are too few Marines for the enormous job of providing security, meaning they endure long bouts of extremely high-risk operations with insufficient sleep.
Ethical and moral judgments are performed by the brain's frontal lobes, where the emotions are centered, said Dr. Jonathan Shay, a Veterans Administration psychiatrist who advises top Marine Corps leaders on issues of combat stress. "And sleep is the gas that makes the frontal lobes go."
Marines often lose friends in ambushes or bombings by unseen insurgents.
And in contrast to past conflicts, they suffer casualties in unpredictable clusters: a sniper's bullet or suicide bomber can as suddenly strike a seasoned and alert sergeant or colonel as a greenhorn private.
At issue are reports that members of 3rd Battalion 1st Marine Regiment, led by an experienced staff sergeant, went on a killing spree after one in their unit was killed in a bomb blast during a routine patrol in Haditha, a dusty town in Al Anbar province west of Baghdad.
None of the experts who agreed to discuss the incident said the extreme conditions in Iraq could excuse the killing of innocent civilians. But they sought to understand how such an atrocity might happen.
A lesson on values
The military's first response was to dispatch senior leaders to lecture soldiers and Marines in Iraq on what Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who commands all U.S. and allied ground forces there, called "core warrior values," including "moral and ethical standards on the battlefield."
In a message to all Marines, Gen. Michael Hagee, Marine Corps commandant, acknowledged that counterinsurgency operations in Iraq have been difficult and bloody.
"The effects of these events can be numbing," he wrote. "There is the risk of becoming indifferent to the loss of a human life."
Hagee urged Marines to recognize that honor means "uncompromising personal integrity ... the moral courage to do the 'right thing' in the face of danger or pressure from other Marines."
But such messages may be off the point and even insulting to troops who know right from wrong, expert observers said.
"There is clear evidence that young Marines today do not want to be murderers," said Shay. "The question is why sometimes does this happen?"
U.S. forces have endured years of vicious attacks in Haditha, including one in August in which insurgents wired together three 155 mm artillery shells and blew up a 28-ton armored amphibious vehicle, killing 14 Marines.
That same month, insurgents ambushed and killed a six-man Marine sniper team, later boasting of the attack on a video that featured shots of the Marines' weapons and dog tags.
Carrying 'shame, guilt'
Among combat Marines, "there is always a significant load of shame and guilt," said Navy Capt. Bill Nash, a psychiatrist who heads the Marine Corps' combat stress program. "A Marine feels guilt over surviving an event when someone close to him didn't, self-reproach for not having done something, not having raised his weapon faster or seen the sniper in the window."
Lack of sufficient sleep can exacerbate the reaction to these stresses.
"I would bet you will find the footprints of extreme sleep loss in not only the junior enlisted Marines but especially in their leaders at all levels," Shay said.
Discipline and devotion
The Marine Corps is legendarily tough on discipline. From the first seconds of a recruit's collision with his drill instructor, uncompromising discipline is the single recurring principle that runs through a Marine's life. So does the concept of brotherhood or love, the bond that binds Marines and is so strengthened in combat that some refer to it as a mothering instinct: the willingness to sacrifice oneself so the other will be safe.
When that drive is frustrated — when a Marine believes he failed to protect the comrade killed by a remote-detonated bomb — there can be an explosive impulse for revenge and to recapture lost honor, Shay said.
"If you have killed my buddy, you have stolen my honor, and the only way I can restore it is to kill you," he said. "This is a very widespread and strongly conserved cultural pattern, and many people either just feel it or are led to it by their leaders."
Ellie