[lbo-talk] Hersh on Bush & Iran

[Dennis Perrin]

> My late father in law, one of the most honorable,
> gentle, and decent men I have ever known -- and
> utterly respectful to women -- was a Marine in World
> War II. He'd volunteered before the war for the same
> reason that kids volunteer now, because he was poor
> and the service was a job. His unit was the first
> posted to Pearl Harbor aftyer the attack. He fought
> through some of the worst battles of the Pacific, and
> never talked about it. I have no doubt that he saw and
> maybe did things that were unspeakable; he had
> nighmares about the war until he died a few years ago.
> I have never known anyone who hated war more than he
> did, and he wasn't a pacifist either. But he was
> always proud, for all that, to have been a Marine --
> prouder of that than to have been the first in his
> family to go to college or to have been one of the
> first Jews at Princeton -- the Marines sent him there.
> Assholes? Sadistic temperments? I've seen lots of
> those in university professorships and big law firms.
> Don't talk to me about the Marines.

Well, your argument is with Robert Towne and the late Hal Ashby, who worked 
on "Last Detail." I merely quoted from the screenplay.

I'm sure there were/are very nice Marines, and I knew a few when I was in 
the service. But I also knew some real --yes-- sadistic assholes, and that's 
drilled into them from boot on. It was drilled into us in Army boot, and 
there were some sadistic fucks there was well. That's what the military 
does, by and large -- tap into that violent core. My Drill Sergeant told us 
this all the time, that his job was to erase our civilian minds and develop 
our warrior minds. And as boot went on, the deeper this appeal went, getting 
us to scream and yell about the possibility of spraying commie guts all over 
the battlefield. Fortunately, I never saw the real shit. Of course, this was 
post-Vietnam, so nobody did.

I will say this about the service -- it politicized me. It's where I read my 
first leftwing literature. It made me a socialist. The military is a complex 
place, and it affects people differently, for good and ill. I'm glad to hear 
about you late father-in-law, and God bless him (no sarcasm). But don't tell 
me that there are no sadistic assholes in uniform. I was there. Indeed, I 
felt the pull for a time.

Dennis