> 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
But the wording that was objected to was that Marines were somehow more damaged or fragile persons than other members of the armed service or even civilians. That's BS. I could write a good deal on what's wrong with the military but it isn't all bad and I don't think it's much worse than what is wrong with most of our society. Seems like most men who beat their wifes never join the military. Most men who rape were never in the military. Most sociopaths who kill without remorse didn't learn to in the Marines or the Army. Most CEO's who cut corners at the expense at the environment and everyones health didn't learn to do that in bootcamp.
The Army has sadists and so does the Navy and Air Force. Teaching kids to kill is going to be harmful for a certain number of them. The biggest failure in this area on the part of the military is that they don't take responsibility for the ones whose minds they fucked up. They just discharge them for medical reasons, wash their hands of them, and then let society deal with them however they wish. Generally the military tries to weed them out of the enlisted ranks but tends to promote many of them in the officers ranks. It might be interesting to study why this is so.
The 2nd Marine Division has a much smaller percentage of assholes than the 3rd Division. That has to be directly related to the officers rather than the enlisted men. How would sadists know to specify the 3rd when enlisting? The 3rd makes them in higher proportion than the 2nd. The courts martials and discharge records more than mere suggests this is true and not just an apocryphal tale. The fault for the noticeably higher rape and assault rates must lie with the commanders of the 3rd rather than something inherent in the Marine Corps since the 2nd's is no different than interbranch average IIRC. The 3rds rape and assault rate rises and falls with changes in the personnel of its command structure.
I think that, just as was your case, military experience has a politicizing effect on all recruits. Few enlisted men are ambivilent politically. They may not all be leftists but perhaps in greater proportion than amoung real estate agents?
The military doesn't exist outside of our society, it is part of it. Civilians tell the military where to go and who to fight. If left primarily to military decision makers the US would have no troops currently in Iraq.
John Thornton