Imperial Grunts

I finished Imperial Grunts. In the book, author Robert Kaplan gives a superb overview of the current state of U.S. Special Forces and Marines. Travelling from the plains of Mongolia to the jungles of Colombia he gives the reader a great feel for the life of these soldiers. Something that kept popping into my head as I read the book was George Orwell's quote that "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." Indeed, I think the quote is mentioned in the book, maybe more than once.

These truly are rough men who are fiercely proud, patriotic and seem to relish their jobs. This seems pretty typical of the attitude encountered by Kaplan in the book:

While I was lying in my sleeping bag, one of the Renegades, Cpl. Michael Pinckney of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, came up to me and began to talk: "I'm twenty-three. My generation sucks. They're all soft. They don't care about their identity as Americans. We live in some bad-ass country, and they're not even proud of it. My family flies the flag, but other families don't. Nobody knows what it means to be American anymore, to be tough. I like being home and yet I don't. People at home are not proud of us being in Iraq, because they've lost the meaning of sacrifice. They expect things to be perfect and easy. They don't know when things go wrong you persevere; you don't second-guess. During OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom)-I, we all slept in the rain and got dysentary in Ad-Diwaniyah. But back home, everyone is going to shrinks and suing each other. That's why I like the Marine Corps. If you f*** up, your sergeant makes you suck it up. I don't want to be anywhere but Iraq. OIF-I and OIF-II, this is what manhood is all about. And I don't mean macho s*** either. I mean moral character."

Indeed, Kaplan goes on to add that "Despite news reports of low morale in the armed services because of overdeployment, with Army Special Forces and the Marines I had met only two kind of troops: those who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those who were jealous of those who were."

I interpret all of this as just futher validation of the all volunteer military. Agree or disagree with the sentiment expressed by the soldiers, but you have to be glad they're the ones on the front line instead of some conscript.

Beyond providing insight into the life of some of the U.S.'s most elite troops, Kaplan also raises a few issues in the book worth pondering. The first is the impact of bureaucracy on the special forces. When Operation Enduring Freedom kicked off, special forces were inserted into Afghanistan and basically given a license to do what they had to to overthrow the Taliban. Within months it was accomplished, with these forces hooking up with Afghan warlords to direct precision airstrikes, growing beards to blend in and even participating in a cavalry charge. Now if they get a tip on an arms cache they have to submit paperwork to approve any raid that can take three days for approval. Of the roughly 18,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, 5,000 are at Bagram Air Base in support functions. Of course, this tooth vs. tail issue has been noted elsewhere.

Another interesting observation is the divide between the U.S. military and the media. Members of the media tend to be graduates of elite schools in the Northeast. Members of the military from the Northeast are disporportionately few. Each one has a culture that the other doesn't understand, or maybe even cares to. Those from New England often view members of the military as a refuge for losers who couldn't hack it in regular life, while the military see the media as immoral and clueless.

Indeed, Kaplan says that many times when he was embedded with troops they would be initially cool towards him, figuring that he was just another "f***ing left-wing journalist." You can see the results of this for yourself. As blogger James Taranto recently noted, perhaps the media should start asking themselves "Why do they hate us?"

Something else I noticed in the book was the number of soldiers who said things to the effect of "Thank goodness for the military. If I hadn't joined the Marines, etc. and gotten some discipline I'd probably be back at home running around with a bad crowd and would be jail right now." I've long believed that the military is the federal government's best program for turning around the lives of troubled kids -- especially those from low-income and minority backgrounds -- and providing them with discipline and an economic ladder. Kaplan's book seems further validation of that. Curious then that the military is perhaps the most despised government institution by many on the left.

I'll conclude with this excerpt, which got me thinking for a number of different reasons:

Most of Staff Sgt. Dick's men were still in their teens, yet they told their Iraq stories to me in the manner of old men talking to their grandchildren. "Iraq made me want to go home and apologize to all the people I had ever been an asshole to; it made me see myself from the outside for the first time," said Richard Cabrera, a twenty-one-year-old corporal from Riverside, California.

Nineteen-year-old Ty Ogden of Sarasota Springs, New York, told me of how an Iraqi girl had come up and given him a flower, which he stuck in his helmet. "The Iraqis were always so nice to us," said another nineteen-year-old tattooed lance corporal, Jeremy Kepner of Utica, New York. "In the morning they brought us fresh tea and pital bread, which we traded for MREs. When we finally got home on leave it was weird. Our old friends suddenly seemed so immature, so naive."

En route home from Iraq, the ship docked in Lisbon, Portugal, for four days. For Lance Cpl. Kepner and most of the others, it was the first time that they had been to Europe. "After months at Camp Lejeune, Kuwait, and Iraq, Portugal blew our minds," he reflected. "The women were so beautiful, the people so polite and well-dressed -- not like Americans. The buildings were old, like a castle. It made me think. I want to go to college after my enlistment is up."

Maybe joining the military -- or going to war -- has a way of making some people see what matters.