November 6, 2016


News and Views


THEY’RE NECK AND NECK AT THE LAST STRETCH. “MOVE YER BLOOMIN’ ARSE, HILLARY!”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-trump-even-in-ohio-and-florida-two-days-before-election-cbs-poll/

Clinton, Trump even in Ohio and Florida two days before election - CBS poll
CBS NEWS
By Anthony Salvanto, Jennifer De Pinto, Sarah Dutton, Fred Backus and Kabir Khanna
November 6, 2016, 9:30 AM


In Ohio and Florida the races are tight and the trend line is toward Donald Trump. Trump has the narrowest of leads - up one point in Ohio, and Florida is even. Trump’s most likely electoral map all but requires him to win both these states, in addition to others.

bt-ohio.jpg
bt-florida.jpg
Trump has won over voters who were previously unsure, though there weren’t many such voters to begin with. In Florida, Trump benefits from slightly increased partisan support: the level of Republican support for Trump has risen from 82 percent to now 86 percent. Ninety-one percent of Florida Democrats were supporting Clinton and still are.

Five days to go - presidential race tightens - CBS/NYT poll
Fifty-three percent of Florida voters describe Clinton as “part of what’s wrong with politics today.” Only 36 percent describe Trump that way, and more – 43 percent - see him as entirely separate from politics today, neither part of what’s right nor wrong.

Everything you need to know about the Electoral College

In Florida, Clinton is up in the preferences of those who report voting early, Trump is up with those who plan to vote on Election Day. This might be an advantage to Clinton in the end – as these votes are in the bank - but Trump’s self-reported planned Election Day vote is a large lead, so strong turnout could ultimately propel him.

Clinton is up with college women overall but down from last month with white college women. Ohio’s self-described independents have seen a swing. They support Trump now, whereas they narrowly supported Clinton in October. The trait that’s moved for Trump among them is the economy -- among independents, more now say he can fix the economy than did in October, while for Clinton, among independents, these views have dropped from early October. Clinton’s honesty ratings are also down among this group, and the number who say she “would look out for people like me” is also down.

This CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker is a panel study based on 2,377 interviews conducted on the internet of registered voters in Ohio and Florida Nov 2-4, 2016. The margin of error for Florida is +/- 3.6 and for Ohio is +/- 4.1

CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll: Methods, Nov. 6, 2016 by CBS News Politics on Scribd



FOR MORE STATISTICS THAN I CAN COPE WITH, GO TO WEBSITE.

So here we are at the nail biting stage, with the Trumpites threatening violence if they lose (because the election was rigged), and the Hillaryites crying softly, fearing that the loss will be theirs (ours) and wondering what it’s like in Canada. If only the Democrats would have wised up and put in Bernie, at least as Vice President, the situation probably wouldn’t look like this. If he lost, he would have lost with a bang! Not this whimper that I hear now (or is that whimper mine?).




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/todd-kohlhepp-case-bond-hearing-chained-woman-unveiled-as-alleged-mass-murderer/

Todd Kohlhepp case: Bond denied for man who chained woman, unveiled as alleged mass murderer
CBS/AP
November 6, 2016, 10:07 AM

Photograph -- Todd Kohlhepp SPARTANBURG COUNTY SHERIFF
Play VIDEO -- New details on woman held captive for months



WOODRUFF, S.C. - A South Carolina man accused of holding a woman chained inside a storage container was was [sic] denied bond Sunday after investigators say he confessed to an unsolved quadruple murder that happened 13 years ago.

Authorities have charged Todd Kohlhepp, 45, with four counts of murder in the deaths of four people in 2003 at the Superbike Motorsports motorcycle shop in Chesnee, South Carolina. His alleged role in those killings was uncovered, police said, after the woman was found earlier this week in a locked metal container “chained up like a dog” on Kohlhepp’s property in rural Woodruff.

Kohlhepp appeared before Magistrate Judge Jimmy Henson on Sunday for the brief bond hearing on the four murder counts. The issue of bond could be taken up by a circuit court later.

Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Kohlhepp declined to make a statement when offered the chance.

After Kohlhepp left the courtroom, Henson addressed the victims’ families, saying, “What you’ve gone through ... is beyond what a lot of people would understand.”

Kohlhepp’s arrest has put to rest for local law enforcement and the families of the victims a mystery that has haunted them for more than a decade.

“We got ‘em today. We got ‘em today. I’m rejoicing that this community can know that four people who were brutally murdered, there’s no wondering about it anymore,” Sheriff Chuck Wright said late Saturday night.

Kohlhepp is also charged with the woman’s kidnapping, and prosecutors say more charges are expected.

He’s also charged with the woman’s kidnapping, and prosecutors say more charges are expected.

A Spartanburg County Sheriff’s investigative report says Kohlhepp “confessed to investigators that he shot and killed” the owner, service manager, mechanic and bookkeeper of the motorcycle shop. “Kohlhepp gave details ... that only the killer would know,” the report says.

Authorities say Kohlhepp is a suspect in at least three other deaths.

Sheriff Wright says Kohlhepp also showed law enforcement officers Saturday where he says he buried two other victims on his 95-acre property near Woodruff. Kohlhepp, in handcuffs and wearing an orange jumpsuit, was at the site for less than an hour.

The sheriff would not say whether more bodies were found in the graves Kohlhepp led them to, but he did say they would be excavated, reports CBS Spartanburg affiliate WSPA-TV.

Those alleged grave sites are in addition to the body found Friday at the site. Wright and Coroner Rusty Clevenger identified that victim as 32-year-old Charles Carver, the boyfriend of the woman found Thursday.

Carver and the woman went missing around Aug. 31. Their last known cellphone signals led authorities to the property.

The Associated Press is not naming the woman because the suspect is a sex offender, though authorities have not said whether she was sexually assaulted.

Carver died of multiple gunshot wounds. An anthropologist is helping determine how long Carver was buried, Clevenger said. He declined to say how many times Carver had been shot.

The sheriff says it’s possible more bodies will be uncovered.

The wife of one of the 2003 victims said detectives told her Kohlhepp was an angry customer who had been in the shop several times.

Melissa Ponder told The Associated Press she was resigned that her husband Scott’s death would never be solved before getting a phone call Saturday evening from one of the case’s original detectives.

Detectives told family members of all four victims of the confession at the same time.

“He knew too much about the crime scene,” Ponder said of Kohlhepp’s account to detectives. “He knew everything.”

The Superbike killings stunned the Chesnee community, with rumors like they were committed by a Mexican drug gang or were part of a love triangle crushing the families of the victims.

Melissa Ponder is glad the rumors weren’t true.

“It isn’t closure, but it is an answer,” she said. “And I am thankful for that.”

Kohlhepp was released from prison in Arizona in 2001. As a teenager, he was convicted of raping a 14-year-old neighbor at gunpoint and threatening to kill her siblings if she called police. Kohlhepp had to register as a sex offender.

Fifteen years after he was released from prison for that crime, Spartanburg County deputies were brought to his property by the last known cellphone signals of two missing people. On Thursday, they found Brown chained in a container for two months. She told investigators that Kohlhepp shot and killed her boyfriend in front of her.

His prison stint didn’t stop Kohlhepp from getting a South Carolina real estate license in 2006 and building a firm.

Wright said “it’s strange” that Kohlhepp managed the pretext of a normal life for so long.

Scott Waldrop, who’s lived next door to the Woodruff property for nearly 22 years, said he thought Kohlhepp was a serious Doomsday “prepper” who liked his privacy, but “he didn’t seem like a threat.”

Waldrop said when he saw the container, it was full of bottled water and canned goods. After buying the property two years ago, Kohlhepp immediately started putting a chain link fence around it.

Waldrop said Kohlhepp paid him to put no trespassing signs, cut trees for him and other odd jobs around the property. Kohlhepp also installed deer cameras and put bear traps throughout.

“I was the only one he let over there, I think because I laughed at his jokes and listened to him,” he said. “I just hate to know somebody who’s done something like this.”

Kohlhepp has a house about 9 miles away in Moore, where neighbor Ron Owen said Kohlhepp was very private but liked to brag about how much money he made day trading online.



EXCERPT – “Kohlhepp was released from prison in Arizona in 2001. As a teenager, he was convicted of raping a 14-year-old neighbor at gunpoint and threatening to kill her siblings if she called police. Kohlhepp had to register as a sex offender. …. Those alleged grave sites are in addition to the body found Friday at the site. Wright and Coroner Rusty Clevenger identified that victim as 32-year-old Charles Carver, the boyfriend of the woman found Thursday. Carver and the woman went missing around Aug. 31. Their last known cellphone signals led authorities to the property. …. His prison stint didn’t stop Kohlhepp from getting a South Carolina real estate license in 2006 and building a firm. Wright said “it’s strange” that Kohlhepp managed the pretext of a normal life for so long. Scott Waldrop, who’s lived next door to the Woodruff property for nearly 22 years, said he thought Kohlhepp was a serious Doomsday “prepper” who liked his privacy, but “he didn’t seem like a threat.”


After reading many of these stories about insane killers, it is clear to me that they don’t look or act “like a killer,” most of the time, so people will overlook eccentricities or worse if they can relate to them in any way. One of the things I read a number of years ago about serial killers is that they are often “sociopaths” rather than truly “insane,” and that they have a smooth exterior. They are able to appear normal. Psychologists have a very complex way of defining the various kinds of mental illness, but to me a serial killer is not “normal” at all. It also appears to me that there are probably thousands of such people walking around unsuspected by their family and neighbors.

We humans are equipped with a built-in denial of the horrifying possibilities in order to be able to make it through life with a modicum of self-confidence. Certain things give a perfect “camouflage” for dangerous individuals, and religion is one of those. He was “a serious Doomsday ‘prepper.’” Now to me that in itself is a sign of some degree of mental illness; but then, I don’t view overt religiosity as virtue or a sign of health. It looks more like a form of obsession to me. To me, a person who is logical, gentle, ethical rather than fervently religious, and happily interested in the world is more likely to be mentally healthy. Anyway, I’m glad this man is in police custody, and likely to stay there.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/worst-president-ever-the-ignominy-of-james-buchanan/

Worst president ever: The ignominy of James Buchanan
CBS NEWS
November 6, 2016, 9:25 AM

Photograph -- james-buchanan-wheatland-exterior-620.jpg, James Buchanan’s Wheatland, in Lancaster, Pa. CBS NEWS
Book Cover Photograph -- worst-president-ever-cover-lyons-press-244.jpg, LYONS PRESS
Related: Dred Scott vs. Sandford (1857) (Cornell University Law School)
Photograph -- president-james-buchanan-and-cabinet-1859-620.jpg, President James Buchnan with his cabinet c. 1859. By the end of his administration Cabinet members from Mississippi, Georgia and Virginia seceded, along with their home states. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Photograph -- james-buchanan-wheatland-guide-betty-nauman-mo-rocca-620.jpg, Correspondent Mo Rocca with Wheatland guide Betty Nauman. CBS NEWS


Who among our presidents deserves the dubious distinction of being called WORST EVER? Mo Rocca tells us that, of all the possibilities there’s one who stands out:

James Buchanan was at Wheatland, his Lancaster, Pa., estate, when he was notified he’d been elected president in 1856.

It’s a gorgeous home, with one very special amenity, which Wheatland’s director, Patrick Clarke, showed Rocca: an outhouse for five.

“This is pretty unique,” said Clarke. “It has two adult seats, one for maybe a teenager, two for little kids. … This is the family that ‘goes’ together!”

“You could have a whole cabinet meeting in there!” said Rocca.

But ask historians where they rank our 15th president and, well, he’s in the proverbial toilet.

“Oh, he’s definitely the worst,” said author Robert Strauss. “The worst president ever.”

Which is also the title of Strauss’ book.

Buchanan had his detractors, like President Andrew Jackson, but not everyone hated him. After all, he was elected president in 1856. But this Northern Democrat’s sympathies with the slave-holding South exacerbated long-simmering tensions.

Under Buchanan, the country split apart, a crisis bequeathed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln.

Yet at Wheatland, they’re not quite so hard on the guy. When asked where he would rank Buchanan among the 43 men who have occupied the Oval Office, Patrick Clarke replied, “Probably 42nd.”

If Buchanan is remembered at all, it’s for being the “Bachelor President” -- the only president never to marry.

Rocca asked Strauss, “Let’s just get this out of the way right now: What was the deal with James Buchanan?”

“He did have a bad relationship early on,” Strauss replied. “His fiancé probably committed suicide based on --”

“Because he was gay?”

“Well, maybe so,” Strauss laughed.

Clarke says, “There’s no evidence to say that he was gay. But there’s no evidence to prove that he was a heterosexual, either.”

But there’s plenty of evidence that he knew how to throw a great party.

“He threw the best party of the middle part of the nineteenth century, the Inaugural Ball,” Strauss said. “Six thousand people show up!”

And Buchanan seemed worth celebrating, if only for having the greatest resume of anyone who’s ever run for president: “He served in both houses of the Pennsylvania State Legislature, served in both houses of the U.S. Congress, he was ambassador to Russia, ambassador to Great Britain, he was also Secretary of State,” said Strauss.

All of which raised high hopes at the beginning of his administration.

But, Strauss noted, “They were dashed pretty quickly.”

Only two days after his inauguration, the Supreme Court handed down the infamous Dred Scott decision, allowing that escaped slaves be forcibly returned to their owners.

Buchanan backed this decision. Slavery would be the country’s -- and his -- undoing.

“He feared that if you handled the issue of slavery too robustly, that it would create what he believed would be the end of the union, secession,” said Clarke.

And that’s exactly what happened. After Lincoln’s election but before his inauguration, seven states seceded while a politically-paralyzed Buchanan presided.

What was his reaction, once states started seceding?

“Well, his biggest reaction is his friends are leaving him, because many of his cabinet are Southerners,” said Strauss. “Many of his friends are Southerners.”

“So his biggest reaction is a personal one, like, ‘Guys, I thought we were all friends’?” Rocca asked.

“Yeah -- ‘I thought we were all friends!’”

The ensuing civil war would become known as “Buchanan’s war.”

So what did Buchanan get right? “Not much, to tell you the truth,” according to Strauss.

Upon leaving Washington, Buchanan is said have told incoming President Abraham Lincoln, “Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.”

“He said to friends and family alike, ‘I could well be the last president of these United States,’” said Betty Nauman, who has been giving tours of Wheatland for close to 30 years.

Still, at 91 Nauman doesn’t plan on abandoning Buchanan, or his home, any time soon.

“I think this house keeps me young,” she told Rocca.

Well James Buchanan did something right!


Playlist: More presidential history from Mo Rocca

For more info:

James Buchanan’s Wheatland, Lancaster, Pa. (lancasterhistory.org)
“Worst. President. Ever. James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents,” by Robert Strauss (Lyons Press).
James Buchanan at whitehouse.gov



EXCERPT – “It’s a gorgeous home, with one very special amenity, which Wheatland’s director, Patrick Clarke, showed Rocca: an outhouse for five. “This is pretty unique,” said Clarke. “It has two adult seats, one for maybe a teenager, two for little kids. … This is the family that ‘goes’ together!” “You could have a whole cabinet meeting in there!” said Rocca. …. “He did have a bad relationship early on,” Strauss replied. “His fiancé probably committed suicide based on --” “Because he was gay?” “Well, maybe so,” Strauss laughed. …. What was his reaction, once states started seceding? “Well, his biggest reaction is his friends are leaving him, because many of his cabinet are Southerners,” said Strauss. “Many of his friends are Southerners.” “So his biggest reaction is a personal one, like, ‘Guys, I thought we were all friends’?” Rocca asked.”


This is the most information on James Buchanan that I’ve ever seen, probably because he was considered a failed president, in that he did not stop the South from seceding, and the resulting disastrous Civil War ensued. Abraham Lincoln inherited the problem from him. He was also president when the Dred Scott Case was put forth by the Supreme Court, disallowing Dred Scott, a Negro born in slavery, to be given full citizenship and sue for his freedom, after being moved into a state in which slavery was illegal.

The interesting comment from the news article above that he was mainly aggrieved over the loss of personal friends when the Civil War began, rather than its’ effect on the American government. He sympathized strongly with the secession of the South, so he considered the Southerners to be his closest friends. There were also rumors at the time that he was gay. He was a more or less colorless character in a time of great need for strong leadership.

He seems to me to have been “temperamentally unsuited to the presidency,” as many people are now saying about Donald Trump, though for the opposite reason. Painfully, it is all too possible that Trump may win over Hillary in just a few days now. I am waiting “with bated breath,” because I have already done all that I can. I voted for Hillary a few days ago. I would cross my fingers for luck, but I can’t type that way.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbi-director-comey-says-agency-wont-recommend-charges-over-clinton-email/2016/11/06/f6276b18-a45e-11e6-ba59-a7d93165c6d4_story.html?tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&pushid=breaking-news_1478464315

FBI Director Comey says agency won’t recommend charges over Clinton email
By Tom Hamburger
November 6, 2016 at 3:29 PM

Photograph -- Clinton campaigns in Philadelphia on Sunday. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)


FBI Director James B. Comey notified key members of Congress Sunday afternoon that after reviewing all of the newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails the agency stands by its original findings against recommending charges.

Comey wrote that investigators had worked “around the clock” to review all the emails found on a device used by former congressman Anthony Weiner that had been sent to or from Clinton and that “we have not changed our conclusions expressed in July.”



I wish I could view this whole thing with something other than cynicism, but I really can’t. This Republican ploy for smearing Clinton is not only obvious, it’s silly, and now Comey has reneged, probably because he and Republicans knew they would be sued and exposed as fraudsters had they not recanted.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/06/donald-trump-just-got-another-very-rare-newspaper-endorsement/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na

The Fix
On the final Sunday before Election Day, Donald Trump collects rare newspaper endorsements
By Callum Borchers
November 6 at 10:35 AM

Video -- Clinton, Trump campaigns look for pathway to victory on Sunday before election Play Video2:30
Photograph -- Two days before the presidential election, surrogates for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump discussed the candidates’ chances on Sunday morning shows. (Video: Bastien Inzaurralde/Photo: LEFT: Melina Mara/The Washington Post)


This post has been updated.

Donald Trump collected three more newspaper endorsements on Sunday — nice pickups for a candidate feeling momentum near the finish line but also a reminder of just how rare it was for the Republican presidential nominee to earn a publication's support in this election.

The Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville, Bowling Green (Ky.) Daily News and Republican-American of Waterbury, Conn., joined a coterie of Trump-backing papers that includes the Las Vegas Review-Journal, owned by GOP mega donor Sheldon Adelson, and small dailies such as the St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press, Santa Barbara News-Press, Waxahachie (Tex.) Daily Light, Times-Gazette of Hillsboro, Ohio, and Antelope Valley Press of Palmdale, Calif.

Overall, the 2016 endorsement season was characterized by striking departures from tradition, as conservative editorial boards across the country overwhelmingly rejected the Republican Party's standard-bearer.

The San Diego Union-Tribune endorsed Hillary Clinton, marking the first time the paper has supported a Democrat for president since 1868. The Arizona Republic also backed Clinton, endorsing a Democrat for the first time in its 126-year history.

The Cincinnati Enquirer, noting it "has supported Republicans for president for almost a century," endorsed Clinton, as did the Dallas Morning News, even though it "has not recommended a Democrat for the nation's highest office since before World War II."

The State of Columbia, S.C., bestowed on Clinton its first endorsement of a Democrat in 40 years, and the Houston Chronicle's endorsement of Clinton was just its second for a Democrat in 13 election cycles.

Other right-leaning publications that could not bring themselves to endorse Clinton threw their support by Libertarian Gary Johnson, instead. The Chicago Tribune, Detroit News, Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal and Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch all backed the former governor of New Mexico.

The Florida Times-Union wrote that endorsing Trump was "anything but a comfortable call" but concluded that he is the best option in a field of flawed candidates.

America needs a major shake-up. There is only one presidential candidate with the will and ability to do it.

Donald Trump, despite all of his faults, is best suited to blow up the inbred corruption of the Washington-New York elites.



Bernie Sanders would have done a better job of “blowing up” the “inbred corruption,” and he isn’t even a far, far right sympathizer like Trump. And as for the following “peace agreement” email, I would have to see and read the whole thing to make up my mind on what is even being said. The phrases referenced look inconclusive to me; they don’t even say that the two had a pact, but that they want reporters to publish a story saying that. Besides, Sanders did promise early on in 2016 that he would not “become a spoiler.” Looks to me as though he’s just following up on that promise.

I still am staying out of the Democratic Party after Tuesday, whoever wins, and joining “Our Revolution.” They speak for the things that I believe in and very greatly care about. I’ve already given them some money and will probably set them up on a very small monthly draft from my account, such as $5.00. I can afford that much and it will help them, if enough others make similar donations. Both the two major parties at this point are too rich, too powerful, too conceited, and too corrupt. They need to be split, producing four major parties. That way they will have to break out of their “brand recognition” plan of campaigning, and compete again based on policies and issues instead. There are too many serious issues that I care about to keep playing this game over and over until I die.



http://nypost.com/2016/11/06/emails-show-sanders-made-peace-agreement-with-clinton/

Emails show Sanders made peace ‘agreement’ with Clinton
By Mary Kay Linge
November 6, 2016 | 12:56pm

Photograph -- Modal Trigger Emails show Sanders made peace ‘agreement’ with Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Photo: AP


Bernie Sanders’ insurgent primary battle against Hillary Clinton may have been just an act, leaked e-mails reveal.

A May 26, 2015, memo — among a batch hacked from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and newly released by WikiLeaks — cites an “agreement” between Sanders and Clinton that should have kept the Vermont senator from criticizing her wealth.

“This isn’t in keeping w the agreement,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook wrote to Podesta, referring to remarks by Sanders. “Since we clearly have some leverage, would be good to flag this for him.”

Sanders had made the supposedly offending critique during a CNBC interview in reply to a direct  question about Clinton’s fortune.

“When you hustle money like that, you don’t sit in restaurants like this,” he said. “I’m not going to condemn Hillary and Bill Clinton because they’ve made a lot of money. That type of wealth has the potential to isolate you from the reality of the world.”

Although far from scathing, the remarks were enough to spark a round of spinning and strategizing in the Clinton camp, the memo chain shows.

“Trying to get reporters to write that HRC and Bernie are actually in the same place,” staffer Christina Reynolds wrote. “We’re working on talking points for surrogates now.”

In December, a strategy memo — written a full two months before Democrats started voting in caucuses and primaries — presumed Sanders would endorse Clinton.

“Demonstrate unity through POTUS, Sanders, O’M and other endorsements,” Mook wrote in a “transition concept” outline meant to guide the campaign once Clinton clinched the nomination.

“O’M” refers to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who was still in the Democratic primary race at that point.

“Secondary objective will be communicating Democratic unity and using Sanders and others to help drive contrast and urgency,” Mook wrote.

Meanwhile, Sanders and Clinton held a joint conference call with millennial voters Saturday to shore up her support in a demographic that has still not warmed to her.

“The future of the planet is at stake,” he said.



HOW MILITARY MINDS ARE FORMED AND DESTROYED – TWO ARTICLES


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/reports-marine-corps-recruit-dies-parris-island-second-this-year/

Reports: Marine Corps recruit dies, second at Parris Island this year
CBS/AP
November 6, 2016, 11:54 AM

Photograph -- Recruits practice hurricane evacuation procedures June 24, 2015, on Parris Island, S.C. MARINECORPS/SGT. JENNIFER SCHUBERT


A Marine Corps recruit has died after being found unconscious in his bed in Parris Island, South Carolina, according to multiple reports.

The Marine Corps Times reports the recruit had been assigned to the 2nd Recruit Training Battalion at the Marine Corps’ East Coast training depot. Base officials said in a statement the recruit was found in his bed unconscious on Friday evening, and was pronounced dead sometime thereafter.

The recruit’s family has been notified, but the Marine Corps has not yet released official identification nor cause of death, reports The Island Packet.

“The circumstances surrounding the recruit death is under investigation,” base spokesman Capt. Greg Carroll told the publication.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service spokesman Ed Buice told the Island Packet that so far there are no signs of foul play.

In March, Raheel Siddiqui, a Muslim recruit, died after falling nearly 40 feet in a stairwell. The Marines claim he committed suicide amid a widespread culture of hazing and abuse in his battalion at Parris Island.

Siddiqui’s family disputed that finding, saying there’s a lack of evidence that the 20-year-old Taylor, Michigan, resident killed himself.

Regardless, the incident led to investigations into 20 officers and enlisted leaders at Parris Island, although the Marine Corps Times reports none of them have been charged, referred to court-martial or administratively disciplined.

The same drill sergeant who assaulted Siddiqui was already under investigation for an earlier incident in which he allegedly ordered another Muslim recruit into an industrial clothes dryer. The recruit told investigators two drill sergeants accused him of being a terrorist and demanded to know if he was part of 9/11. When the recruit denied he was working for a terrorist organization, the drill sergeants closed the dryer and ran it for about 30 seconds. They repeated that at least two more times, burning the recruit on his neck and shoulders. The recruit testified he could smell alcohol on the drill sergeants’ breath.

The Marine Corps Times reports that in addition to the two deaths this year at Parris Island, another recruit who suffered severe injuries after falling two stories off the recruit processing center only four days after arriving at the training depot on Oct. 28 remains in critical condition.



http://www.octobernight.com/matrix/addendum/Anybodys%20Son%20Will%20Do.htm

Gwynne Dyer:
“On War: Anybody’s Son Will Do”
from War: Past, Present, and Future.
1985

“‘... All soldiers belong to the same profession, no matter what country they serve, and it makes them different from everybody else. They have to be different, for their job is ultimately about killing and dying, and those things are not a natural vocation for any human being. Yet all soldiers are born civilians. The method for turning young men into soldiers-people who kill other people and expose themselves to death-is basic training. It's essentially the same all over the world, and it always has been, because young men everywhere are pretty much alike.

Human beings are fairly malleable, especially when they are young, and in every young man there are attitudes for any army to work with: the inherited values and postures, more or less dimly recalled, of the tribal warriors who were once the model for every young boy to emulate. Civilization did not involve a sudden clean break in the way people behave, but merely the progressive distortion and redirection of all the ways in which people in the old tribal societies used to behave, and modern definitions of maleness still contain a great deal of the old warrior ethic. The anarchic machismo of the primitive warrior is not what modern armies really need in their soldiers, but it does provide them with promising raw material for the transformation they must work in their recruits.

Just how this transformation is wrought varies from time to time and from country to country. In totally militarized societies-ancient Sparta, the samurai class of medieval Japan, the areas controlled by organizations like the Eritrean People's Liberation Front today1- it begins at puberty or before, when the young boy is immersed in a disciplined society in which only the military values are allowed to penetrate. In more sophisticated modern societies, the process is briefer and more concentrated, and the way it works is much more visible. It is, essentially, a conversion process in an almost religious sense-and as in all conversion phenomena, the emotions are far more important than the specific ideas....

‘When I was going to school, we used to have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day. They don't do that now. You know, we've got kids that come in here now, when they first get here, they don't know the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. And that's something - that's like a cardinal sin.... My daughter will know that stuff by the time she's three; she's two now and she's working on it.... You know, you've got to have your basics, the groundwork where you can start to build a child's brain from....

-USMC drill instructors,
Parris Island recruit training depot, 1981

That is what the rhetoric of military patriotism sounds like, in every country and at every level-and it is virtually irrelevant so far as the actual job of soldiering is concerned. Soldiers are not just robots; they are ordinary human beings with national and personal loyalties, and many of them do feel the need for some patriotic or ideological justification for what they do. But which nation, which ideology, does not matter: men will fight as well and die as bravely for the Khmer Rouge as for "God, King, and Country." Soldiers are the instruments of politicians and priests, ideologues and strategists, who may have high national or moral purposes in mind, but the men down in the trenches fight for more basic motives. The closer you get to the frontline, the fewer abstract nouns you hear.

Armies know this. It is their business to get men to fight, and they have had a long time to work out the best way of doing it. All of them pay lip service to the symbols and slogans of their political masters, though the amount of time they must devote to this activity varies from country to country. It is less in the United States than in the Soviet Union, and it is still less in a country like Israel, which actually fights frequent wars. Nor should it be thought that the armies are hypocritical-most of their members really do believe in their particular national symbols and slogans. But their secret is that they know these are not the things that sustain men in combat.

What really enables men to fight is their own self-respect, and a special kind of love that has nothing to do with sex or idealism. Very few men have died in battle, when the moment actually arrived, for the United States of America or for the sacred cause of Communism, or even for their homes and families; if they had any choice in the matter at all, they chose to die for each other and for their own vision of themselves....

The way armies produce this sense of brotherhood in a peacetime environment is basic training: a feat of psychological manipulation on the grand scale which has been so consistently successful and so universal that we fail to notice it as remarkable. In countries where the army must extract its recruits in their late teens, whether voluntarily or by conscription, from a civilian environment that does not share the military values, basic training involves a brief but intense period of indoctrination whose purpose is not really to teach the recruits basic military skills, but rather to change their values and their loyalties. "I guess you could say we brainwash them a little bit," admitted a U.S. Marine drill instructor, "but you know they're good people."...

It's easier if you catch them young. You can train older men to be soldiers; it's done in every major war. But you can never get them to believe that they like it, which is the major reason armies try to get their recruits before they are twenty. There are other reasons too, of course, like the physical fitness, lack of dependents, and economic dispensability of teenagers, that make armies prefer them, but the most important qualities teenagers bring to basic training are enthusiasm and naiveté. Many of them actively want the discipline and the closely structured environment that the armed forces will provide, so there is no need for the recruiters to deceive the kids about what will happen to them after they join.

There is discipline. There is drill.... When you are relying on your mates and they are relying on you, there's no room for slackness or sloppiness. If you're not prepared to accept the rules, you're better off where you are.

-British army recruiting advertisement, 1976

People are not born soldiers, they become soldiers.... And it should not begin at the moment when a new recruit is enlisted into the ranks, but rather much earlier, at the time of the first signs of maturity, during the time of adolescent dreams.

-Red Star (Soviet army newspaper), 1973

Young civilians who have volunteered and have been accepted by the Marine Corps2 arrive at Parris Island, the Corps's East Coast facility for basic training, in a state of considerable excitement and apprehension: most are aware that they are about to undergo an extraordinary and very difficult experience. But they do not make their own way to the base; rather, they trickle in to Charleston airport on various flights throughout the day on which their training platoon is due to form, and are held there, in a state of suppressed but mounting nervous tension, until late in the evening. When the buses finally come to carry them the seventy-six miles to Parris Island, it is often after midnight -and this is not an administrative oversight. The shock treatment they are about to receive will work most efficiently if they are worn out and somewhat disoriented when they arrive.

The basic training organization is a machine, processing several thousand young men every month, and every facet and gear of it has been designed with the sole purpose of turning civilians into Marines as efficiently as possible. Provided it can have total control over their bodies and their environment for approximately three months, it can practically guarantee converts. Parris Island provides that controlled environment, and the recruits do not set foot outside it again until they graduate as Marine privates eleven weeks later.

They're allowed to call home, so long as it doesn't get out of hand-every three weeks or so they can call home and make sure everything's all right, if they haven't gotten a letter or there's a particular set of circumstances. If it's a case of an emergency call coming in, then they're allowed to accept that call; if not, one of my staff will take the message....

In some cases I'll get calls from parents who haven't quite gotten adjusted to the idea that their son had cut the strings -and in a lot of cases that's what they're doing. The military provides them with an opportunity to leave home but they're still in a rather secure environment.

-Captain Brassington, USMC

For the young recruits, basic training is the closest thing their society can offer to a formal rite of passage,3 and the institution probably stands in an unbroken line of descent from the lengthy ordeals by which young males in precivilized groups were initiated into the adult community of warriors. But in civilized societies it is a highly functional institution whose product is not anarchic warriors, but trained soldiers.

Basic training is not really about teaching people skills; it's about changing them, so that they can do things they wouldn't have dreamt of otherwise. It works by applying enormous physical and mental pressure to men who have been isolated from their normal civilian environment and placed in one where the only right way to think and behave is the way the Marine Corps wants them to. The key word the men who run the machine use to describe this process is motivation.

I can motivate a recruit and in third phase, if I tell him to jump off the third deck, he'll jump off the third deck. Like I said before, it's a captive audience and I can train that guy; I can get him to do anything I want him to do.... They're good kids and they're out to do the right thing. We get some bad kids, but you know, we weed those out. But as far as motivation-here, we can motivate them to do anything you want, in recruit training.

-USMC drill instructor, Parris Island

The first three days the raw recruits spend at Parris Island are actually relatively easy, though they are hustled and shouted at continuously It is during this time that they are documented and inoculated, receive uniforms, and learn the basic orders of drill that will enable young Americans (who are not very accustomed to this aspect of life) to do everything simultaneously in large groups. But the most important thing that happens in "forming" is the surrender of the recruits' own clothes, their hair-all the physical evidence of their individual civilian identities.

During a period of only seventy-two hours, in which they are allowed little sleep, the recruits lay aside their former lives in a series of hasty rituals (like being shaven to the scalp) whose symbolic significance is quite clear to them even though they are quite deliberately given absolutely no time for reflection, or any hint that they might have the option of turning back from their commitment. The men in charge of them know how delicate a tightrope they are walking, though, because at this stage the recruits are still newly caught civilians who have not yet made their ultimate inward submission to the discipline of the Corps.

Forming Day One makes me nervous. You've got a whole new mob of recruits, you know, sixty or seventy depending, and they don't know anything. You don't know what kind of a reaction you're going to get from the stress you're going to lay on them, and it just worries me the first day.

Things could happen, I'm not going to lie to you. Something might happen. A recruit might decide he doesn't want any part of this stuff and maybe take a poke at you or something like that. In a situation like that it's going to be a spur-of-the-moment thing and that worries me.

- USMC drill instructor


But it rarely happens. The frantic bustle of forming is designed to give the recruit no time to think about resisting what is happening to him. And so the recruits emerge from their initiation into the system, stripped of their civilian clothes, shorn of their hair, and deprived of whatever confidence in their own identity they may previously have had as eighteen-year-olds, like so many blanks ready to have the Marine identity impressed upon them.

The first stage in any conversion process is the destruction of an individual's former beliefs and confidence, and his reduction to a position of helplessness and need. It isn't really as drastic as all that, of course, for three days cannot cancel out eighteen years; the inner thoughts and the basic character are not erased. But the recruits have already learned that the only acceptable behavior is to repress any unorthodox thoughts and to mimic the character the Marine Corps wants. Nor are they, on the whole, reluctant to do so, for they want to be Marines. From the moment they arrive at Parris Island, the vague notion that has been passed down for a thousand generations that masculinity means being a warrior becomes an explicit article of faith, relentlessly preached: to be a man means to be a Marine.

There are very few eighteen-year-old boys who do not have highly romanticized ideas of what it means to be a man, so the Marine Corps has plenty of buttons to push. And it starts pushing them on the first day of real training: the officer in charge of the formation appears before them for the first time, in full dress uniform with medals, and tells them how to become men.

The United States Marine Corps has 205 years of illustrious history to speak for itself. You have made the most important decision in your

life ... by signing your name, your life, pledge to the Government of the United States, and even more importantly, to the United States Marine Corps-a brotherhood, an elite unit. In 10.3 weeks you are going to become a member of that history, those traditions, this organization -if you have what it takes.

All of you want to do that by virtue of your signing your name as a man. The Marine Corps says that we build men. Well, I'll go a little bit further. We develop the tools that you have and everybody has those tools to a certain extent right now. We're going to give you the blueprints, and we are going to show you how to build a Marine. You've got to build a Marine-you understand?

-Captain Pingree, USMC

The recruits, gazing at him with awe and adoration, shout in unison, 'Yes sir!" just as they have been taught. They do it willingly, because they are volunteers-but even conscripts tend to have the romantic fervor of volunteers if they are only eighteen years old. Basic training, whatever its hardships, is a quick way to become a man among men, with an undeniable status, and beyond the initial consent to undergo it, it doesn't even require any decisions.

I had just dropped out of high school and I wasn't doing much on the street except hanging out, as most teenagers would be doing. So they gave me an opportunity -a recruiter picked me up, gave me a good line, and said that I could make it in the Marines, that I have a future ahead of me. And since I was living with my parents, I figured that I could start my own life here and grow up a little.

- USMC recruit, 1982

I like the hand-to-hand combat and ... things like that. It's a little rough going on me, and since I have a small frame I would like to become deadly, as I would put it. I like to have them words, especially the way they've been teaching me here.

-USMC recruit (from Brooklyn),
Parris Island. 1982

The training, when it starts, seems impossibly demanding physically for most of the recruits - and then it gets harder week by week. There is a constant barrage of abuse and insults aimed at the recruits, with the deliberate purpose of breaking down their pride and so destroying their ability to resist the transformation of values and attitudes that the Corps intends them to undergo. At the same time the demands for constant alertness and for instant obedience are continuously stepped up, and the standards by which the dress and behavior of the recruits are judged become steadily more unforgiving. But it is all carefully calculated by the men who run the machine, who think and talk in terms of the stress they are placing on the recruits: "We take so many c.c.'s of stress and we administer it to each man-they should be a little bit scared and they should be unsure, but they're adjusting." The aim is to keep the training arduous but just within most of the recruits' capability to withstand. One of the most striking achievements of the drill instructors is to create and maintain the illusion that basic training is an extraordinary challenge, one that will set those who graduate apart from others, when in fact almost everyone can succeed.

There has been some preliminary weeding out of potential recruits even before they begin training, to eliminate the obviously unsuitable minority, and some people do "fail" basic training and get sent home, at least in peacetime. The standards of acceptable performance in the U.S. armed forces, for example, tend to rise and fall in inverse proportion to the number and quality of recruits available to fill the forces to the authorized manpower levels. (In 1980, about 15 percent of Marine recruits did not graduate from basic training.) But there are very few young men who cannot be turned into passable soldiers if the forces are willing to invest enough effort in it.

Not even physical violence is necessary to effect the transformation, though it has been used by most armies at most times.

It's not what it was fifteen years ago down here. The Marine Corps still occupies the position of a tool which the society uses when it feels like that is a resort that they have to fall to. Our society changes as all societies do, and our society felt that through enlightened training methods we could still produce the same product-and when you examine it, they're right.... Our 100 c.c.'s of stress is really all we need, not two gallons of it, which is what used to be.4 ... In some cases with some of the younger drill instructors it was more an initiation than it was an acute test, and so we introduced extra officers and we select our drill instructors to "fine-tune" it.

-Captain Brassington, USMC

There is, indeed, a good deal of fine-tuning in the roles that the men in charge of training any specific group of recruits assume. At the simplest level, there is a sort of "good cop - bad cop" manipulation of the recruits' attitudes toward those applying the stress. The three younger drill instructors with a particular serial are quite close to them in age and unremittingly harsh in their demands for ever higher performance, but the senior drill instructor, a man almost old enough to be their father, plays a more benevolent and understanding part and is available for individual counseling. And generally offstage, but always looming in the background, is the company commander, an impossibly austere and almost godlike personage.

At least these are the images conveyed to the recruits, although of course all these men cooperate closely with an identical goal in view. It works: in the end they become not just role models and authority figures, but the focus of the recruits' developing loyalty to the organization.

I imagine there's some fear, especially in the beginning, because they don't know what to expect.... I think they hate you at first, at least for a week or two, but it turns to respect.... They're seeking discipline, they're seeking someone to take charge, 'cause at home they never got it ... They're looking to be told what to do and then someone is standing there enforcing what they tell them to do, and it's kind of like the father-and-son game, all the way through. They form a fatherly image of the DI5 whether they want to or not.

-Sergeant Carrington, USMC

Just the sheer physical exercise, administered in massive doses, soon has the recruits feeling stronger and more competent than ever before. Inspections, often several times daily, quickly build up their ability to wear the uniform and carry themselves like real Marines, which is a considerable source of pride. The inspections also help to set up the pattern in the recruits of unquestioning submission to military authority: standing stock-still, staring straight ahead, while somebody else examines you closely for faults is about as extreme a ritual act of submission as you can make with your clothes on.

But they are not submitting themselves merely to the abusive sergeant making unpleasant remarks about the hair in their nostrils. All around them are deliberate reminders-the flags and insignia displayed on parade, the military music, the marching formations and drill instructors' cadenced calls - of the idealized organization, the "brotherhood" to which they will be admitted as full members if they submit and conform. Nowhere in the armed forces are the military courtesies so elaborately observed, the staffs' uniforms so immaculate (some DIs change several times a day), and the ritual aspects of military life so highly visible as on a basic training establishment.

Even the seeming inanity of close-order drill has a practical role in the conversion process. It has been over a century since mass formations of men were of any use on the battlefield, but every army in the world still drills its troops, especially during basic training, because marching in formation, with every man moving his body in the same way at the same moment, is a direct physical way of learning two things a soldier must believe: that orders have to be obeyed automatically and instantly, and that you are no longer an individual, but part of a group.

The recruits' total identification with the other members of their unit is the most important lesson of all, and everything possible is done to foster it. They spend almost every waking moment together-a recruit alone is an anomaly to be looked into at once-and during most of that time they are enduring shared hardships. They also undergo collective punishments, often for the misdeed or omission of a single individual (talking in the ranks, a bed not swept under during barracks inspection), which is a highly effective way of suppressing any tendencies toward individualism. And, of course, the DIs place relentless emphasis on competition with other "serials" in training: there may be something infinitely pathetic to outsiders about a marching group of anonymous recruits chanting, 'Lift your heads and hold them high, 3313 is a-passin' by," but it doesn't seem like that to the men in the ranks.

Nothing is quite so effective in building up a group's morale and solidarity, though, as a steady diet of small triumphs. Quite early in basic training, the recruits begin to do things that seem, at first sight, quite dangerous: descend by ropes from fifty-foot towers, cross yawning gaps hand-over-hand on high wires (known as the Slide for Life, of course), and the like. The common denominator is that these activities are daunting but not really, dangerous: the ropes will prevent anyone from falling to his death off the rappelling tower, and there is a pond of just the right depth - deep enough to cushion a falling man, but not deep enough that he is likely to drown - under the Slide for Life. The goal is not to kill recruits, but to build up their confidence as individuals and as a group by allowing them to overcome apparently frightening obstacles.

You have an enemy here at Parris Island. The enemy that you're going to have at Parris Island is in every one of us. It's in the form of cowardice. The most rewarding experience you're going to have in recruit training is standing on line every evening, and you'll be able to look into each other's eyes, and you'll be able to say to each other with your eyes: 'By God, we've made it one more day! We've defeated the coward."

-Captain Pingree, USMC

Number on deck, sir, forty-five ... highly motivated, truly dedicated, rompin', stompin', bloodthirsty, kill-crazy United States Marine Corps recruits, SIR!

- Marine chant, Parris Island, 1982


If somebody does fail a particular test, he tends to be alone, for the hurdles are deliberately set low enough that most recruits can clear them if they try In any large group of people there is usually a goat: someone whose intelligence or manner or lack of physical stamina marks him for failure and contempt. The competent drill instructor, without deliberately setting up this unfortunate individual for disgrace, will use his failure to strengthen the solidarity and confidence of the rest. When one hapless young man fell off the Slide for Life into the pond, for example, his drill instructor shouted the usual invective - "Well, get out of the water. Don't contaminate it all day" - and then delivered the payoff line: "Go back and change your clothes. You're useless to your unit now."

"Useless to your unit" is the key phrase, and all the recruits know that what it means is I useless in battle." The Marine drill instructors at Parris Island know exactly what they are doing to the recruits, and why. They are not rear-echelon people filling comfortable jobs, but the most dedicated and intelligent NCOs6 the Marine Corps can find: even now, many of them have combat experience. The Corps has a clear-eyed understanding of precisely what it is training its recruits for - combat - and it ensures that those who do the training keep that objective constantly in sight.

The DIs "stress" the recruits, feed them their daily ration of synthetic triumphs over apparent obstacles, and bear in mind all the time that the goal is to instill the foundations for the instinctive, selfless reactions and the fierce group loyalty that is what the recruits will need if they ever see combat. They are arch-manipulators, fully conscious of it, and utterly unashamed. These kids have signed up as Marines, and they could well see combat; this is the way they have to think if they want to live....

Combat is the ultimate reality that Marines or any other soldiers, under any flag-have to deal with. Physical fitness, weapons training, battle drills, are all indispensable elements of basic training, and it is absolutely essential that the recruits learn the attitudes of group loyalty and interdependency which will be their sole hope of survival and success in combat. The training inculcates or fosters all of those things, and even by the halfway point in the eleven-week course, the recruits are generally responding with enthusiasm to their tasks.

But there is nothing in all this (except the weapons drill) that would not be found in the training camp of a professional football team. What sets soldiers apart is their willingness to kill. But it is not a willingness that comes easily to most men -even young men who have been provided with uniforms, guns, and official approval to kill those whom their government has designated as enemies. They will, it is true, fall very readily into the stereotypes of the tribal warrior group. Indeed, most of them have had at least a glancing acquaintance in their early teens with gangs (more or less violent, depending on, among other things, the neighborhood), the modem relic of that ancient institution.

And in many ways what basic training produces is the uniformed equivalent of a modern street gang: a bunch of tough, confident kids full of bloodthirsty talk. But gangs don't actually kill each other in large numbers. If they behaved the way armies do, you'd need trucks to clean the bodies off the streets every morning. They're held back by the civilian belief -the normal human belief -that killing another person is an awesome act with huge consequences.

There is aggression in all of us - men, women, children, babies. Armies don't have to create it, and they can't even increase it. But most of us learn to put limits on our aggression, especially physical aggression, as we grow up....

There is such a thing as a "natural soldier": the kind of man who derives his greatest satisfaction from male companionship, from excitement, and from the conquering of physical and psychological obstacles. He doesn't necessarily want to kill people as such, but he will have no objections if it occurs within a moral framework that gives him a justification - like war - and if it is the price of gaining admission to the kind of environment he craves. Whether such men are born or made, I do not know, but most of them end up in armies (and many move on again to become mercenaries, because regular army life in peacetime is too routine and boring).

But armies are not full of such men. They are so rare that they form only a modest fraction even of small professional armies, mostly congregating in the commando-type special forces. In large conscript armies they virtually disappear beneath the weight of numbers of more ordinary men. And it is these ordinary men, who do not like combat at all, that the armies must persuade to kill. Until only a generation ago, they did not even realize how bad a job they were doing.

Armies had always assumed that, given the proper rifle training, the average man could kill in combat with no further incentive than the knowledge that it was the only way to defend his own life. After all, there are no historical records of Roman legionnaires refusing to use their swords, or Marlborough's infantrymen7 refusing to fire their muskets against the enemy. But then dispersion hit the battlefield, removing each rifleman from the direct observation of his companions-and when U.S. Army Colonel S. L. A. Marshall finally took the trouble to inquire into what they were doing in 1943-45, he found that on average only 15 percent of trained combat riflemen fired their weapons at all in battle. The rest did not flee, but they would not kill - even when their own position was under attack and their lives were in immediate danger.

The thing is simply this, that out of an average one hundred men along the line of fire during the period of an encounter, only fifteen men on average would take any part with the weapons. This was true whether the action was spread over a day, or two days or three.... In the most aggressive infantry companies, under the most intense local pressure, the figure rarely rose above 25% of total strength from the opening to the close of an action.

-Col. S. L. A. Marshall

Marshall conducted both individual interviews and mass interviews with over four hundred infantry companies, both in Europe and in the Central Pacific, immediately after they had been in close combat with German or Japanese troops, and the results were the same each time. They were, moreover, as astonishing to the company officers and the troops themselves as they were to Marshall; each man who hadn't fired his rifle thought he had been alone in his defection from duty.

Even more indicative of what was going on was the fact that almost all the crew-served weapons had been fired. Every man had been trained to kill and knew it was his duty to kill, and so long as he was in the presence of other soldiers who could see his actions, he went ahead and did it. But the great majority of the riflemen, each unobserved by the others in his individual foxhole, had chosen not to kill, even though it increased the likelihood of his own death....

But the question naturally arises: if the great majority of men are not instinctive killers, and if most military killing these days is in any case done by weapons operating from a distance at which the question of killing scarcely troubles the operators-then why is combat an exclusively male occupation? The great majority of women, everyone would agree, are not instinctive killers either, but so what? If the remote circumstances in which the killing is done or the deliberate conditioning supplied by the military enable most men to kill, why should it be any different for women?

My own guess would be that it probably wouldn't be different; it just hasn't been tried very extensively. But it is an important question, because it has to do with the causes and possible cure of war. If men fight wars because that is an intrinsic part of the male character, then nothing can abolish the institution of warfare short of abolishing the male half of the human race (or at least, as one feminist suggested, disfranchising it for a hundred years).

If, on the other hand, wars are a means of allocating power between civilized human groups, in which the actual soldiers have a.1ways been male simply because men were more suited to it by their greater physical strength and their freedom from the burden of childbearing, then what we are discussing is not Original Sin, but simply a mode of social behavior. The fact that almost every living male for thousands of generations has imbibed some of the warrior mystique is no proof of a genetic predisposition to be warlike. The cultural continuity is quite enough to transmit such attitudes, and men were specialized in the hunting and warrior functions for the same physical reasons long before civilized war was invented.

It was undoubtedly men, the "hunting" specialists, who invented civilized war, just as it was probably women, specializing in the "gathering" part of the primitive economy, who invented agriculture. That has no necessary relevance today: we all eat vegetables, and we can all die in war. It is a more serious allegation against males to say that all existing forms of political power have been shaped predominantly by men, so that even if wars are about power and not about the darker side of the masculine psyche, war is still a male problem. That has unquestionably been true through all of history (although it remains to be proven that women exercising power respond very differently to its temptations and obsessions). But there is no need to settle that argument: if war and masculinity are not inseparable, then we have already moved onto negotiable ground. For the forms of political power, unlike psyches, are always negotiable.

Unfortunately there is little direct support for this optimistic hypothesis in the prevailing current of opinion among soldiers generally, where war and maleness are indeed seen as inseparable. To say that the combat branches of the armed forces are sexist is like remarking that gravity generally pulls downward, and nowhere is the contempt for women greater than at a recruit training base like Parris Island. The DIs are quite ruthless in exploiting every prejudice and pushing every button that will persuade the recruits to accept the value system they are selling, and one of those buttons (quite a large one) is the conviction of young males - or at least the desire to be convinced - that are superior to young females. (After all, even recruits want to feel superior to somebody, and it certainly isn't going to be anybody in their immediate, vicinity at Parris Island.)

When it's all boys together, especially among the younger men, Marine Corps slang for any woman who isn't the wife, mother, or daughter of anyone present is "Suzie." It is short for "Suzie Rottencrotch" - and Suzie crops up a lot in basic training. Even when the topic of instruction is hand and arm signals in combat.

Privates, if you don't have a little Suzie now, maybe you're going to find one when you get home. You bet. You'll find the first cheap slut you can get back home. What do you mean, "No"? You're a Marine, you're going to do it.

If we get home with little Suzie ... we're in a nice companionship with little Suzie and here you are getting hot and heavy and then you're getting ready to go down there and make that dive, privates, and Suzie says ... Suzie says it's the wrong time of the month. Privates, if you don't want to get back home and indulge in this little adventure, you can show your girlfriend the hand and arm signal for "close it up."

And you want her to close up those nasty little thighs of hers, do you not, privates? The hand and arm signal: the arms are laterally shoulder height, the fingers are extended, and the palms are facing toward the front. This is the starting position for "close it up" [tighten up the formation]: just like closing it up, bring the arms together just like that.

Privates, in addition, I want you to dedicate all this training to one very special person. Can anyone tell me who that is, privates?

(Voice) The Senior Drill Instructor, sir?

No, not your Senior Drill Instructor. You're going to dedicate all this training, privates, to your enemy ... to your enemy. To your enemy: the reason being, so he can die for his country. So who are we going to dedicate all this training to, privates?

-- lecture on hand and arm signals,
Parris Island, 1982

And they shouted enthusiastically,: "The enemy, sir! The enemy, sir!" It would not be instantly clear to the disinterested observer from Mars, however, why these spotty-faced male eighteen-year-olds are uniquely qualified to kill the enemy, while their equally spotty-faced female counterparts get to admire them from afar (or so the supposition goes), and get called Suzie Rottencrotch for their trouble.

Interestingly, it isn't entirely clear either to the senior military and civilian officials whose responsibility it is to keep the organization filled up with warm bodies capable of doing the job. Women are not employed in combat roles in the regular armed forces of any country (though increasing numbers of women have been admitted to the noncombat military jobs in the course of this century). But in the last decade the final barrier has come under serious consideration. It was, unsurprisingly, in the United States, where the problems of getting enough recruits for the all-volunteer armed forces converged with the changes of attitude flowing from the women's liberation movement, that the first serious proposals to send women into combat were entertained, during the latter years of the Carter administration.

There is no question but that women could do a lot of things in the military. So could men in wheelchairs. But you couldn't expect the services to want a whole company of people in wheelchairs.

-- Gen. Lewis B. Hershey,
former director, Selective Service System, 1978

If for no other reason than because women are the bearers of children, they should not be in combat. Imagine your daughter as a ground soldier sleeping in the fields and expected to do all the things that soldiers do. It represents to me an absolute horror.

-- Gen. Jacqueline Cochran, U.S. Air Force Despite the anguished cries of military conservatives, both male and female, the reaction of younger officers in the combat branches (all male, of course) was cautious but not entirely negative. The more intelligent ones dismissed at once arguments about strength and stamina -the average American woman, one pointed out, is bigger than the average Vietnamese man - and were as little impressed by the alleged special problems arising from the fact that female soldiers may become pregnant. In the noncombat branches, the army loses less time from its women soldiers due to pregnancy than it loses from desertion, drug abuse, and alcoholism in its male soldiers.

More important, few of the male officers involved in the experimental programs giving combat training to women recruits in the late 1970s had any doubt that the women would function effectively in combat. Neither did the women themselves. Despite their lack of the traditional male notions about the warrior stereotype, the training did its job. As one female trainee remarked: "I don't like the idea of killing anything ... [and] I may not at this moment go into combat. But knowing that I can fire as well as I can fire now, knowing that today, I'd go in. I believe in my country ... I'd fight to keep it."

The one major reservation the male officers training the "infantrywomen" had was about how the presence of women in combat would affect the men. The basic combat unit, a small group of men bound together by strong male ties of loyalty and trust, was a time-tested s,.-stem that worked, and they were reluctant to tamper with it by adding an additional, unknown factor to the equation.

In the end a more conservative administration canceled the idea of introducing women to American combat units, and it may be some years yet before there are female soldiers in the infantry of any regular army. But it is manifestly sheer social conservatism that is retarding this development. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of women have fought in combat as irregular infantry in the past half-century, from the Yugoslav and Soviet partisans of World War II to Nicaragua in 1978-79. They performed quite satisfactorily, and so did the mixed units of which they were members. There are numerous differences of detail between guerrilla and regular army units, but none of them is of the sort to suggest that women would not fight just as well in a regular infantry battalion, or that the battalion would function less well if women were present.

The point of all this is not that women should be allowed (or indeed compelled) to take their fair share of the risks in combat. It is rather that war has moved a very long way from its undeniably warrior male origins, and that human behavior, male or female, is extremely malleable. Combat of the sort we know today, even at the infantryman's level let alone the fighter pilot's- simply could not occur unless military organizations put immense effort into reshaping the behavior of individuals to fit their unusual and exacting requirements. The military institution, for all its imposing presence, is a highly artificial structure that is maintained only by constant endeavor. And if ordinary people's behavior is malleable in the direction the armed forces require, it is equally open to change in other directions....


Footnotes:
1.Eritrea, an Italian colony from 1885 to 1941, was annexed by Ethiopia in 1962. After a 30-year civil war, Eritrea gained its independence in 1992.
2.Something you might not know if you have no military experience and don’t watch war movies or attend the ballet is that the word corps is pronounced "core" (from the Latin corpus, meaning "body").
3.The concept of rite of passage (or rites de passage) is discussed in The Practical Skeptic, chapter 10.
4.As a point of reference, there are 4c.c.'s in a teaspoon.
5.Drill Instructor.
6.Noncommissioned officers.
7.John Churchill (1650-1722), first Duke of Marlborough, British General, supreme commander of the British forces in the War of the Spanish Succession.


Gwynn Dyer, "Anybody's Son Will Do." From War: Past, Present, and Future by Gwynne Dyer, copyright © 1985 by Media Resources.



Two severe falls as cause of death don’t look like suicide any more than they do murder to me, but it they were suicide I can see how it happens. All humanness is severely punished, and pure brutality is rewarded. When I worked at a library some 20 years ago I came across the title of a book that says it all – “Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.” The same holds true for exactly how the military “builds men.” Partly due to this, Americans are becoming more and more untrustworthy as human beings.

That’s not a sign of our country’s “greatness.” Training and personnel management at this post and undoubtedly others need to be examined by Congress, not those Hillary Clinton emails. This is more like the destruction of otherwise good young men to me, rather than the famous Marine Corps slogan, “We build men.” A sadistic and psychotic man is not a “stronger” or “better” man. Group assaults on those who are “different” is a sign of mental illness and, pardon me for putting it this way, stupidity. Too much “patriotism” is the cause here, I think, and, of course, the coddling of the aggressors after they commit what is not only a sin, but a crime by any normal standards.