Killing People
“I came over here because I wanted to kill people.”
When he said he was inured to death and killing, it seemed to me — in that place and at that time — a reasonable thing to say.
But… that’s NOT all he said. He didn’t just say he’d become accustomed to all the death. He said he’d gone to Iraq because he wanted to kill people — and that didn’t alarm this article’s author, Andrew Tilghman? I have to wonder whether the subject of this story, Steven D. Green (who is accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and then killing her and her family), told his recruiter that he wanted to go to Iraq so he could kill people. And, if he did, I wonder why this psychopath was ever given a gun.
There are a lot of good reasons for joining the military. “I want to kill people” is not among them.
Posted by RebeccaHartong on July 30, 2006 under Uncategorized
The US military is in a very bad situation with its recruitment and retention problems. We have spent the last several years downsizing and now we find ourselves in a war that we do not have enough soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines to fight.
My son has spent 2 one-year tours in Iraq. He was scheduled to go on his third in November, but then he got selected for recruiting duty. He did not request this. It was a Department of the Army (DA) directed assignment. So now he’s in recruiting school. He is being taught all kinds of tricks that recruiters use to get people to enlist.
At one point he thought he would be assigned to the LA area because they had a lot of recruiters there that were creating fake high school diplomas to get drop-outs into the army. They have removed all the recruiters involved and are now looking at the newly-trained recruiters to replace them.
My point is that our military is short-handed. We are in a war that is not widely supported by the American public, including those young men and women that are of enlistment age. The DA has set high quotas for the recruiters. Those quotas are so unrealistic that the recruiters will do anything to meet them, knowing that it cannot be done by following all the rules and being moral and ethical.
If we can’t get people into the army because they’ll be asked to go kill people, then it only stands to reason that a recruiter would be relieved to find someone who IS willing to go kill people.
Of course this isn’t the right way to build an army. But what is a recruiter (or even the basic training drill sergeant) to do? He doesn’t write the rules. He doesn’t set the quotas. He just has the job of getting people to sign up. His annual evaluations are based in large part on whether he meets his quotas. And his promotions are based in large part on his annual evaluations.
It’s a real mess. The DA needs to re-evaluate it’s quota system, its criteria for enlistment eligibility, and its method of evaluating recruiters. But that isn’t likely to happen as long as we have Bush (and Rumsfeld) in office.
We need to make the status of our military forces an issue in the 2008 elections so that we can put a stop to things like the Steven Green situation.
Thanks for the great comment, Linn. You are SO right about the problems recruiters are facing. Several years ago — before the Iraq war — I read an article somewhere (maybe the Washington Post) about this very topic. The focus of that article was some army guys who had been caught stealing weapons and selling them on the black market. One of the things I particularly recall from that article was how recruiters aren’t able to access juvenile criminal records that might help them weed out the worst offenders.
Your comments, LInda, bring to mind the article a few weeks back where it was revealed a recruiter had put an autistic man into service. He knew full well the young man didn’t fully understand what was being asked of him, and did it anyway. I cannot remember the full details — I think there was a suit by the mother or something? Perhaps it was being reported the autistic man had been let out and the recruiter reprimanded? If I find the link(s) I’ll post it.
It’s very difficult to recruit, like you said, when there is an unpopular war, but also when the government keeps cutting benefits for our military people. Except for the poorest or least skilled, most will wonder if they are sent to fight, will they be cared for when they come back — and the VA and hospitals are being cut left and right. Add to that stories of people having to struggle to get the pay due to them (my brother was owed several months back pay from Iraq; he finally got it AFTER being sent back out again to Pakistan/Afghanistan; there is a wife and three kids that needed that money!) it’s all a mess. And I don’t think the people in charge right now really care (or care to see it).
oops. I meant Linn — Sorry!
Of course they don’t care! Remember, the big honchos in this mess never WENT to war. Dumb Dubya Fiddled around in the Air Guard and Chaney got deferment after deferment until the war was over. I always thought downsizing the military was a stupid idea. It’s one of those things you never know WHEN you’ll need, and when you DO need them you need them yesterday, and don’t have the luxury of time tto recruit and train.
We have many people around us who are weak minded and are not able to handle severe stress. The act that Green is accused of seems like an act of sick / ill mind. How can you expect a young kid with difficult childhood and already a weak mind withstand the stress of war in a very hostile foreign land.
Thanks, Michael, for your comments about decreasing benefits. It’s so tru. Who would want to join the military knowing that they could make more money as a civilian? As the wife of a retired 1SG and the mother of a SGT, I just don’t understand what the Army thinks it’s doing. Hopefully our next president will have the balls to appoint a SecDef that will fix these issues of undercompensation!
P.S. Thanks for the correction of my name, too.
[...] We’ve discussed this before — most recently in a post and follow-up comments regarding Private Steven D. Green. [...]