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Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs:
Bring 'Em Home!
By GARY LEUPP

...Then there is that other problem: the troops. Sgt. Adrian Pedro Quinones, in Fallujah, expresses frustration at local civilian hostility. "Like, in Fallujah we get rocks thrown at us by kids. You wanna turn round and shoot one of the little f*****s but you know you can't do that. Their parents know if they came out and threw rocks we'd shoot them. So that's why they send the kids out." Specialist Anthony Castillo frankly admits to killing civilians: "When there were civilians there we did the mission that had to be done. When they were there, they were at the wrong spot, so they were considered enemy."

Both Quinones and Cpl. Michael Richardson admit to killing injured enemy: "The worst thing is to shoot one of them, then go help him," says Quinones, "In that situation you're angry, you're raging" and although regulations call for him to provide medical assistance to the injured, "S***, I didn't help any of them. I wouldn't help the f******. There were some you let die. And there were some you double-tapped. Once you'd reached the objective, and once you'd shot them and you're moving through, anything there, you shoot again. You didn't want any prisoners of war. You hate them so bad while you're fighting, and you're so terrified, you can't really convey the feeling, but you don't want them to live." (Evening Standard, June 19). Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Bodley, chaplain for the First Reconnaissance Battalion, admits, "The zeal these young men have for killing surprises me. When I first heard them talk so easily about taking human lives, using such profane language, it instilled in me a sense of disbelief and rage. People here think Jesus is a doormat" (Evan Wright, "From Hell to Baghdad," Rolling Stone, July 10; highly recommended).
It's natural to hate people who are trying to kill you, to denigrate them as "ragheads" or "Hajjis." Your commanding officers order you to do house-to-house searches, binding every family members' hands behind their backs, with plastic handcuffs (the Arab press is filled with pictures of fully-armored GIs binding children face-down on the floors of their homes).

You tend to dehumanize the "enemy," and that in turn dehumanizes you. Sgt. First Class John Meadows declares, "You can't distinguish between who's trying to kill you and who's not. Like, the only way to get through s*** like that was to concentrate on getting through it by killing as many people as you can, people you know are trying to kill you. Killing them first and getting home." Sgt. Antonio Espera told Wright, "Do you realize the stuff we've done here, the people we've killed? Back home in the civilian world, if we did this, we would go to prison." Just as was the case in Vietnam, the brutality you're obliged to enact can have a heavy psychological toll. Sgt. Meadows says men under his command have been suffering from severe depression: "They've already seen psychiatrists and the chain of command has got letters back saying 'these men need to be taken out of this situation'. But nothing's happened. Some soldiers don't even f****** sleep at night. They sit up all f****** night long doing s*** to keep themselves busy---to keep their minds off this f****** stuff. It's the only way they can handle it. It's not so far from being crazy but it's their way of coping."...