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Into Iraq With 'Generation Kill': An Interview with Evan Wright
Evan Wright spent two months living with twenty-three marines from First Recon, the elite unit who spearheaded the invasion of Iraq. In magazine articles and his book ‘Generation Kill’, Wright chronicled the triumphs and horrors—physical, moral, emotional, and spiritual—that these marines endured. We talked to him about his experience of the Iraq War, and the human costs of ‘just wars.’...

...Based on reports in the religious press it seems that many soldiers come from traditional families, what with pictures of soldiers praying, etc. I have a tough time reconciling that with the porn and the language presented in the book.

It’s an interesting thing; I think with my group if I met them on the street outside the Marine Corps I would have thought, “My God, these guys are the salt-of-the-earth, small-town, religious America.” But get with them in the platoon tent, like a day before the invasion, and they’re the most foul-mouthed, atheist bastards on earth. I actually think it’s the opposite of the saying, you know, how there are no atheists in fox holes. I think there’s an opposite force at work, that they’re trained to kill and violate all these taboos. For that moment they’re the most irreverent… Look at Sgt. Espera. He felt he couldn’t be a Catholic and a Marine. These guys from small town America, what they’re being told to do—they didn’t learn that in Sunday school. They’ve got to throw all that out....

GENERATION KILL: DEVIL DOGS, ICEMAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, AND THE NEW FACE OF AMERICAN WAR
While spearheading the American invasion of Iraq, the marines of the elite First Recon—-nicknamed ‘First Suicide Battalion’—often operated deep behind enemy lines and far beyond anything they had trained for. They faced death every day—and above all, they killed a lot of people. From America's first generation of disposable children, more than half of these young men come from broken homes and were raised by absentee, single, working parents. Evan Wright was embedded with them for two months, and in this excerpt from his book, ‘Generation Kill,’ gives a first-hand account of the new face of American war, and the human costs that almost never enter into sterile debates about ‘just wars.’...

...Trombley is beside himself. "I was just thinking one thing when we drove into that ambush," he enthuses. "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I felt like I was living it when I seen the flames coming out of windows, the blown-up car in the street, guys crawling around shooting at us. It was fucking cool."

Culturally, these Marines would be virtually unrecognizable to their forebears in the "Greatest Generation." They are kids raised on hip-hop, Marilyn Manson and Jerry Springer. For them, "motherfucker" is a term of endearment. For some, slain rapper Tupac is an American patriot whose writings are better known than the speeches of Abraham Lincoln. There are tough guys among them who pray to Buddha and quote Eastern philosophies and New Age precepts gleaned from watching Oprah and old kung fu movies. There are former gangbangers, a sprinkling of born-again Christians and quite a few guys who before entering the Corps were daily dope smokers; many of them dream of the day when they get out and are once again united with their beloved bud.

These young men represent what is more or less America's first generation of disposable children. More than half of the guys in the platoon come from broken homes and were raised by absentee, single, working parents. Many are on more intimate terms with video games, reality TV shows and Internet porn than they are with their own parents. Before the "War on Terrorism" began, not a whole lot was expected of this generation other than the hope that those in it would squeak through high school without pulling too many more mass shootings in the manner of Columbine....

...They are the first generation of young Americans since Vietnam to be sent into an open-ended conflict. Yet if the dominant mythology that war turns on a generation's loss of innocence—young men reared on Davy Crockett waking up to their government's deceits while fighting in Southeast Asian jungles; the nation falling from the grace of Camelot to the shame of Watergate—these young men entered Iraq predisposed toward the idea that the Big Lie is as central to American governance as taxation. This is, after all, the generation that first learned of the significance of the presidency not through an inspiring speech at the Berlin Wall but through a national obsession with semen stains and a White House blow job. Even though their Commander in Chief tells them they are fighting today in Iraq to protect American freedom, few would be shaken to discover that they might actually be leading a grab for oil. In a way, they almost expect to be lied to....

...There’s a scene in the book where you describe how deserting Iraqi soldiers had to be sent back—to possible death—because the Marines couldn’t handle them. And you were prescient in saying that they’d probably become insurgents as a result. Can you talk about how anger of this kind, along with anger at having friends and family killed, has affected the situation in Iraq?

If you look back at the first Gulf War we captured and imprisoned large numbers of Iraqis, and the interesting thing is that most of them had fairly positive experiences. When we got into Baghdad there were a number of older residents—in their thirties—who I talked to who really liked us because they remembered being treated well when they were captured in the Gulf War.

In this war, in regard to enemy combatants, we didn’t apprehend them and process them. We lost two opportunities. One was to find out who these people were, and whether there were leaders among them. And two, the opportunity to indoctrinate them about the good intentions of the U.S. occupiers. We let the army melt away, and we let them float around ready to pick up the insurgency, especially after Bremer fired the army and the soldiers realized that that they weren’t employed any more.

Another thing is the bombing and shooting of towns. But people were not as outraged as you would expect when, say, the Marines killed civilians by accident. There was this moment of good will on the Iraqis’ part. What really started the insurgency and turned the populace against us was our inability to provide security. ...