Four Days With the Marines

Reflections on the USMC Educator's Workshop and Marine Culture from the Perspective of a Peace Activist

I am a peace activist, and my training and education is in the business of ending war and promoting peace.  I am also a politician who has run for office twice as a candidate for US Senate representing the Green Party of Tennessee.  If I had been elected to office one of my first actions as Senator would have been to sponsor legislation to immediately withdraw all US armed forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, to drastically reduce the scope of US military spending and close our military bases overseas, so I didn't fit easily into any category that the USMC had constructed for the three-day program.  Still, as a former candidate and in the interest of good will and cooperation I attended because I believe that it is important to hear all sides in any conversation--and the USMC clearly has one side and they want to make sure that you understand exactly what that side is.

We flew into Atlanta early that morning with a two-hour layover.  I milled around the airport looking for a Starbucks and the smoking lounge.  I found a great restaurant serving eggs and grits. I ate while working on my laptop, smoking and drinking coffee.  My head was still wrapped up with the most current manifestation of the war on the Palestinian people. I was editing a video I had shot two nights before at the Islamic Center of Nashville in which Yassir Arafat had given a fairly direct presentation on the history of Palestine.  It was a forceful presentation that was unapologetically one-sided, documenting the history of abuse of the Palestinian people, the war of 1967, the demolition of houses and entire villages, the rounding up of civilians, the loss of citizenship, identity, imprisonment and the tedium of life under constant occupation. I looked at the clock and realized it was time to get on the transfer to Savannah.  The war in Gaza and twelve hundred dead Palestinians continued to occupy my thoughts as I glanced out the window of the airplane and caught a good view of Stone Mountain, Georgia--a granite monolith protruding from the relatively flat plains of Atlanta where a monumental Confederate memorial was originally planned to function as the Mount Rushmore of the South.

In the halls and terminals of the Atlanta airport there had been Marines and soldiers of various types in uniforms walking about everywhere, a clear reminder of current activity within the US armed forces.  My initial reaction to men in camouflage and hiking boots walking around an airport is caution and intimidation, especially when confronted by literally hundreds of them including some on the plane. We landed after a short thirty minute flight from Atlanta to a gray, overcast day with rain speckling the windows.  The first thing I noticed about Savannah was that it was green.  There were still leaves on some of the trees and Spanish moss.  I noticed a few palm trees and was wondering if they were real or the plastic kind you find at used car lots in New Mexico.  Arriving at the airport, unsure of what came next, I approached our Marine guide and asked him what was next.  He told us they had lunch available and we were waiting for another plane to arrive and then we would all get on the bus to the hotel. 

This was my first experience with military time, which I came to know well over the course of the next three days.  Military time does not operate on the same scale as civilian time.  Military time happens all at once, it is ordered and punctual, yet also seems to be chaotic and undeterminable.  Military time, as with military culture, appears to be somewhat pedantic and mindless, but this can be said of any large organization.  Being approached by the Marines was definitely a surprise, and I wondered what their motivation was for inviting me to tour their facility.  Surely they must have reviewed my campaign website or read some of the articles that I have published, but being a good journalist and good citizen I felt that it was my responsibility to attend this event and see what they have to say.

It was my intention as an observer to try to be objective, in spite of my training as a peace activist.  I would say that the Marines really believe in what they say.  In the three days of touring their facilities I received endless lectures on how the Marines build character and turn boys into men.  They discussed the value of taking someone who might be a troublemaker or not have a sense of direction in life and present them with a sense of direction through their training.  I found their training methods to be highly questionable and their sense of character building to be tantamount to brainwashing and indoctrination. 

The entire environment on the military base is girded by a constant sense of control, authoritarianism and violence.  Let me be as frank as I can here, the purpose of the Marines is to train men to become highly skilled killers.  There is no doubt about this.  Everything in their training is about working in a group with the purpose of killing when needed.  Stripped of ideology, this is the function of the military.

Whether this is good or bad, I think it is important to evaluate this experience objectively without ideology and without filters.  In my touring of the military base I constantly asked questions, and one of the primary questions I asked was whether the Marines who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan were accomplishing their objectives.  I asked them what their objectives were and did they believe that they had the support of the American people and their elected representatives.  How did they feel about the morality of their actions and did they believe that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan supported their objectives? Most of my questions were concerned with morality, ethics and intention. What I received as a response over and over again was that my questions were not appropriate.  I was often told that my question was above the pay grade of the officer I was talking to or that this was a decision for the people in Washington DC to make.

All I saw of Savannah was the airport.  I browsed the brochures of the travel center looking at the places I could go - Hilton Head, historic downtown Savannah, golf clubs, beachfront condos, fishing excursions and art galleries.  The last time I was in Savannah I was out marching in the streets with protesters surrounded by police protesting the meeting of the G8 at Sea Island, Georgia.  The landscape looked the same, especially the distinctive Spanish moss that hangs down from the trees everywhere and gives the area a look of antebellum charm even in the airport terminal.  While we were waiting for the other plane to arrive I sat down with a couple of teachers from a public school system in Mississippi.  They were happy to get a week off with pay and were very proud of the work that the Marines are doing at their schools. 

The Educator's Workshop is really more of a public relations effort than an effort at education.  During the course of the weeklong event journalists and teachers travel along with Marine officers on base and off base to learn what life is like for a new recruit to the Marines.  We sit with new recruits who are in the midst of their thirteen weeks of training.  Those of us who choose to can learn how to fire a military rifle, inspect an F-18 fighter jet, and go through the "yellowfeet" indoctrination process. This includes becoming part of a formation, learning how to march and follow the orders of a drill instructor.  Although I did not choose to actively participate in this element of the process, everyone was assigned a drill instructor.  We were broken up geographically into Tennessee and Alabama/Mississippi.  Over the course of the week everyone from Tennessee traveled around on the same bus with the same drill instructor who gave us lectures about his pride in the USMC and how it has changed his life and made him a better person.  We were given the 'inside scoop' on particular aspects of language, speech, dress code, social interaction and hierarchy within USMC culture. 

Tennessee has about 100 Marine recruiters scattered across the state.  The function of these recruiters is to go to the high schools and foster relationships with students and encourage them to join the Marines by promising them money for college, world travel, service to their country and character building.  In Tennessee approximately 850 students are recruited into the Marines this way every year.  Since only about ten percent of all these students sign up voluntarily, then it is the job of the Marine recruiters to get the other ninety percent through various forms of persuasion.

The USMC has an active force of just over two hundred thousand.  This force is broken up into many functions, but the heart and soul of the Marine force is its Infantry, which accounts for about forty thousand of the total service members.  These are the people who fire the guns and are on the front lines of any action.  For the most part the Infantry is composed of recruits although every officer in the Marines is in the Infantry, but their function is more to administer and coordinate the actions of the general forces.

At Parris Island about twenty thousand recruits are turned out every year.  Once a young person has signed a contract with the Marines, they are committed to four years of general service and then four years of reserve duty during which time they may be called back up to service or not.  Every week the Marines graduate a new class of recruits, as Parris Island is a continuous training facility.  After thirteen weeks of training the new recruits are considered graduates and ready for the next step in their training.  Currently about seventy five percent of all new recruits will be shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan within six months of graduation.

Our last group of high school teachers arrived at the airport and we got on a white diesel school bus and headed to our hotel.  On the way I chatted with a female Major who reminded me of a character on the television series 'MASH.'  In fact, most of what I saw on Parris Island the next three days reminded me of that television series.  It was all there--the tedium of military culture, the unending monotony and illogic of that environment.  On base there is a strong emphasis on attention to detail, appearance and function without any obvious purpose.  I was also reminded of the way in which the military strips people of individual identity but also of the interesting ways in which identity still manages to surface beyond the carefully constructed facade of group identity.  I chatted with the Major about politics.  I asked her about voting on the base during the recent elections and if people had put up Obama or McCain yard signs.  Obviously ignorant to anything about life on a military base, I was told that political signs were not permitted on the base.  In fact, no form of political speech or free speech really exists on Parris Island.

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