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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Evan Wright
Read between
September 16 - September 28, 2024
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.
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.
one of the Marines in First Recon would later put it, “Bunch of psycho officers sent us into shit we never should have gone into. But we came out okay, dog, even though all we was packing was some sac.”
“We had a saying about the military in Afghanistan: ‘The incompetent leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary.’ ”
What unites them is an almost reckless desire to test themselves in the most extreme circumstances. In many respects the life they have chosen is a complete rejection of the hyped, consumerist American dream as it is dished out in reality TV shows and pop-song lyrics. They’ve chosen asceticism over consumption. Instead of celebrating their individualism, they’ve subjugated theirs to the collective will of an institution. Their highest aspiration is self-sacrifice over self-preservation.
“The whole structure of the military is designed to mature young men to function responsibly while at the same time preserving their adolescent sense of invulnerability.”
Marines who’d been so jubilant in the morning start bitching, primarily to amuse themselves.
“Well,” he says. “We kicked the hornet’s nest. Now we better kill all the fucking hornets.”
His leadership philosophy is based on “building confidence in my men by respecting them.”
Unlike these Marines, I haven’t spent the last few years of my life in wars or training exercises with bombs going off, jumping out of airplanes and helicopters. In my civilian world at home in Los Angeles, half the people I know are on antidepressants or anti–panic attack drugs because they can’t handle the stress of a mean boss or a crowd at the 7-Eleven when buying a Slurpee.
“Hey, it’s ten in the morning!” says Person, yelling at two farmers dressed in robes in the distance. “Don’t you think you ought to change out of your pajamas?”
“Garza, please make sure you don’t shoot the civilians on the other side of the canal. We are the invading army. We must be magnanimous.” “Magna-nous?” Garza asks. “What the fuck does that mean?” “Lofty and kinglike,” Colbert tells him. “Sure,” Garza says after a moment’s consideration. “I’m a nice guy.”
One has to marvel at the might—or hubris—of a military force that invades a sand- and rock-strewn country but brings its own gravel.
Through the blackness of the night, orange puffs of artillery bursts are vaguely discernible over the town. Fick slips into the vehicle with a map, to tell us that the name of the town is Al Gharraf. “Good,” Colbert says. “I hope they call it El Pancake when we’re through with it.” Marine artillery crews fire approximately 1,000 rounds into Al Gharraf and the vicinity during the next twelve hours.
“It’s okay, whatever it is,” Encino Man encourages him. “Frankly, sir, I think you’re incompetent to lead this company.” “I’m doing the best I can,” Encino Man says. “Sir, it’s just not good enough.”
“Back home you pal around with your own kind,” he says. “I never thought my best friends would be Mexicans. Here, we’re brothers, and we all look out for each other. That’s the best part of being in a war. We all get to be together.”
One of the men on Espera’s team, twenty-three-year-old Lance Corporal Nathan Christopher, walks down the road, crying, while carrying a baby. He later tells me what got to him was seeing the mother, weakened from days of walking, almost drop the infant. Despite bawling his eyes out, Christopher tells me helping the refugees has afforded him his best moment in Iraq. “After driving here from Kuwait, shooting every house, person, dog in our path, we finally get to do something decent.”
“If something happens to me, I want my wife to know the truth,” he says. “If they say we fought valiantly here, I want her to know we fought retarded. They haven’t used us right—sending us into these towns, onto the airfield, with no observation.”
complains almost exclusively about Captain America. “He’s just nervous,” Colbert says. “Everyone’s nervous. Everyone’s just trying to do their job.” “We’re going to die if we don’t get out of here!” Captain America screams over the radio. “They’ve sent us to die here!” “Okay,” Colbert says. “Fuck it. He is crying.”
Since meeting his wife, Espera has become an avid reader, voraciously consuming everything from military histories to Chinese philosophy to Kurt Vonnegut (his favorite author).
Fick radios the battalion, requesting permission to medevac the girl. It’s denied. The platoon delays its mission for two hours, while Doc Bryan does his best to clean the wounds out. The girl wails and sobs most of the time. Her mother holds her head. Doc Bryan curses softly. Fick walks away, turning his back on the girl. “This is fucking up our mission,” he says, pissed off at the girl for showing up with her horrific wounds. “A week after liberating this city, the American military can’t provide aid to a girl probably hit by one of our bombs,” he says, pissed off at the war.
Under the ROE, the children were technically “armed” since they were on tanks, so the GIs opened fire. Maj. Gen. Mattis would later call this shooting “the most calamitous engagement of the war.” After he hears of it, Colbert rails, “They are screwing this up. Those fucking idiots. Don’t they realize the world already hates us?”
Early one afternoon following the battalion’s arrival at Ad Diwaniyah, he runs into the warehouse serving as a chow hall with his M-16, puts it to the head of the suspected thief, racks a round into the chamber and screams, “Give me back my Game Boy!” Other Marines talk him out of pulling the trigger. The battalion isolates him for a few days, then returns him to his unit. The Game Boy is never recovered.
“I don’t give a fuck. But I keep thinking about what the priest said. It’s not a sin to kill with a purpose, as long you don’t enjoy it. My question is, is indifference the same as enjoyment?”
“In the end,” Reyes says, “they need bodies for the war.” Reyes adds, “This is the way the Corps is. You join for the idealism, but eventually you see the flaws in it. You might fight this for a while. Then you accept that one man isn’t going to change the Marine Corps. If you love the Corps, you give up some of the ideals which motivated you to join in the first place.”
