Pentagon Policies Undermining Soldiers’ Values excerpted from Winslow Wheeler, AlterNet
A recent study from the Office of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army Medical Command addresses the ethics and mental health of US soldiers in Iraq has raised alarms. Among the findings:
Regardless of just how frequent the abuse may be beyond the survey results, these are descriptions of behaviors that can only alienate the Iraqi population against the U.S. military presence there, and against any among that population, including its politicians, who welcome or even tolerate our presence. It is not just that we are not winning; we are helping the enemy. When the historians explain why America lost the war in Iraq, this study should be prominent evidence.
Reacting to the surgeon general's devastating study, our commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, said he was "very concerned" and that he had been writing "a memorandum to our leaders and to our troopers to discuss these kinds of issues and to note that we can never sink to the level of the enemy."
If he read the entire study from the surgeon general, Petraeus probably hopes that no one else reads it. The study seeks to explain the reasons for our troops' abusive behavior, and that explanation casts devastating illumination on the logic of this war. It also provides a prospective explanation for why the "surge" of American troops in Iraq, which Petraeus has accepted as his mission, can only make things worse.
Page 38 of the surgeon general's study states that "soldiers who screened positive for a mental health problem (anxiety, depression or acute stress) were twice as likely to engage in unethical behavior (i.e., abuse of Iraqi civilians) compared to those soldiers who did not screen positive." Subsequent pages make the same point about Marines.
What causes the "anxiety, depression or acute stress" that can result in the abuse? For Army personnel, deployment tempo is a major factor: "Soldiers deployed to Iraq more than once were more likely to screen positive for acute stress," notes the report. And perhaps even more significantly, given the rotation schedule in Iraq: "Long deployment length [described as one year] continues to be the top concern for … soldiers."
The study recommended extending the period of time soldiers spend at home with their families to 18-36 months, while also decreasing the length of deployments in Iraq to under one year. At no time in our military history have soldiers and Marines been required to serve on the front line in any war for a period of 6-7 months, let alone a year, without a significant break in order to recover from the physical, psychological and emotional demands that ensue from combat. During World War II, entire units were withdrawn from the line for months at a time in order to rest and refurbish. Even during Vietnam, weeklong combat patrols in the field were followed by several days of rest and recuperation at the base camp.
Yet, in Iraq neither soldiers nor Marines experiencing high levels of combat receive significant in-theater periods of recovery. ... Arguing that the intensity of the combat operations in Iraq is not comparable to those of previous wars such as World War II and Vietnam and, therefore, recovery periods are unnecessary demonstrates a lack of appreciation of what constitutes combat in general and ignorance as to the level of combat soldiers and Marines are experiencing in Iraq. Being in mortal danger for hours on end, every day of the week for months at a time is at best physically exhausting and mentally draining.
It must be noted that the study was written in November 2006, shortly before President George W. Bush announced the "surge" that Petraeus would command. The surge, as implemented by Petraeus, is doing everything exactly wrong for the soldiers and Marines described in this study, namely:
The soldiers and Marines are being asked to mingle on a 24-hour per-day basis among the very same civilians we now know have been on the receiving end of widespread abusive behavior from soldiers and Marines previously stressed out by the mismanagement of how we deploy them.
The surge plan is to take those factors that alienate our soldiers and Marines from Iraqi civilians, make those factors worse, thereby increasing the likely alienation from those civilians, and then telling the soldiers and Marines to live among those civilians 24 hours a day and to protect them. Making their circumstances worse, Petraeus now tells our troops to simply "suck it up."
It is a prescription for disaster: more stress, more abuse, more alienation, more sympathy and support for the enemy, more combat, more stress, and so it goes on and on. Our soldiers and Marines are in an utterly impossible situation.
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USA today reports that U.S. commanders in Iraq are rejecting a recommendation by Army mental health experts that troops receive a one-month break for every three months in a combat zone, despite unprecedented levels of continuous fighting and worsening risks of mental stress.
Instead, commanders are trying to give troops two to three days inside heavily fortified bases after about eight days in the field, said the chief aide to the ground forces commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno.
“Even in World War II and other times … we would pull forces off the line and bring them back on. Here we don’t do that,” Odierno said. “They (U.S. troops) are out there consistently every single day. So you have to be mentally and physically tough.”