Hell And Haditha - Understanding War

National Review Online: Find Out Details Before Convicting Haditha Marines

(National Review Online)  Retired Marine Major Frank C. Stolz Jr. agrees. "Some who are heroic one day can become incapable of performing their duties the next and vice versa," says Stolz who, like Morris, commanded a Marine rifle company in Vietnam. "Whenever a member of one's unit is harmed by the enemy in whatever fashion, there is an immediate desire for revenge, as well as one of fear and sometimes of incomprehension. I have more than a few times had to re-instruct my own men that they cannot take out their desire for vengeance on the very innocents that we came to protect."

Retired Marine Lt. Col. Alex Lee, who commanded "special operations elements" in Vietnam, tells NRO that though the stress of combat will always affect the performance of combatants, it does not result in prisoners or civilians being “routinely” killed.

"It does however mean that fear levels are raised to nearly unbearable intensities, and unless the junior leaders live by their training and the core values of Marines, incidents could occur," he says, adding, "Rage at the loss of comrades causes many to seek some way to exact revenge. I have seen this on many occasions, and when you combine confusion with rage it takes hard-nosed leaders to keep emotions in check, otherwise villages get burned and the inhabitants will be killed."

Complicity, Confusion, and Disgust

John Temple Ligon, a former Army Ranger officer and artillery forward observer in Vietnam, says that, while he does not condone the killing of 24 civilians, he cannot condemn the Marines, either. "Chances are, whenever a roadside bomb kills a Marine or a soldier, there are nearby civilians who saw the installation of the bomb and the concealment of the bomb, and the civilians operated at a safe distance when the Marines rolled by," Ligon tells NRO. "In South Vietnam, I saw soldiers lose their feet, legs, and lives as they walked over land mines hidden in the rice paddy berms. The civilians were planting rice at the time nearby, but never near the mines when the soldiers walked by. They, too, knew exactly where the mines lay."

So, as Ligon explains, just as there are no hard-and-fast frontlines in the war on terror, there also is no absolute determinant as to who is and is not the enemy. That’s tough for a 19-year-old to process when somebody is trying to kill him every time he shoulders his weapon and walks down the street.

Additionally, some troops on the ground say they are increasingly coming under fire by armed children: a sign of desperation and recruiting woes for the terrorists, but an additional challenge for infantry and special operations units who must confront them.

"This is not new, in war or the Middle East, but seems to be a new trend in Iraq," says former Marine infantryman Robert L. Rohrer, who claims to have seen "several statements" indicating there is much more to the Haditha story than has been released.

Much more indeed, and we will learn a great deal more about it in the coming weeks, which is why the investigations continue.

Are Marine infantrymen, by virtue of the nature of their work, "cold-blooded" killers?

On the contrary: It is because of the nature of their work — usually performed under extreme stress and fatigue — that Marines truly have to be some of the most moral men on the planet if they are going to be effective warriors. That doesn’t mean they are flawless.

"(A Marine) lives on the razor’s edge of fury and retribution, along with disgust for what he sees, i.e., how the enemy treats their own people," Col. Ripley says. "He is gripped with emotion when he sees children, many the same ages as his own brothers and sisters, and especially when he sees the mothers trying to protect them from the line of fire. He will put himself in great danger, exposing himself to that same fire just in an attempt to remove non-combatants from this danger."

He adds, "a Marine is disgusted when he sees how the enemy treat their own people by putting them in situations where they will assuredly become casualties, for the obvious reason that they can blame it on the Americans."

So it would be unfair and foolish to pass judgment on these Marines, without first finding what exactly happened at Haditha.


A former U.S. Marine infantry leader, W. Thomas Smith Jr. writes about military issues and has covered conflicts in the Balkans and on the West Bank.