We stand at an ethical threshold.
The ethical choices and challenges that have faced U.S. forces for the last four years are unlike anything we have confronted in at least a century. If our officer corps fails to prevent a hardening of the hearts of our strategic corporals, we as a military and a nation risk losing the moral imperative from which true U.S. power stems. This source of U.S. power is hope, hope that all of the tiresome prejudices of the Old World, indeed the rest of the world, can be forgotten, and embraced in competitive toleration in a multicultural society.
The allegations, events, facts, and falsehoods that have been reported from Bagram to Baghdad, Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay, all have one strategic factor in common: regardless of the truth, they seriously erode the image of the United States, and the cumulative effects degrade the ability of U.S. forces to accomplish their broader cultural mission in the war on terror.
No one who has ever been shot at, felt the surge of adrenaline, the rush of fear, and the jubilation of survival can second-guess the actions of a man on the spot who makes a split-second decision to take or grant life. But once a man raises his hands, surrenders, and is taken into custody, he is a noncombatant. He gets treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, the Law of Armed Conflict, and common sense-the same way you would want your brother or fellow Marine treated.
Some will argue that our enemies respect nothing but force.
Some will argue that the fanatics and zealots whom we are fighting will never adjure their hatred for us.
Some will argue that as long as the faith of Islam is struggling to escape from 13th century paradigms into the 21st century, it is impossible to reason or converse with them on an equal intellectual or moral plane.
Some will argue that we are fighting not organized military forces, but desperate criminal elements who have nothing to lose in their attacks on U.S. forces and citizens.
We cannot dehumanize our enemies as they dehumanize us, their fellow Muslims, their countrymen, and their women. To assume the position of übermensch is to plunge head first down the slippery Faustian slope that stops at Auschwitz, Cambodia, the Balkans, and Rwanda. To dehumanize and demonize our enemies changes nothing in their core character, while ceding them the victory of their vitriol as we become the very beasts of their propaganda. They lose nothing, we lose everything.
Where then does this leave our officers, corporals, and sergeants as we deploy into uncertain, uncharted, and dangerous places? First of all, protect yourself, and your fellow Marines. If you're not sure, shoot, and shoot well. If mistakes are made, admit them and face the consequences. Hostile intent is hostile intent-and deserves an instant kinetic reward. Once an enemy is subdued, though, do not expect gratitude for medical care, fresh clothes and sheets, food, or spiritual care. While a certain amount of machismo can get boys to stand in broad daylight with an RPG and take a quick shot, it is fierce faith in the validity of the fight against U.S. forces that propels these men to attack us. Our kindness will not cure or change that in most cases.
We will never convince these men that they should stop fighting us unless they perceive it to be in their interest to do so. Young men around the world, unemployed and with no hope for a future, fueled by desolate desperation, will continue to attack us, but we only make our mission interminably more difficult when they perceive us to have degraded them as human beings. We are supposed to attack and destroy the capability of our enemies to inflict harm on us. In a fight, I expect all Marines to equal, and, where possible, surpass the legacy of the ferocious warriors that have preceded us in the Corps.
Once our enemies are defeated, though, we must remember our roots and what built President Ronald Reagan's "shining city upon the hill." It is up to our officers to stringently set and ruthlessly enforce the standards. Any less is to permanently destroy our own source of power by strategic and ethical suicide.
Major Thieme served as plans officer at Marine Forces Pacific/Central Command from July 2001 to July 2003 and is currently stationed in Warsaw, Poland, as the Marine and Naval Attache.