MAKING WAR:
EMBODIED INTERACTIONS, MEANING-MAKING AND THE WAR IN IRAQ
By Jesse Paul Crane-Seeber Submitted to the Faculty of the School of International Service of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations Chair: tU iJUM- LL Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
llllv-y/ 1 \ srf / - ^ f* Raymond Duvall kJUM) C9^ruA^ Dean of the School of International Service if 3 Qo Date (J 2009 America University Washington, D.C. 20016 -AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UMI Number: 3410326 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UNIT Dissertation Publishing UMI 3410326 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. uestA ® ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 © COPYRIGHT by Jesse Paul Crane-Seeber 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED For the better world we all long for and those who need it most MAKING WAR: EMBODIED INTERACTIONS, MEANING-MAKING, AND THE WAR IN IRAQ BY Jesse Paul Crane-Seeber ABSTRACT The invasion and occupation of Iraq has been the center of numerous political and theoretical disputes, and as the war heads into its seventh year, U.S. forces are still deployed in the tens of thousands, at massive social and economic expense. Rather than assuming that categories like 'soldier,' and 'combat zone' refer to stable objects, this dissertation looks at the work that goes into accomplishing them in practice. Asking how combatants make themselves available as 'instruments' of state power, the answers build from an analysis of interactive meaning-making processes amongst deployed U.S. combat forces in Iraq. Utilizing publicly available audio-visual recordings made in Iraq as mediated access to empirical relationships, the arguments of this dissertation build from close readings of particular interactions between U.S. combatants and the world around them. Combining methods and insights from Ethnomethodology, Science and Technology Studies, and post-structural International Relations theory, this study points to the production and reproduction of shared understandings of who we are, what is going on, and how to ii respond. In making meaning, this dissertation argues, identities, combat units, and hierarchies are all effects of the depictions of the world that combatants create using concepts and discourses from the broader social and institutional contexts they find themselves within. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of how the Abu Ghraib torture scandal came about, the investigation of combat incidents, the decision not to count Iraq deaths, and a discussion about tactics between two Colonels. Running through these various issues are two pervasive discourses, one which describes combat zones as inevitably violent, and the other which describes individual soldiers and marines as legally liable rational actors. Noting how these two ways of conceptualizing war overlap to produce confusing questions of moral accountability in combat, the institutional politics of these discourses in the war in Iraq are analyzed. Building from face-to-face interactions through public debates helps illustrate the ways that discourse circulates, linking different sites in a way that makes micro/macro distinctions moot. Keywords: Post Structural International Relations, Iraq War, Ethnomethodology, Science and Technology Studies, Iraq Documentary, Iraq Video, Masculinity, Process Ontology iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been extraordinarily privileged and blessed to have a string of dedicated and talented teachers in my life. Most recently, Patrick Jackson and Celine-Marie Pascale have been incredibly patient and generous in mentoring me through the process of producing a dissertation. Patrick welcomed me to American University, and has been unwavering in his support since the day I first met him. Through departmental politics and existential crises, he has been central to my ability to navigate the experience. Celine- Marie's Pascale's class, the 'Sociology of Language,' enriched my final year of coursework and profoundly influenced the way that I approach the practice of social science. As an intellectual sounding board and careful reader of my work, she always provides insights and suggests references that clarify and sharpen my thinking. I would also like to appreciate Bud Duvall for offering his support to me despite the distance between us. My trips to Minnesota were incredibly meaningful, both because of Bud's mentorship and because of the intellectual community he helped to cultivate. All three of you have made this project possible in different ways, and I am very grateful for your support. Before SIS, Naeem Inayatullah introduced me to Patrick at the International Studies Association meeting in New Orleans, and wrote the letter that helped get me into graduate school. Naeem's impact on my intellectual, pedagogic, and personal history has been intense, and I will always carry it with me. Dan Flerlage, Dave Lehman, and Karen iv Adams at the Lehman Alternative Community School helped provide an academic and social environment that can be soberly called Utopian. From ages 12-18,1 experienced direct participatory democracy in a public school, and was encouraged to test boundaries in the service of my passions. Learning to challenge authority with cogent arguments was a gift that keeps on giving. Long live Lehman Alternative Community School! I wish to extend my thanks to Dean Louis Goodman, Steve Silvia, and Mary Barton for helping me navigate the School of International Service, and to express gratitude for the SIS 4th year fellowship committee, the year of funding they provided helped me finish this project as quickly as I did. Special thanks are also due to my colleagues at American University, both in and out of the School of International Service. Jacob Stump, Benjamin Jensen, and Kiran Pervez have been supportive readers, critics, and reliable friends and allies. They show up for my ISA presentations and help me laugh at myself when I need it most. I am also grateful to Maria Amelia Viteri and Kristin Haltinner who wrestle with the same ethnomethodological demons, and do so with a yearning for social justice. Eve Bratman, Mark Hamilton, Robert Soden, Priya Dixit, Dan Yu, Ian Maley and Simon Nicholson were always down for intellectual discussion, a good laugh, or both. We shared quality time, and I wouldn't have learned to love DC without you. To my community, Aaron, Trina, Emily, Jim, Meenal, Che, Rafe, Trevor, Michael, Brett, Anne, Elizabeth, the DC V!s, ACSers, and all of those who've helped me imagine v ways of making things better, you are all gems of shining light in a world that's 'kinda not.' Keep doing what you're doing, you are each models of devoted friendship. My mother's example as an academic and principled human being is a particular inspiration as I follow her into academia, as is Robert's thinking on men and masculinity. I would also be remiss not to single out Frank, who showed me his world and opened his home to me so many times. To all of my families, Robert and Betsy, Paul and Joan, as well as my fabulous siblings, Matt, Sarah, Autumn, Rachel and Nate, plus their partners, Cara, David, Tracy and Mari, I am grateful for your support through thick and thin, and glad no one ever took me too seriously. Ann and Hans, and Tina and Stefan, have all welcomed me to Europe and showered me with encouragement. Bepa and Grandma believed and invested in me. Thank you all for your support. Stephanie, my proof reader, patron, comrade, chief counsel and life partner, your patience, faith, and occasional bribes helped me reach this point. Every day is better because you are in it. Thank you. vi Table of Contents ABSTRACT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST OF FIGURES: INTRODUCTION: MAKING WAR PUBLIC Chapter ONE: THE STATE OF THE LITERATURE ON STATE VIOLENCE 1 1: International Relations and the Social Sciences 1 2: Describing states: analytical and ethical considerations 2 3: Making sense of war and warriors 3 3.1: IR, ontology, and war: 3 3.2: The empirical study of militaries: being a soldier 4 3.3: History and the study of warriors: 4 3.4: Political and Social Psychology: obedience to orders and group conformity 5 3.5: Gender, war, and masculinity: 6 4: Putting the pieces together 6 TWO: FROM QUESTIONS TO ANSWERS VIA METHODOLOGY 6 1: The ontology of things: implications of a processual approach 6 vii 2: The shift from subjects to intersubjective relations 73 3: Identity and language: a processual approach 76 4: Identity and meaning-making as observable processes 82 5: Beyond interaction: bridging EM and STS with philosophical approaches 92 6: Method: access via video recordings 101 THREE: A TYPOLOGY OF COMBATANTS' INTERACTIONS 108 1. Playing and showing off 109 2: Praying 121 3: Healing and Medicalization 129 4: Calling home 135 5: Banter and debate 144 6: Combatants and self-crafting 158 FOUR: THE COORDINATION OF BODIES AND THINGS IN COMBAT 162 1: Moving through space: coordinating combatants in combat situations 166 2: A few portraits of embodied combatant relations with others 175 2.1: "Owning" the roads 175 2.2: Entering dwellings 182 2.3: Detaining Iraqi nationals 187 3: Friend or foe? Identifying enemies 195 4: Interactions between combatants and animals 205 viii 5: Interacting with land, water, and air 208 6: World making practices at war: some closing observations 222 FIVE: BREECHES OF THE ACCEPTABLE: INVESTIGATORY AND JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY PRACTICES 226 1: Excessive cruelty: torture, rape, and murder in U.S. military and CIA prisons 229 2: Investigations of deployed combatants 250 3: Body counting 257 4: A public discussion of tactics: rhetorical frameworks and ethical evaluation 267 CONCLUSION 291 APPENDIX ONE: FILMS AND VIDEO MATERIALS INCLUDED IN THIS STUDY 302 APPENDIX TWO: ACRONYMS AND WEAPONS, 306 WORKS CITED 310 ix LIST OF FIGURES: Figure 1 277 2 279 x INTRODUCTION: MAKING WAR PUBLIC "Procedures to authorize and legitimize are important, but it's only half of what is needed to assemble. The other half lies in the issues themselves, in the matters that matter, in the res that creates a public around it. They need to be represented, authorized, legitimated and brought to bear inside the relevant assembly. What we call an "object-oriented democracy" tries to redress this bias in much of political philosophy, that is, to bring together two different meanings of the word representation that have been kept separate in theory although they have remained always mixed in practice. -Bruno Latour, "From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik, or How to Make Things Public" (Latour and Weibel 2005: 16) Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel's edited volume, Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (2005) consists of over a thousand pages of photos, diagrams, essays, and charts that explore the "crisis of representation" in contemporary western life. Based on an installation exhibit they held in Karlsruhe, Germany, the book looks at practices of representation in politics, computer programming, art, scientific disputes, ecological planning, and much more. It begins with Latour's call for a shift from Realpolitik, the German word for hard-headed materialist analyses of power and strategy, to Dingpolitik, a neologism meaning the politics of things.1 1 "Ding" is the old German root of 'thing,' and Latour points out that original uses of the word also included 'meeting' or 'concern.' His argument builds from Heidegger's lectures in " What is a Thingl" (1969) and Barbara Dolemayer (Latour and Weibel 2005: 260-267) and Graham Harman's (Latour and Weibel 2005: 268-271) essays in the same volume. 1 2 Inviting readers to think along with the exhibit, Latour points to the ways that liberal enlightenment thinkers, from Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau up through Habermas and Rawls, have all been quite clear on the procedures of decision making. Their discussions of contracting power for rights, consensus seeking, and rational thought experiments have all drawn attention to the ways that republics ought to deliberate on politics. But none of them spend very much time talking about the 'things,' the issues, problems, and conflicts that would draw together concerned parties in the first place. In the epigraph (above), Latour argues that without substantive matters worth discussing, and without a community for whom they matter, democratic processes are not enough. Considering the ways that the word "representation" is used in European languages, Masato Fukushima questions the terms on which the exhibition and book sought to address the supposed 'crisis' that the world is suffering from (Latour and Weibel 2005: 58-63). He notes that in Japanese, a number of quite distinct words are required to render the concepts of political, graphic, and symbolic representation, to take only a few of its uses. The same is even more true of Latour's favored term, 'thing,' and Fukushima has to invent a new Japanese word for it to be used in a similar way. He argues that it is "almost eye-opening for non-Westerners to observe how this small term, deriving from repraesentare of Latin, has spread its ramifications... [hence] the battle cry of "crisis of representation" can have simultaneous echoes in different realms." He argues that the success of the very idea of such a crisis "hits home only with those who share, in this case, its Latin heritage" (Latour and Weibel 2005: 60). Fukushima's analysis of how the entire discussion of a 'crisis of representation' depends on the particular etymology of that one Latin word is a powerful reminder that so many of the controversies and 3 dilemmas of life are powerfully impacted by the words and concepts available for discussing them. Despite the cultural contingency of the question posed by Latour and Weibel's art exhibit and book, asking how the representation of things, of substantive matters, can be integrated into the processes of political representation is important. Without necessarily accepting the premise of a crisis of representation, the need to focus public discussions on the 'thing,' the substantive matter of concern, is a significant contribution of the many exhibits and essays gathered in the volume. Exploring how to bring 'things' (or at least references and citations to them), into deliberative processes is instructive. Pointing to former Secretary of State Colin Powell's case for war on Iraq as presented to the United Nations in February of 2003, Latour argues that the blurry satellite photos, charts, and small vial that Powell displayed were brought to buttress his claim that "every statement I make is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts" (Latour 2005a: 18). Powell's evidence has since been found to lack the 'solid sources' he claimed to have, and the effort to track down those citations was abandoned in 2004 (BBC Staff 2004).2 Yet the war on Iraq was launched, and at the time of writing, continues. Powell and other Bush administration officials were able to make their case for war because the procedures of representation, citation, and validation of claims about political matters have not been debated, much less 2 In a curious side note, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller pressured the Iraq Study Group (ISG) searching for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) to "GTMO-ize" their treatment of detainees. The debriefers on staff at the ISG balked, with one threatening to resign, when temperature and sleep manipulation were suggested as ways to "break" prisoners (United States Senate Committee on Armed Services 2008: 191-193). One is left to wonder if the ISG had used torture, whether they would have found Iraqis willing to corroborate Powell's assertions, regardless of their validity. Miller was the commander of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and his role in the dispersion of torture techniques will be discussed in more detail in chapter five. 4 settled. Able to convince allies that Iraq was developing chemical and biological weapons, yet also able to question the findings of countless researchers that human related C02 is warming the atmosphere alarmingly, the Bush administration serves as a reminder that questions of evidence loom large in public life, not just in academia. With awareness that concepts, descriptions, and evidence are all highly contestable, democratic and public discussions nonetheless require some notion of what is actually happening. This dissertation is intended to provide a look at the conduct of the war in Iraq in light of these concerns. It seeks to answer the question of how U.S. combatants' embodied interactions make them available as instruments of state power. By focusing on interactive processes, the goal is to foreground the work that combatants do in order to achieve the properties they are assumed to have in much of the literature on war, manhood, or the military. Drawing on tools from Ethnomethodology (EM), discourse analysis, and Latour's discipline of Science and Technology Studies (STS), the chapters that follow trace the processes that produce social identities, combat units, and institutionally accountable subjects. Latour noted that "to provide complete undisputable proof has become a rather messy, pesky, risky business" (2005: 19), and the process of studying an on-going war has certainly conformed to this characterization. The sheer volume of books, academic and journalistic investigations, and audio-visual reporting on this war are staggering, and I have not attempted to synthesize or order them all. Latour noted that "Accurate facts are hard to come by, and the harder they are, the more they entail some costly equipment, a longer set of mediations, more delicate proofs" (2005: 21), and in the social sciences, the struggle over epistemology and attendant methodologies has had a hard time reckoning 5 with this state of affairs. To know something with great certainty is to know a little bit about something specific, and requires elaborate techniques to produce. Yet accusations of relativism and abandonment of standards of evidence and warrants do have a point. If we question the traditional models of knowledge, how are readers and colleagues to judge our work? This study represents a deliberate ethical and epistemic stance towards the U.S. deployment of combatants in Iraq as a public 'matter-of-concern.' In order to access the processes that make the war what it is, I have turned to a highly mediated form of 'witnessing,' using audio-visual recordings produced in Iraq to analyze empirical interactions. Others have explored how combatant-produced videos from Iraq (Hagan 2007), as well documentaries (Aufderheide 2007, 2008), render that war legible through cinematic and aesthetic techniques and references. This dissertation instead uses them as "inscriptions" (Latour and Woolgar 1979), that is, transformations of one set of relations between recording devices and those around it into something reproducible and citable. The choice of audio-visual recordings as data sources means that a highly mediated process of recording, editing, uploading, and other operations stands as a chain linking the empirical interactions of combatants through to the viewer. 3 Latour noted that in his research with Woolgar (1979) on how laboratory scientists produce facts, what he learned is that the observation that "anything and everything was transformed into inscriptions was not my bias, as I first thought, but was what the laboratory was made for. Instruments, for instance, were of various types, ages, and degrees of sophistication. Some were pieces of furniture, others filled large rooms, employed many technicians and took many weeks to run. But their end result, no matter the field, was always a small window through which one could read a very few signs from a rather poor repertoire (diagrams, blots, bands, columns). All these inscriptions, as I called them, were combinable, superimposable and could, with only a minimum of cleaning up, be integrated as figures in the text of the articles people were writing" (Latour 1986: 3). 6 The act of watching these recordings involves 'witnessing,' a verb that means to testify, certify, or provide evidence, but also "To be formally present as a witness of (a transaction)" and "To be a witness, spectator, or auditor of (something of interest, importance, or special concern); to experience by personal (esp. ocular) observation; to be present as an observer at; to see with one's own eyes" (witness, v., Oxford English Dictionary Online 2009). Discussing the trope of "eyewitness news," one scholar of the media explored the philosophical implications of framing the experience of live and non- fiction programming as witnessing instant history (Peters 2001). He argues that non- fiction programming carries an ethical dilemma dissimilar to fiction's 'suspension' of belief and responsibility, adding: "because it is spatially remote, our duty to action is unclear." Those who watch far-away people via these mediated images are "in the position of spectators at a drama without the relief of knowing that the suffering is unreal" (Peters 2001: 722). It is this uncomfortable acknowledgement that one is actively viewing the suffering and terror of other people's lives that I wish to highlight in using this verb. A philosopher, also considering the question of 'witnessing' in light of psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and poststructural insights into subjectivity, argued that "The victims of oppression, slavery, and torture are not merely seeking visibility and recognition, but they are also seeking witnesses to horrors beyond recognition" (Oliver 2004: 78). She goes on to explain her formulation of subjectivity in terms of witnessing, arguing that the "infinite open system of response" at the center of the self is made possible though the combination of historically specific subject positions and ethical obligations to respond to others (Oliver 2004: 81). Though I am un-persuaded by her 7 psychoanalytic discussion of the subconscious, what Oliver and Peters both highlight is that unlike 'seeing,' witnessing the lives of others implies an ethical responsibility. In her typology of Iraq documentaries, Aufderheide (2007, 2008) notes that these films come in three basic genres: the "why are we in Iraq" essays like Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore 2004), "what we can learn from Iraqis" films like Voices from Iraq, (The people of Iraq 2004) and Iraq in Fragments (Longley 2006), and the "grunt docs" that this dissertation builds its arguments from. In her commentaries, Aufderheide has focused on the 'what we can learn' genre of films, noting the ways that cinematography builds intimacy between the viewer and those appearing in the film. Describing the "grunt docs," she notes: "The aesthetic challenges of these films center on how to create watchable video out of paralyzingly long stretches of boredom and frustration interrupted by chaos. The usual choice for narrative structure is to follow the course of a deployment. What sustains our interest over this year? Probably not character development. Character development is tough with teenagers whose common experience over twelve months is that they're terrified and lonely. The development over that time is typically brutal: The trajectory is usually from young and naive to young with post-traumatic stress disorder" (Aufderheide 2007). Though her characterization is hard to dispute, these films do contain numerous recordings of interactions between U.S. forces and the people, animals, and "natureculture"4 of Iraq. In the course of producing a documentary film about everyday life for U.S. forces, the films convert their interactions into an audio-visual inscription 4 In her Companion Species Manifesto, Haraway (2003) argues that treating land, ecology, and culture as separate participates in the reification of the 'natural' and makes it more difficult to perceive the complex linkages and relationships which bind human activity to non-human species and processes over a long historical scale. The very species that live in given regions, along with the chemical composition of water and air, not to mention the movement of water, are what they are due to these long term relationships. Hence, she uses the neologism 'natureculture' in order to highlight the social interaction of human and non- human beings in an area. 8 which can be publicly accessed. Witnessing these interactions, and applying heuristic techniques from empirical social sciences to them, forms the basis for answering the research question of this dissertation. The dissertation begins with a review and critique of literatures on International Relations (IR), war and gender, obedience to orders, and historical studies of war and warriors. Arguing for a processual approach to meaning-making and social life, chapter one draws attention to the gaps and potentials of scholarly work in these areas. The second chapter builds from the previous discussion, and introduces the analytical and theoretical approaches utilized in this study. Drawing from Sociological Ethnomethodology (EM), Science and Technology Studies (STS), and IR post-structural discourse analysis in the Foucauldian tradition, the philosophical commitments of these approaches is discussed. A basic, if not unproblematic, combination of these commitments is defended, and the methods used to collect and analyze the audio-visual recordings are described in more detail. Chapter three offers close readings of U.S. combatant's interactions in Iraq, focusing on the processes of 'accountability' that provide the moment to moment conversational basis for identity production, using concepts largely drawn from discourse analysis and EM. Similarly, chapter four uses EM and STS analytical techniques to describe the processes that achieve unit cohesion, friend from foe distinctions, and shared situational definitions. It then continues the emphasis on processes of interaction, but looks specifically at the effects of U.S. forces on the naturecultures and non-human animals around them. 9 The final chapter uses discourse analysis to examine the subject-positions that combatants are assigned in the contradictory but co-present discourses of 'individual accountability' and 'war zones,' by examining the Abu Ghraib scandal, military legal investigations, and the Bush administration's decision not to keep 'body counts.' The chapter concludes with a close reading of a dialogue between two retired Colonels on PBS in 2004, as they discuss one of the documentaries featured in this study. From their discussion, two discursive frameworks are drawn out and analyzed, one emphasizing U.S. forces as potentially dangerous and in need of monitoring, the other emphasizing war zones as dangerous places where bad things happen. The conclusion argues that the processes described in previous chapters, both at the level of interaction, and in public debate, produce soldiers and marines as instruments of state power. In their interactions with themselves and each other, in the ways that they characterize and interpret the world, and in the ways that they are held accountable to contradictory discourses, what this dissertation offers is a view of some of the many processes which give the U.S. military the shape it currently holds. In place of the individualist and statist assumptions normally embedded in studies of armed forces, the goal throughout this study is to describe the techniques and practices which link people in interaction to conceptualizations of the world. Pointing to the false dichotomy of micro/macro, the dissertation ends by arguing that careful attention to the forms of labor that produce meaning in interaction offer an answer to how U.S. combatants' embodied interactions make them available as instruments of state power. CHAPTER ONE: THE STATE OF THE LITERATURE ON STATE VIOLENCE This chapter begins with a contextualization of this research project in light of cross- disciplinary conversations that it draws upon. Seeking to outline the major schools of thought in International Relations (IR) theory for an interdisciplinary audience, the introduction explains the position of this research within IR debates. The next section of this chapter outlines recent and innovative research in IR, pointing to gaps in both theory and methodology which this dissertation seeks to address. The chapter ends with a review of substantive research on armed combatants, drawing on the empirical findings of other scholars engaged in similar undertakings. 1: International Relations and the Social Sciences All wars are fought three times. There is the political struggle over whether to go to war. There is the physical war itself. And then there is the struggle over differing interpretations of what was accomplished and the lessons of it all. -Richard Haas, War of Necessity, War of Choice: a Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (2009: 216) Richard Haas, a republican National Security official in both Bush administrations and both U.S. invasions of Iraq, describes a three step process of contestation involved in war fighting. First, policy arguments must be advanced in such a 10 11 way as to gain the secure political and legal authority to initiate military action. This step, engaged in by politicians, journalists, and others with access to media outlets or formal decision-making powers, can be quite acrimonious. Leading up to the current war in Iraq, questions of legitimacy, evidence, and political manipulation of information generated a host of popular and scholarly investigations (c.f. Gordon and Trainor 2006; Hann 2004; Palast 2006; Zizek 2004). The second step involves armed men and women in uniform going into another country and engaging in combat, usually involving a significant number of people killed and major disruptions to all aspects of life in the surrounding areas. This second moment, when bodies are being smashed, is what this dissertation is about: the conduct of war as empirical interactions between members of the armed forces and others. The third step calls for an interpretation of the resulting events. A number of academic disciplines engage in this sort of interpretive project, not to mention public discussions in the popular media. But it is also the point at which military institutions reflect on their own practices, seeking short term and long term adaptations. The final battle over the interpretation of the U.S. occupation of Iraq will be fought for years to come. My goal is not to tell the story of the lead-up to the invasion in terms of economic policy and interests (Klein 2007: 325-382; Palast 2006: 9-143), or to explain executive branch decision-making processes (c.f. Clarke 2004; Woodward 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008), nor is it to analyze the problematic relationships between autocratic politics and oil (c.f. Hedges 2006; Mitchell 2002a; Rashid 2000; Scott 2003). This dissertation does not analyze the entire debate, still in its infancy, over how to interpret the war in Iraq in a larger historical, cultural, or geostrategic context. It is offered as a systematic 12 'witnessing'5 of U.S. combatants' interactions while serving in Iraq, seeking to explain the techniques they use to make sense of, and enact, their participation in war. In drawing out the practices that combatants engage in, the goal is to map out the various forms of accountability that they hold themselves (and each other) to, thereby linking discourses6 to empirical interactions. Unlike the 'norms' literature in IR, which often fails to specify mechanisms linking behavior to ideas, the combination of face-to-face interactive accountability with discursively shared normative categories provides a direct link between seemingly 'micro' and 'macro' level phenomena. Before turning to the review of the literature itself, this first section is intended as a bridge for those of disparate disciplinary backgrounds who may find the results, methods, or material of this dissertation interesting, if unfamiliar in presentation or articulation. The choice to utilize methodologies from Sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) in completing a research project in IR could make this project less familiar to some readers. In terms of argumentation, the fundamental questions and debates that this dissertation addresses emerge from IR. IR is a peculiar discipline, one that borrows from other social sciences quite freely, yet remains primarily interested in its own theoretical debates. This dissertation emerges from those debates while drawing on tools and vocabularies from very distinct research traditions. There is a certain degree of danger in doing so, since no debate looks the same from the outside as from inside. This means that distinctions that may be 5 For more on the epistemic and ontological assumptions adopted vis-a-vis 'witnessing,' see the dissertation introduction. 6 The term 'discourse' refers to "clusters of ideas, images, and practices" (Hall 1997: 6), creating frameworks of meaning that allow evaluations, causal explanations, or normative valuations. For more on how this concept works in research practice, see chapter two. 13 extremely important in one discipline are glossed when ideas are imported into different debates. The advantage in taking these risks is that certain lines of thought emerging from feminism, post-structuralism, and pragmatics have had rippling effects across the social sciences. Drawing on other fields' literatures enriches the conceptual toolkit, highlights empirical data that is unfamiliar, and helps to increase self-awareness of one discipline's quirks. Each discipline has had discussions about how to acknowledge gender, how to make sense of racist and colonial histories, and how the validity of research should be assessed, yet each does so on its own terms, in light of its own ongoing debates. Throughout this dissertation, I draw on examples and insights from a range of disciplines in order to illustrate how particular interpretive strategies are utilized in literatures where such approaches are more widely utilized. In terms of the treatment of empirical data, this means adopting techniques and concepts from feminist and post-structural methodological traditions outside of IR. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), Ethnomethodology (EM) and Foucault-inspired post-structural discourse analysis, the arguments of this dissertation concern how the occupation of Iraq, and the social identities of those occupying it, are produced in interaction. Noticing how those interactions intersect with intersubjectively shared discursive formations helps to explain how individual people produce, modify, and resist accountability to cultural and institutional expectations. In order to make sense of how soldiers and marines 'do war' in their everyday lives in Iraq, feminist studies of gender, historical studies of participation in massacre, social psychological experiments on willingness to torture, and historical and political parallels from other conflicts will be 14 invoked. Each such study emerges from its own disciplinary conflicts, and may look quite different as it enters a study of everyday life for U.S. combatants in Iraq. In Chaos of Disciplines (2001), Andrew Abbott notes the recurrence of fractal patterns of argumentation as the social scientific disciplines parted ways. History broke from Sociology on the question of generalizability, yet this debate has repeated in both disciplines, with some historians insisting that their work contributes to broader theoretical questions, and some Sociologists arguing that context is so specific that particular empirical studies should not be compared to others. The lines of argumentation that once provoked disciplinary divisions in the social sciences recur within them, Abbott notes. As Political Science and Economics have parted ways based on different ways of thinking about the role of the state and the rationality of the market, debates between development economists and Chicago school structural adjustment economists have a ring of familiarity, as do debates between rational choice and neo-Marxist Political Scientists. These debates, and patterns of debate, are particularly important to note when conducting interdisciplinary research. The rewards of crossing these boundaries in search of allies, inspiration, and empirical studies are incredible, but they do come at a cost. This dissertation is about the occupation of Iraq by U.S. combat forces, a theme that could very well be studied anthropologically, macro-economically, ecologically, or in terms of literature and music. There is virtually no limit to the questions that can be asked of and about this war, and each question can be answered according to different methodological and epistemic assumptions. 15 Traditionally, the study of war has been largely assigned to Historians, who conduct research on every conceivable aspect of a given conflict, usually long after it is over, and based on primary sources. Political Scientists study the policies, budgets, and doctrines that make war possible, often with an eye to influencing policy-making, while Military Sociologists study those people and institutions that compose the military itself. Economists assess costs of war, and Psychologists design training programs that prepare (and repair) combatants for battle. Philosophers and Political Theorists ask why wars are fought, which wars are worth fighting, and how war transforms politics and culture. Each specialization has developed its own debates, ways of conceptualizing problems, and standards for evaluating arguments and evidence. Each has its own place in the fractal history of the modern academic social sciences, which affects whether particular perspectives are dominant or recessive. IR traces its lineage largely through Diplomatic History, which was an area of research where diplomats, policy makers, and scholars interacted in their debates about the past, and what lessons could be learned for present crises and situations (c.f. Schmidt 1998, 2002). Historically, those who wrote about and debated questions of war and peace were also interested in moral and theological questions, especially in debates about just war in Christian and Islamic jurisprudence. Thus the reflections of philosophers like Sun Tzu, Aristotle, Ibn Khaldun, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and others have contributed strongly to debates in IR (c.f. the essays in Jahn 2006). The founders of modern IR scholarship read widely in philosophy and theology, even as they were concerned with the particulars of statecraft, Hans Morgenthau (1946, 16 1948, 1965; 1951) and Edward Hallett Carr (1945a, 1945b, 1962), exemplify the pre-cold war approach of scholars who were active in philosophical, political, and diplomatic debates (Long and Schmidt 2005). Their interest in why nations go to war was not confined to choosing among policy instruments, but asked deeper questions about how political and military power work, and how to respond to world events in a way that advances ethical ideals like peace, economic and political democratization, or defeating fascism. Indeed, the main schools of contemporary IR theory divide along normative political theoretical debates, rather than methodology (cf. Inayatullah and Blaney 2004; the essays in: Keohane 1986; Walker 1993; Williams 1992). 'Liberal' political theory, especially in the guise of European early modern political philosophy, has a pervasive influence not only on the political institutions which IR scholars study, but also on the intellectual frameworks they use to interpret what they see. Liberalism influences Neoliberal Institutionalism with its emphasis on the ways that trade and bureaucratic linkages between states lead to more rational outcomes (c.f. Keohane 1984; Keohane and Hoffmann 1991). Liberal assumptions about individuals and rationality also pervade rational choice (c.f. Moravcsik 1997) in IR scholarship. Liberal political theory also contributes to scholarship on just war theory (c.f. Walzer 2000), regime types (c.f. Leeds and Davis 1999), political transformation (c.f. Finnemore and Sikkink 1998), social movements (c.f. Keck and Sikkink 1998), and human security (c.f. Axworthy 2001; Thomas 2001). 'Realist' political theory, centered on European debates about Realpolitik, and raison d'etat, remains a powerful source of insight for IR scholars. Authors like Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and Clausewitz, emphasized the imperatives of martial 17 security in a world of very real and very dangerous empires, strategic rivals, and internal and external enemies. This tradition inflects much of IR scholarship, from balance of power and security studies through more recent critical neo-Marxist and post-structural IR (Bially-Mattern 2001; c.f. Mearsheimer 2001; Morgenthau 1948). Even those who have built careers critiquing realism have adopted many of its assumptions about power, international anarchy, and national interests (c.f. Nye 2004; Wendt 1999). Additional 'schools' of IR that are commonly taught in basic survey courses include feminist, post-colonial, and constructivist scholarship, all three of which are 20th century additions to the field, and all of which repeat the liberal/realist argument within their own debates, along the lines suggested by Abbott's notion of fractal repetition. Feminists and postcolonial scholars sometimes use liberal ideas of universal rights, self- determination, and rational actors, while others rely on theories of power, force, and violence that emerged from Machiavellian, Gramscian, or Foucauldian lines. Liberals and realists both appear within the constructivist camp, with debates about rationality, actor hood, and the possibility of overcoming power relations providing opportunities for the recurrence of the same themes in new debates (c.f. Barkin 2003, 2004; Bially-Mattern 2004; Jackson and Nexon 2004; Sterling-Folker 2004). Within liberal schools of IR, like Neoliberal Institutionalism, there are some who appear 'realist-like,' emphasizing power relations and strategic capability. Among realists, there are those who advocate the spread of democracy and human rights, a very liberal notion, as a means to advancing state security. What recurs is a debate that Hans Morgenthau, a committed if not ideal-typical realist, described as "Scientific Man versus Power Politics" (Morgenthau 1946). 18 In one corner are those who believe that human beings are defined by objective rationality and that their decisions and practices can be explained in terms of regularities along the lines of natural phenomena, which are also assumed to be predictable. Attempting to isolate the 'causal variable' or single factor that leads to a given outcome is the goal of such research, and it is premised on a stable, predictable, and manipulable social world. The 'scientific man' of the modern era has given way to the 'rational actor,' but both make sense according to a world view that sees technical, scientific, and political progress as linked to the essential rationality of individual human beings. While liberalism offers a variety of concepts, its strongest contribution to IR theory has been a persistent belief in the capacity of human beings to engineer a better world through "Rationalizing Politics" (and the ways that it is studied, cf. Milner 1998). Whether through market integration (c.f. Friedman 2005), institutional collaboration (Keohane and Milner 1996; c.f. Martin and Simmons 1998; Milner 1997), or rational deliberation (c.f. Habermas 1984; Habermas 1998; Wyn Jones 2001: chs. 10-11), liberalism has bequeathed IR a tradition of seeking to transcend power relations through rationality. The realist tradition, emerging as a critique of this faith in progress, insists on the inescapability of power in world politics. Early realists like Carr (1939; 1945a:), Morgenthau (1946, 1948), and Waltz (1959) saw themselves as critics of a dangerously 'idealist' faith in rationality, and turned to thinkers like Machiavelli (1992), von Clausewitz (1873), Nietzsche (1968, 1989), andNiebuhr (1944, 1953, 1960) for inspiration in a world where human beings seem to be capable of terrible things. Seeking to hem in American idealism, particularly the idea that markets can bring about peace and the Wilsonian ideal of spreading democracy globally, realists developed a tradition that 19 focuses strongly on strategic capacities and the global balance of power. Striving to secure 'national interests' while resisting political temptations to overreach, realism has provided a basis to critique U.S. involvement in Vietnam (c.f. Klare 1972; Morgenthau 1965), Iraq (c.f. Waltz 2004), and Israel (c.f. Mearsheimer and Walt 2007). That said, realism, particularly in its Neorealist guise (c.f. Waltz 1979; Waltz 2000) has emphasized strategic rationality as the best path to success in power politics. Both liberal and realist schools of IR call for the study and practice of politics to be grounded in objective analysis of interests and capacities, their disagreement is on whether to treat state military power as the defining feature of international politics. Recent decades have brought a number of new debates as philosophical and theoretical arguments concerning epistemology and foundational assumptions have raged through social science journals. Scientific realists ("positivists," to their detractors) square off against post-structural and constructivist theorists ("postmodernists," to theirs) over the relationship of scientific descriptions and practices to the essential characteristics of the universe (c.f. Berger and Luckmann 1966; Foucault 1982; Hacking 1999; Jackson 2008; Lakatos 1978; Latour 2004b; Lyotard 1984; Popper 1969). Similarly, recent work on the role of language and interaction in constituting and enabling human agency has also aroused significant controversy (c.f. Butler 1997; Denzin 1993; Foucault 1982; Harre and Tissaw 2005; Kristeva 1980; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Nelson 2001; Shorter 1993). Critics have derided these 'postmodernist' ideas as undermining or dismissing the foundations of scientific practice and progress in a variety of fields (c.f. Jarvis 2000; King, Keohane, and Verba 1994; Polier and Roseberry 1989). By questioning the relationship of language to truth, and the rational individual subject as a stable and pre- 20 given basis for research, these dangerous ideas have had troubled receptions in a variety of fields. In IR, a 'social constructivist' position has been asserted as a 'middle ground.' This position accepts that language and meaning do not correspond to essential qualities of the universe, and that social arrangements are not natural occurrences, while asserting that nonetheless, the properties of things in the universe can be apprehended through scientific contestation (Wendt 1999). This line of argumentation, based on scientific realism (c.f. Bhaskar 1986; Bhaskar 1998; Kuhn 1970) and like actual logical-positivism7 (Hempel 1965), requires a qualitative distinction between social facts and natural things, meaning that it remains philosophically "dualist" (Jackson 2008), despite acknowledging that social outcomes are constructed, rather than inevitable. The world is seen as separated between an "in-here" of culture and knowledge versus an "out-there" of nature which must be bridged through rigorous methodology, This would seem to be the legacy of Descartes' asking 7 Positivism is named for attempting to create a "positive," or proven, system of universal laws which would allow the logical creation of knowledge. Logical positivism, as in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, endeavors to create a logical model of the world inside language, a one to one representation of that which is true. Facts, arranged correctly, would allow the logical positivist to logically produce truth (Hempel 1966). Traditional logical-positivists presume that nature and society both have regular causal laws that can be discovered through systematic data analysis. Similarly, those who reject positivism in favor of falsification hold that the world does have determinate characteristics, against which we can compare our hypotheses (Kuhn 1970; Lakatos 1978; Popper 1959, 1969). The difference between the two is that positivists hold that we can build knowledge 'up' from data, whereas falsificationists hold that we can only seek to refute one another's claims, maintaining provisional best-guesses. The difference is one of certainty, but leaves the procedures of knowledge production more or less the same, and both presume a world 'out there' against which to measure our statements. As Wittgenstein's attempt to produce such a logical system says in its final sentence, "What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence" (2001b: §7). Unfortunately, that would mean silence concerning motivations, judgments, ethical or aesthetic values, all of which depend on statements which do not literally represent states of affairs or arrangements of objects. Hence Wittgenstein's later work on language-games, gestures, and other approaches to meaning-making (c.f. Harre and Tissaw 2005; Wittgenstein 2001a, 2006). 21 how an isolated mind could be absolutely as opposed to relatively sure of anything about the outside world....Descartes was asking for absolute certainty from a brain-in-a-vat, a certainty that was not needed when the brain (or the mind) was firmly attached to its body and the body thoroughly involved in its normal ecology (Latour 1999: 4). Dualist epistemologies like Descartes' flow from an insistence on an ontological split between the mind and body, knowledge and nature, the ideal and the material. Monistic epistemologies, on the other hand, insist that humans are part of the world and inseparable from it, making the search for absolute certainty a hindrance in the production of useful and ethical relationships with the world around us (c.f. Haraway 1989; Haraway 1991, 2003; Latour 1991, 2004a, 2005a). Human beings can be "relatively sure of many of the things with which we are daily engaged through the practice of our laboratories...[however, in] Descartes' time this sturdy relativism, based on the number of relations established with the world, was already in the past" (Latour 1999: 4). Rather than applying a relational ontology 'all the way down' (Doty 2000), IR constructivists claim to have "rescued the exploration of identity from postmodernists" through "arguing for its importance using methods accepted by the majority of scholars" to "challenge mainstream analysts on their own ground" (Checkel 1998: 325). This means, for Checkel and other "middle ground" IR constructivists (Adler 1997), turning norms, values, or cultures into variables that can be causally compared to material, rational choice, or other causal variables within an overall rationalist framework that divides things from meanings (Epstein 2008: 7). Hence in IR, there is an established place for a certain kind of constructivism which complicates traditional state-centric 22 research, while accepting modern assumptions about rationality and the stability of subjectivity. While epistemological questions have divided colleagues and yielded new approaches to the study of international politics, the established canons of theory and method have been even more troubled by radically new conceptualizations of gender that have emerged from a politically and academically engaged queer and feminist movement throughout the social sciences and humanities (c.f. Butler 1991; Cleaver 2002; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Crane and Crane-Seeber 2003; Denzin 1993; Fenstermaker and West 2002; Hammington 2002; Heasley 2005a; Laqueur 1990; Pascale 2007; Pascoe 2007; Tickner 2001). Despite this proliferation of research, feminism has often found more acceptance when 'women' or 'gender' become populations or variables in traditional research designs. In the words of one neoliberal IR scholar: "We will only "understand" each other if IR scholars are open to the important questions that feminist theories raise, and if feminists are willing to formulate their hypotheses in ways that are testable -and falsifiable- with evidence" (Keohane 1998: 197).Where constructivists were able to position themselves against radical postmodernists and gain a certain legitimacy, some variants of feminism have also gained ground by adopting traditional epistemic, ontological, and methodological assumptions. This comes at the price of losing the radical critique of existing society, ideology, and scholarship that a complete rethinking of gender might entail (Seidler 1994). Feminism has a rising visibility in IR (Hutchings 2008), though still does not seem to attract the attention of top-ranked journals, despite the prolific and inspiring work done by feminist IR scholars (c.f. Alexander and Hawkesworth 2008; Enloe 1990, 1993, 23 2000; Peterson 1992; Tickner 2001). In spite of the relative lack of attention (Youngs 2004), innovative new research on how gender, militarism, and masculinities are linked represents one of the cutting edges of feminist scholarship in IR and related fields (c.f. Steans 2006; Sylvester 1994). Ever since Cohn's (1987) path breaking study of defense planners and gender, a growing body of recent feminist work in IR has recognized that 'where are the women?' might not be all that thinking about gender in IR has to contribute, turning to the 'man question' (see the essays in: Zalewski and Parpart 1998). Rather than confining feminist analysis to women, or queer theory to queer communities, this growing body of work points to the ways that (masculinist) gendered social relations constitute the objects and analyses of international politics (c.f. Goldstein 2001; Hooper 2001; Kronsell 2005; Woodward and Winter 2004). With all of its exciting promise, feminist and queer theoretic IR still seems to raise too many questions about fundamental assumptions in the field, and scholars interested in gender and feminist theory often find the conversations of their colleagues shocking for the metaphors that pass without notice.8 Like the disruption caused by feminist critiques of the invisible and assumed 'scientific man' at the center of IR scholarship, the voices of those outside of the white, Euro-American academy where IR started have also found a complicated reception. Numerous studies linking the history of social scientific complicity in colonialism and racial oppression have pointed out the ways that theorizing and measuring political life 8 As Cohn's study of defense intellectuals noted in terms of nuclear weapons strategy, phrases like "penetrate," "violate," and "hit" carry the double entendre of sex and death, rape and mass murder. Such turns of phrase may seem innocent, especially to those with personal or intellectual ties with the military, where such mixing of sex and death in everyday speech are common. 24 contribute to legitimating and consolidating certain forms of rule (c.f. Blaut 1993; Chakrabarty 2000; Grovogui 1996, 2006; Haraway 1989; Harrison 1998; Lindqvist and Tate 1996; Ling 2002; Memmi 2000; Nandy 1984; Said 1979, 1994). Noting that anthropologists and other social scientists contributed to European colonial rule, a number of authors have argued that this legacy requires a more thorough accounting, both in terms of the historical record and contemporary house-cleaning (c.f. Mitchell 1988, 2002b; Pratt 1986, 1992; Thomas 1994). This anti-colonial and anti-racist critique of IR has been received timidly, and many textbooks as well as theory courses reserve one week for feminist, post-colonial, and critical theories of IR. While an acknowledged part of the field, and building on a history of brutality and dehumanization that few IR scholars could pretend not to know about, post-colonial scholarship remains outside of the core journals, and its insights seem not to have percolated through the field. The proliferation of schools of thought in IR has caused some scholars to ask whether the discipline still holds together at all (Snyder 2004; Walt 1998), although one unifying factor for IR scholars is a commitment to engaging with IR theory. The juxtaposition of political theory and empirical research in IR is a defining feature of the field. While sometimes viewed as a sub discipline of Political Science, the substantive conversations of IR scholars have little in common with those who study U.S. politics. IR has long been, and remains, a largely U.S. field (Smith 2002; Wasver 1998), though distinct European and non-western schools of thought have been assertive in contesting that state of affairs. 2: Describing states: analytical and ethical considerations 25 The realist has thus been enabled to demonstrate that the intellectual theories and ethical standards of utopianism, far from being the expression of absolute and a priori principles, are historically conditioned, being both products of circumstances and interests and weapons framed for the furtherance of interests. -E.H. Carr, The Twenty Year's Crisis: 1919-1939, (1945b: 60) IR theories have long presumed states to be the primary agents of global politics, but those studying social movements (Keck and Sikkink 1998) as well as multinational corporations (Gilpin 1987) and 'civilizations' (Huntington 1993) have attempted to add their own chosen actors to the mix. But how far we can go in comparing states (or other corporate actors) to individual people has been the subject of some controversy. Some, like Ringmar (1996) and Neumann (2004) see an appropriate linking through metaphor, states are like people; while Wendt (2004) goes further and defends the idea that states are persons, in that they exhibit intention, homeostasis, and autonomy. Though the 'state as a person' debate is particularly clear in making these metaphors explicit, the dominant mode of theorizing and conducting research in IR treats states as singular, unified, and rational actors. Using Hobbes' metaphor of 'men' in the 'state of nature' who compete with one another for position (and survival) in a world without a higher arbiter than 'self-help' (Hobbes 1997; Jahn 2000; Williams 1992: 56-68, 2006), realists have argued that the condition of international politics is one of "anarchy," because no state can rely on anything other than its own capacities to survive (Powell 1994; Waltz 1979). The classic constructivist critique of this formulation accepted the idea that states are like people, but argued that anarchy is a result of their interaction, not a natural condition (Wendt 1992). The post-colonial critique of the entire metaphor traces the idea of a "state of nature" 26 back to colonial interpretations of native American life as being without culture, religion, politics, or trade (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004; Jahn 2000); as Mirsepassi writes "Early modern Europe defined its own modernity in opposition to the colonial "primitive" living in the "state of nature"" (2000: 5). The entire metaphor ignores millennia of movement, trade, and transformation, describing natives of the 'state of nature' as "without history" (Wolf 1982). As one feminist author argued, such a 'state' of nature is "a garden unfit for women and other living things" (Runyan 1992). In mainstream IR, however, such metaphors are commonplace, and the basic worldview conceives of a system of states 'who' act based on their own national interests and power projection capacities. This state of affairs is assumed to be timeless, and a result of there being no higher force to appeal to in interstate conflict. War is thus a permanent option in interstate relations, one that requires all states to be vigilant in their defenses and careful about relative power shifts. In this interpretive framework, military capacities are the primary variable explaining outcomes in international politics (Desch 2002). Strategic analysis in the realist tradition looks to differentials of power, either in the form of the ability to use violence or ruthlessness in doing so. Such perspectives might detail how the Eisenhower-era CIA-backed coups in Iran (1953), El Salvador (1954) and the Zaire/Congo (1960) were possible, but the turmoil, bloodshed, and repressive regimes unleashed by these coups appear, if at all, as externalities. As a failure of social scientific thoroughness, this might be a trade-off for parsimony worth making. But in a finite and shared world, a world where "blowback" is real and lasting (Johnson 27 2004), failure to take responsibility for the effects of one's actions is a dangerously arrogant position. From a strategic vantage point, one can tell a story using the language of interests and capacities, but only if neither the narrator nor the reader has links to the conflicts under discussion. Discussions of justice, betrayal, lost alternatives, warriors using war to consolidate their dominance, and how cultures carry wounds forward all appear, if at all, as normative or rhetorical 'soft power' strategies by weak actors. IR as a discipline seems to agree with the Athenian commander at the battle of Melos, who stated "The standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept" (Thucydides 402). Endorsing the Athenian view of politics means no longer seeing it as one perspective among others, turning the self-serving argument of hegemonic aspirants into a methodology of political analysis. One uncomfortable fact for those who naturalize this Athenian worldview is that the argument ended when 'democratic' Athens killed all the males "and sold the women and children as slaves" after conquering Melos (Thucydides 1972: 408). They did what they had the "power to do." What else is to be said? Morally, adopting the worldview of those who enslaved, raped and murdered their neighbors might seem problematic when the genealogy of these concepts is uncovered, as numerous studies of the intellectual residue of colonialism in social science have done (c.f. Blaut 1993; Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: chs. 3 & 4; Said 1979). Even scholars who maintain an epistemic commitment to positive causal knowledge end up asking important political questions, landing some in extra-academic controversy (Mearsheimer and Walt 2007). 28 Despite the highly abstracted models that are often used to describe the causes and outcomes of international conflicts, cultural and strategic interactions consist not of power that is held and strategically deployed like trump cards or financial capital, but power that is exercised in embodied relationships between human beings. Violence, after all, is a relationship between bodies mediated through technology. IR scholarship has tended to emphasize state military violence as the power to compel, though more complicated formulations involving power in institutions, framing debates, and mobilizing identities have also enriched the literature in recent years (Duvall and Barnett 2005). 'Israel has the power to bomb Gaza' is such an obvious and amoral description of events that it is analytically fruitless. More salient questions, are: Should Israel bomb Gaza again? How will Israel know when it has bombed Gaza enough? What can people in Gaza do to deter or prevent future bombing? Such questions are not causal in the sense in which IR disciplinarians insist all good research questions must be (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). Yet for research to be at all useful to society, we must ask the questions that invite vital debates at the heart of political action and social identity. The ways that different people answer these questions point to how we understand the world and what future we seek to move towards (c.f. Carr 1945b; Mannheim 1963; Nandy 1987). Rather than the distanced and minimalist verdicts of strategic analysis, these questions make us ask how we are involved, whose perspective we are highlighting, and whose we are dismissing. It may be comfortable and obvious to say 'the U.S. deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups to the South China Sea in a show of support for the upcoming Taiwanese 29 election,' because it conforms to everyday language in journalism, as well as IR's scholarly norms about countries and their actions as unified beings. It makes intuitive sense given the way that conversations about governments are usually achieved, reinforced by the narrative structure of American history textbooks in which the parade of wars and treaties are narrated as triumphs of a single transhistorical entity called 'America' (Loewen 1995). 'The government' is typically described as a thing, a unified Leviathan whose head is the President and whose claws are cavalry formations and cruise missiles. In everyday talk, this 'thing' is also interchangeable with an 'us,' and 'our country' requires our faith and support through patriotic rituals, financial contributions, and self-sacrifice.9 The typical description of the nation-state as a collective 'we' and a unified 'it' is part of the productive process that yields the effect of an 'imagined community' (Anderson 1991), and naturalizes the idea of a nationalist 'we' through story telling (Smith 2003). Shorthand expressions, like the assumed 'we' of patriotic discourse, collapse political and other differences in deference to a universal membership category defined by state boundaries (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: 21-46, 187-221). Yet the experience of the state is not at all uniform for those living within the U.S., or those outside of it, and never has been (X 1965: 145-156). Some communities are financially buoyed by aerospace weapons contracts or prison construction, while 9 The parallels between state apparatuses that mediate an experience of 'nation-ness' for citizens and the apparatuses which mediate between religious practitioners and their metaphysical Others is, to me, striking. Religious belief and nationalist patriotism are both relational practices that produce experiences of 'we-ness' for billions of people. As 'imagined communities,' they yield identifications and identities of immense personal and social importance. By calling them imagined, or constructed, 1 do not mean anything like 'falsified' or 'debunked.' As I will argue throughout this work, production is an omni-present human activity, we produce selves, routines, marriages, laws, gods, facts, scientific apparatuses, improvised explosive devices and all of the other 'things' which we interact with. For a similar approach, see Latour's writings on the politics of things (2005a), and on why the fact that things are constructed does not make them false (2008). 30 others are subject to violent military intervention and repressive policing. The assumption of a universal 'we' erases these distinctions, while preserving a national self. Thus one must ask, when the U.S. Army was engaging in a century of 'Indian Wars and Removals,' (c.f. Churchill 1997; Friedberg 2000; Six Nations and United Nations 1978) was 'it' killing indigenous people? Were 'we'? What do such constructions achieve in terms of inclusion or exclusion of Others? These types of questions have been the focus of poststructural research in IR and Foreign Policy studies, yielding close readings of the multiple masculinities constructed by the gendered language used to describe international politics (Hooper 2001), discourses of "civilization" and "barbarism" in debates about civilians in international law (Kinsella 2005), the role that invocations of 'western civilization' played in legitimating the re-arming of West Germany (Jackson 2006), the exclusionary logic of sovereignty as it is produced in IR theory (Walker 1993), and the implicit universalism of developmental and teleological discourse in IR and international political economy (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004), amongst others. Studies by IR poststructural and critical constructivist scholars have attended to how normative communities are discursively produced, and with what implications for the conduct of foreign policy (c.f. Bially-Mattern 2001; der Derian 1997; Doty 1993, 1996; Neumann 1995; Weldes 1999a). By mapping out policy debates, these approaches illustrate the legitimating and sustaining role of self/other differentiation and linkage in foreign policy articulations. Those seeking to implement or change policies must define who 'we' are, who 'they' are, and what 'we' must do about the situation in question (Campbell 1992). While studies of dehumanizing self/other binaries premised on radical difference are important, not all identities are posited vis-a-vis an absolute Other 31 (Connolly 1991). Hansen argues that going 'beyond the other' means adopting "an ontology of identity that is flexible as to the forms of identity construction that one might encounter in concrete foreign policies" (2006: 41). This means that scholars of identity should avoid building assumptions about exactly what types of self/other demarcations might be at work, instead of attending to the messy and contested process by which identity is achieved in particular policies or debates. Beyond the fascinating insights that derive from asking how objects and actors come to be understood in particular policy debates, there is a normative advantage to bracketing everyday ways of talking about social life in general, and state activity in particular. Morally, the implication of a universal 'we' makes us all responsible for 'our country's' invasions of other peoples' lands, or else it removes the question of accountability completely. The first solution assigns collective responsibility, erasing the boundary between civilian and combatant.10 Attacks on random civilians, as in the train bombings in London and Madrid or the shootings in Mumbai, are motivated by such notions of collective accountability. 'You are supporting our enemy and are therefore also our enemy' is the message implicit in U.S. planes firebombing German and Japanese cities, and the message of terrorist attacks by occupied peoples against their occupiers (c.f. Fanon 1963; Johnson 2004). This solution takes liberal claims about representative democracy at their most literal, and holds entire populations to account for the military and covert actions of the state they support. 10 On the discursive production of this distinction, and how "barbarism" and "civilization" are implicated in it, see Kinsella's thorough treatment (2005). 32 The second solution to the moral accountability of state directed violence is that if 'it' sends 'its' troops to war based on Realpolitik, then the thing called a state is responsible. The tradition of 'realist' analysis of state action draws on this notion, and argues that war is a necessity in great power politics, even if it is tragic (Mearsheimer 2001). This way of talking produces constructions like 'national interests dictate that the Panama canal must remain under American control,' assigning inevitability to a course of action that might be politically contested. Treating states as things also allows for constructions that produce 'totalitarianism' (Zizek 2001) or 'rogue states' (Klare 1995) as the objects of policy debate. More recent examples of this way of constructing states can be seen in 'Saddam's oppressive regime' or 'Serbian nationalist aggression' which can be targeted and 'taken out' by other states. The moral problem with describing states as unified actors is that attacking a state, and not 'its' national population, is a complicated thing to do. If we don't blame a whole people, but rather the legal system, military bureaucracy, and other institutional forms within which they live, targeting becomes more complicated. Where do states end and economies begin? Are power plants that supply energy to air-defense systems 'parts' of a functionalist construction of the state? Are public schools less part of the state than privately owned weapons factories? The ambiguity in the construction of the state as both a 'we' and an 'it' is evident in discussions of legitimate and illegitimate targets, in the discourse of 'regime change,' and in the practical efforts of political and religious activists to change the policies and activities of their governments. The normative implications of this way of constructing world politics provide a reminder that language is constitutive of not just knowledge, but also of ethics. 33 A third type of language is also relatively familiar and comfortable for describing state action, one that operates via personifications of the state: 'George Bush decided to move them to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba' or 'the General deployed 1200 more troops for the operation.' In this way of talking about state action, the focus is on decision-making individuals. This approach is less ontologically ambiguous than collective responsibility, and is thus the basis of international legal precedents. The individualizing logic of legal accountability was applied at Nuremburg (Davidson 1997), and in subsequent trials in Israel, and led to the imprisonment and hanging of officials from the Third Reich for their activities related to the mass killing of POWs and of Jews, Communists, Homosexuals, Gypsies, the disabled, not to mention the civilians of the countries they occupied. As applied to Nazis by the victorious allies, this logic enjoyed wide consensus, but postwar efforts to institutionalize it in efficacious international institutions fell apart amidst "debates about the criminal nature of apartheid, the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons and the use of force by states as a crime against peace" (Weller 2002: 695). Though a victim of cold-war superpower antagonisms (Lindqvist 2001), the practice of holding individuals accountable for state-sanctioned activities has been resurrected in a variety of contexts since the end of the cold war. Taking place weeks after the collapse of Communist Party rule in Eastern Europe, the 1989 invasion of Panama is paradigmatic of the post-cold war emphasis on the rhetorical individuation of state activities. "Operation Just Cause" was a three-day military assault justified as 'taking out' the one-time C.I. A. asset Manuel Noriega. By constructing the enemy as a 'strongman,' the need to legitimize (or declare) war between communities was sidestepped. Instead of a war on Panama as a nation or people, military 34 operations were described as targeting an individual and those defending him. Surveys indicate that during the invasion, "13 Panamanian civilians died for every U.S. military fatality" (Ford 2003), and a proposed national 'day of mourning' for the 500+ civilians killed in the three day invasion was vetoed in 2008 (Associated Press Staff 2008). Despite the use of unguided air-launched high-explosives against very poor civilian neighborhoods, the targeting of security forces and government ministries, and widespread disruption of everyday life, the personalized description of events seems to have stuck (Lindsay-Poland 2003). Since the end of the cold-war, U.S. Presidents have repeatedly appealed to this type of language in order to construct their enemies as individuals, whether attacking 'Milosevic,' 'Saddam,' or 'bin Laden.' In each instance, the narrative posture was similar in separating the latently liberal populations from the radically Other criminal dictator who was the declared target of operations (Hansen 2006: 41). U.S. officials have described military actions as targeting specific criminal individuals and their supporters, rather than the communities in which they lived. However, the very possibility of distinguishing between the two when using long distance high-payload weaponry has been hotly debated after recent aerial attacks killed civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon and Georgia. The most logically consistent attempt to codify the individualization of responsibility took place in the formation of the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.), in which member "states created a regime that administers universal (or at least territorial) jurisdiction in relation to all individuals, whether or not they are nationals of state- parties" (Weller 2002: 711-12). U.S. representatives' efforts to weaken the universality of 35 the I.C.C.'s jurisdiction during treaty negotiations,11 and subsequently signed bilateral agreements that shield U.S. personnel from extradition, did not succeed in stopping the court from being constituted. The office of the prosecutor at the I.C.C. describes its mission as working "to end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, and thus to contribute to the 12 prevention of such crimes." Despite concerns from China, Russia, and others, it has already issued an indictment against a sitting head of state, Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, for crimes related to state-sponsored militias in Darfur.13 Adding to complications related to great power rivalry, as of 2009, only African defendants had been brought before the I.C.C., allowing Sudanese spokespersons to denounce it as "the white man's court" (Faul 2009). Where, asked the chair of the African Union, are prosecutions for Gaza, Chechnya, Afghanistan, or Iraq? The choice between collective national responsibility vs. individual culpability manifests in normative policy debates about who is responsible for perceived crimes or atrocities, and is mirrored in the 'levels of analysis' question in social science. Whereas the ontology (or 'objects') of research methodology reflects analytical choices by scholars, the same issues appear as hotly contested questions of social identity, political responsibility, and legal accountability in other domains. When scholars construct states as holistic analytical objects by assigning them functional parts and rationalities, they are 11 Those present at the 1998 Rome negotiations on the text of the I.C.C. treaty heard a great deal of grumbling from human rights activists about repeated U.S. attempts to weaken the universal jurisdiction of the court. In the end, only Algeria, China, Israel, Libya, Qatar, Yemen and the United States voted against it, see: http://www.asil.org/insigh23.cfm. accessed January 3, 2009. 12 http://www.icc-cpi.int/organs/otp.html. accessed November 21, 2008. 13 http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/africa/7500437.stm. accessed November 21, 2008. 36 reproducing the rhetoric of collective responsibility. When scholars turn to methodological individualism, they draw on the rhetoric of liberal atomism and legal systems. In the next section, I offer an explanation of how others have addressed these issues. 3: Making sense of war and warriors Studies of soldiers and marines at war have been conducted in a number of disciplines, and utilizing a variety of interpretive and methodological frameworks. In the final section of this chapter, a brief overview of the literatures on war and warriors is presented. Starting with IR, and then turning to military Sociology, History, Social Psychology, and interdisciplinary studies of gender and war, the chapter concludes with how this particular dissertation builds from these studies. 3.1: IR, ontology, and war: But in the night of thick darkness enveloping the earliest antiquity, so remote from ourselves, there shines the eternal and never failing light of a truth beyond all question: that the world of civil society has certainly been made by men [sic], and that its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind. -Giambatista Vico, 1725, The New Science, §331, (in: Zagorin 1984: 18). In the IR literature, war has traditionally been understood in terms of balance of power (c.f. Art and Waltz 1999; Gilpin 1987; Mearsheimer 2001; Waltz 1979), of military doctrine (c.f. Kier 1997; Posen 1984, 2003), or of top-level decision making (c.f. Allison and Zelikow 1999; Bernstein 2000; Mintz 2002; Snyder, Brack, and Sapin 2002). Each of these accounts presumes a stable state actor, a "statism" (Mitchell 1991) shared 37 by most accounts of international politics, whether 'realist' or 'liberal,' systemic or domestic (Wyn Jones 1999: ch. 4).14 Political science seems content to relinquish explanations of the brutal details of war-fighting to historians, lawyers or psychologists. When they are considered, occasional massacres, accidents, or startling body counts are explained as the results of particular 'bad apples,' and not understood in relation to the constitution and deployment of state power. In individualizing these excesses and focusing solely on state-level factors, a macro view of politics as disconnected with specific events is all that remains, and the particulars of how wars are undertaken become epiphenomenal. Against this tendency to separate the 'personal' from 'the political,' many would argue that there is a continuity between individuals and large scale processes that is implied by even the mildest consideration of ontology or the constructed nature of human institutions and practices (c.f. Hacking 1999; Latour 1991; Tilly 1984). This perspective allows us to use theory to grapple with the detail and experience of the phenomena itself. Instead of focusing on the decision-making process of policy elites, researchers can turn towards those who implement and act out policy. Instead of asking "how do states make choices to wage war?" as IR theory would typically lead us to do, this dissertation asks "how do combatants interactively produce the state of affairs we call war?" The Prussian military reformer Karl von Clausewitz is often cited to support the instrumental view of conflict embedded in realist and strategic analyses. He famously 14 There are, however, differences in the types of theorizing that state-centric authors engage in. Some Constructivist, Marxist, and Classical Realist accounts, while focusing on states as loci of power, are also interested in power relations more broadly. While armies are traditionally considered proof of state power when used on others, this project concerns the relations of power required to make such an army available to state elites in the first place. 38 wrote that "War is a mere continuation of policy by other means... therefore... war is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means" (von Clausewitz 1873: Book 1, Ch. 1 §24).15 Seeing militaries as 'instruments' means that much of the scholarly study of warfare presumes a rational, single entity called 'the state,' which then 'uses' 'its' military to secure 'its' national interests. Michel Foucault inverted Clausewitz's maxim, calling on researchers to avoid assuming that domestic authority is peaceful, or that war is a discrete event resulting from policy. He instead argues that "Politics is the continuation of war by other means. Politics, in other words, sanctions and reproduces the disequilibrium of forces manifested in war" (Foucault 2003: 16). This inversion undermines the idea of political community as essentially unified, instead pointing to war-like force-relations pervading all aspects of society. It also helps draw researchers' attention to the myriad ways that political and social institutions serve to discipline, shape, and reproduce power relations. The idea that force relations are not confined to the sphere of inter-state competition is not news to neo-Marxist or post-colonial scholars, many of whom have addressed the ways that economic, social, and psychological relations between people perpetuate domination off the battlefield (c.f. Blaut 1993; Cox 1987; Memmi 1991; Nandy 1984; Scott 1998; Stavrianos 1981). 15 See Bassford's excellent essay on Clausewitz's thought and its reception in the U.S. Military. He argues that Clausewitz's dialectical method of argumentation contradicts the de-contextualized reading this quote usually receives. Available at: http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford/CworksAVorks, accessed July 3, 2009. 39 Entities such as states, armies, corporations, and resistance movements have long been acknowledged to be "social facts," as opposed to natural ones (Durkheim 1982).16 Rather than viewing states as single actors with their own form of corporate rationality, this means turning to a study of processes by which states are produced on an ongoing basis in human social relations. Adopting what some IR scholars have called an 'ethnological' approach to contemporary social arrangements as products of human activity (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: chs. 4-5), a processual approach looks to the cultural practices and narratives which make them appear natural (Shotter 1993).17 The constructed nature of such social facts can be seen to rest on a scientific- realist basis, retaining extra-social "brute facts" (Searle 1995) which can also be thought of as the limits of nature, against which to test propositions (Popper 1959, 1983). Many constructivists in IR, like traditional Marxists, retain a residual materialism which is seen as limiting and anchoring processes of social construction (Wendt 1999). But the construction of culturally and institutionally stable social facts need not rest on a material 16 Though Durkheim sought to treat these as equivalent sorts of facts, modern social theory indicates that the distinction is much stronger (Hacking 1999). Nouns like 'the state' are better researched as verbs, like 'state-reproducing,' since they are sustained by ongoing activity (Jackson and Nexon 1999). 17 In Sociology, the analysis of this ongoing production of meaning is referred to as 'Ethnomethodology,' meaning 'people's methods' (Francis and Hester 2004). This school of analysis follows Harold Garfinkel (1967, 1986) in studying the production of meaning in particular conversations. Though these distinctions are not as relevant in Political Science (where any study focused on language use is suspected of being 'idealist'), this project draws on Ethnomethodology, Science and Technology Studies, and poststructural discourse analysis to do the type of bridging discussed by Miller (1997), Saukko (2003) and Pascale (2007). Where participants in debates between various qualitative research traditions might see such combining of strategies as dangerous syncretism, IR post-structuralism has an opportunity to connect history, power and knowledge to the world of the everyday. Using poststructural analyses of power/knowledge to create empirical social science opens avenues of exploration for IR and social science in general. For more on this subject, see chapter two. 40 "outside," devoid of human meaning or interference.18 The 'social factness' of institutions and practices can also rest on assumptions derived from pragmatic (Rorty 1982), historical-economic19 (Gramsci 1971, 2000; Marx), or linguistic (Hilbert 1990; Shotter 1993) philosophies. All of these epistemic positions, no matter how much they might disagree with one another on the limits of construction, would still lead to a view of social institutions as made by people. No matter what ultimate stopping point one comes to in terms of epistemology, it is hard to conceive of the state as something that is natural or inevitable (c.f. Biersteker and Weber 1996; Hacking 1999). Yet in IR, it is only the more extreme 'constructivists' who attend to the processes by which everyday activity produces social institutions. Studying the shift from feudal and monarchical states to modern nations, Benedict Anderson argues that nation-states are "imagined communities;" ideas which spread as a result of communication technologies and flows, as well as imposition by colonial practices (1991). Rogers Smith goes further, studying the nation as a "story of peoplehood" within which citizens (more or less sincerely) locate themselves, providing a narrative about who a people are, and are not (2003). One feature of collectively shared stories is that they often locate communities and boundaries by asserting continuity with 18 Bruno Latour is instructive on this point, in arguing that for too long, appeals to scientific facts have been used to shortcut democratic and socially-constructive processes of negotiation: "When we say there is no outside world, this does not mean that we deny its existence, but, on the contrary, that we refuse to grant it the ahistorical, isolated, inhuman, cold, objective existence that it was given only to combat the crowd [...] we long neither for the absolute certainty of a contact with the world nor for the absolute certainty of a transcendent force against the unruly mob. We do not lack certainty, because we never dreamed of dominating the people" (1999: 15). 19 Though unpopular with those who follow Engels or Althusser, I trace the critique of essentialism and reductionism to Marx's ontology as expressed in the 1844 Manuscripts: "Even as I am scientifically active, etc. - an activity I can seldom pursue in direct community with others -1 am socially active [...] not only is the material of my activity - such as the language in which the thinker is active - given to me as a social product, but my own existence is social activity" (1967b: 306). 41 the past through the incorporation of myths and local histories into their narratives. Such a narrative provides legitimation for the type of "inside/outside" splits that characterize dominant practices of statecraft (Walker 1993). Following from this logic, states can be studied as stories which enable people to draw on discursive subject positions in their interactions with one another and with themselves. As a number of authors of have argued, this process reproduces particular social arrangements and enacts subjectivities (c.f. Butler 1990; Butler 1993; Foucault 1990; Shotter 1993). This view destabilizes our easy understandings about citizenship, since it is not citizens who produce a state, but rather citizens who produce themselves as an effect of discourse about states.20 The position put forward above differs from the much older contention that nation-states are composed of individuals. This latter is the foundational premise upon which philosophical liberalism has rested since the 17th century. The difference lies in thinking of states as stories which yoke together ongoing processes, rather than resulting from a founding moment establishing them as legitimate through a social-contract (Rousseau 1997), or as a "leviathan" quelling the chaos of 'the state of nature' (Hobbes 1997). Classical liberalism and its modern derivations maintain a rational individualism that treats states as rational corporate actors reflecting the interests of their constituents (c.f. Keohane 1984; Keohane and Milner 1996; March and Olson 1996), with democracy as a method of preference agglomeration (Moravcsik 1997). Similarly, economic liberals 20 This recalls the "counterfeit" narratives discussed by Shotter: "And by not having been properly aware of the power of language, of the power of storytelling to 'lend' a sense of reality to wholly fictitious worlds, we have allowed ourselves to have been talked into accepting a counterfeit version of our social lives together - where what I mean here by the term 'counterfeiting' is the appropriation and use by individuals for their own purposes of certain special, communally constructed and sustained resources, which (like money) are the resources in terms of which the community in fact maintains itself as a community" (Shotter 1993: 138). 42 conceive of capitalist markets as mechanisms that convert the activity and desires of gain-seeking individuals into efficient social divisions of labor and resources (Smith 1999). Adherence to the liberal conception of the state draws attention to individual level preferences and phenomena, but the presumption of an isolated asocial rational subject is problematic (Jackson 2002a); especially if one takes a poststructural view of the relation between power and subjectivity (c.f. Butler 1993; Foucault 1980, 2003; Nelson 2001). These presumptions help liberalism obscure questions of power, violence, and coercion (Agamben 1998; Foucault 2003), maintain a system of unequal access to wealth and state power (Cox 1986; Laclau and Mouffe 2001; Tilly 1998), and help reify the boundaries of the liberal state. This last move blinds analysts to the vast networks of communication, organized violence, and unequal exchange which have concentrated so much wealth in the hands of formerly colonizing liberal societies (c.f. Cox 1987; Stavrianos 1981; Wallerstein 1974; Williams 1994). A final limitation of an individualist approach is methodological. If individuals' beliefs, desires, and preferences are the origin point for social outcomes, social scientists are left trying to 'get inside peoples' heads.' A liberal approach to the phenomena in question would lead us to individualize excesses and seek psychological roots within the soldiers themselves, leaving aside questions of social meaning-making. As Wittgenstein illustrates in his parable about a situation where everyone has a "beetle in a box" but no one is able to see into anyone else's box (2001a: §293), making statements about private 43 experiences should be interpreted as a move in a language-game, not as an authoritative account of an experience (Jackson 2006; Shotter 1993).21 3.2: The empirical study of militaries: being a soldier The military's success [lies] in undoing the traditional values of the free individual which date from the bourgeois revolution...He becomes a member of a new society that has complete control over his movements, his behavior, and the physical and social conditions of his life. This absence of choice puts him in a position of relative powerlessness, susceptible to an assault at the roots of his civilized existence. He is forced to function in ways alien to any he would freely select. Freedom of choice is banished to the world of daydreams and recreation, while order, authority, and threat occupy the center of the stage. -Chaim Shatan, "Bogus Manhood, Bogus Honor," (1977: 596-7). The position of a soldier within the system of oversight described by Shatan was traditionally described by Military Sociology, a field in which military officials and academics have developed a substantial literature. This field has been largely concerned with the impact of the shift from a citizen-soldier model based on the draft towards a professional military (a process that culminated in the end of the draft in 1973). Huntington (1957) argued that the professional military should be politically neutral and soldiers should hold a professional, rather than civilian, identity. He further argued that the military should be free of civilian control except when setting policy objectives. A more liberal "constabulary" model for professional military forces as police-like and 21 The Philosophical Investigations (2001a) refer to the rule-governed yet adaptive nature of language in use with the term 'language-game.' Wittgenstein argues that meaningful interaction is possible because of a series of language-games through which rules and possible moves are made available to speakers (2001a: §23-24, 82-84), deriving from a certain 'form of life' (2001a: §241). The meaning of speech derives from use in particular contexts and is reproduced through training procedures. He states that we can tell a pupil has 'learned' something, when she can do so "correctly, that is, as we do it" (2001a: § 145). In this conception of language, meaning derives from appropriate use, not reference to 'outer' or 'inner' objects. See the contemporary discussions of this concept by Shotter (1993) and Harre (2000; 1994; 2005), and the further elaboration of these ideas in chapter two. 44 integrated with civilian society was advanced against Huntington's argument, while still maintaining a 'problem solving' orientation (Janowitz 1971). Within the rhetorical space of Cold War academia, it was seemingly natural for social scientists to want to help the American military be a useful instrument for advancing legitimate national policy. In the post-Vietnam period, many in civil society came to see that both of those presumptions could be questioned. The military may not be able to achieve all goals, and foreign policy itself may not be based on rational, ethical, or admirable calculations (c.f. Caldicott 1986; Chomsky 1985; Chomsky and Herman 1979). In the post-cold war, Clinton era, Sociologists of the military also created accounts of the gradual growth of peacekeeping and other missions which required more nuance than traditional training might inspire (c.f. Karsten 2001 ; McCarroll et al. 2000; Moskos, Williams, and Segal 2000), despite the preference of combat-oriented specialties to remain war focused (Segal, Segal, and Eyre 1992; Segal and Tiggle 1997). Studies concerned with soldiers' political preferences have found that they return to 'normal' after their service, and that service does not have a significant overall political impact on them (Janowitz 1971; Katz 1990; Krebs 2004; Roghmann and Sodeur 1972). In a survey of Army Airborne soldiers' attitudes towards following immoral and illegal orders, the authors wrote "it is highly likely that primary group solidarity and discipline would function to enforce group norms and reinforce the individual during the stress of combat, to the extent that the consistency between the attitudes expressed here and behavior in battle may be quite high" (Cockerham 1980: 16). Using statistical methodology, this particular study was unable to provide any causal mechanisms by 45 which "group solidarity and discipline [might] enforce group norms," but does exemplify the need to elucidate such mechanisms. The classic statements in the field of Military Sociology, which preceded the contemporary literature on nationalism, did not examine the processes of legitimation and collective story-telling that scholars have examined as productive of national(ist) identities (c.f. Anderson 1991; Brubaker 1996; Campbell 1992; Marx 2003; Smith 2003; Tilly 2002). Based on an acceptance of the U.S. role in the Cold War, the modern study of the military as an institution was shaped by arguments about what kind of military the U.S. ought to have to protect and advance its interests. When American soldiers do commit acts of widely reported cruelty, thereby undermining patriotic and idealist narratives about 'our heroes,' the idea of collective American values breaks down, and soldiers are held to be individually responsible for 22 their actions. One provocative study of the "Hillbilly Defense" argues that public discourse uses the semi-liminal 'hillbilly' motif in order to distance some of the egregious acts of U.S. combat personnel. In her study of Jessica Lynch, the U.S. soldier 'rescued' from an Iraqi hospital by special forces with an embedded combat camera team, Lyndie England of Abu Ghraib fame, and Eric Rudolph, a terrorist who targeted abortion clinics, a lesbian bar, and the Olympics, Mason (2005: 59) points to the ways that racialized discourses can alternately blame or applaud the resistance to modernity that Appalachia represents, thus steering "the public away from thinking that any such 22 As one U.S. veteran who served in the infantry near Haditha, Iraq in 2003 said: 'They make it look like Abu Ghraib, that it was just some bad soldiers who went crazy - they were the bad apples' (Harris, Beaumont, and al-Ubeidy 2006). This theme is discussed in greater depth in chapter five. 46 transgressions or negotiations between civilized and uncivilized, humane and inhumane behavior are systemic." Scholars who focus on security and military policy have been less enthusiastic about using bottom-up or interactive approaches to understanding military outcomes (exceptions include Barkawi 2006; Enloe 1990, 1993, 2000; Segal, Segal, and Eyre 1992). Rather, they commonly treat the military as a bureaucratic actor engaged in domestic politics, or as the site where the citizen-soldier and the functional demands of security meet (c.f. Feaver 1999, 2003; Huntington 1957; Janowitz 1971; Krebs 2004; Moskos, Williams, and Segal 2000; Segal and Wechsler Segal 1983). In journals directly concerned with the functioning of the military itself, unit-level culture is prominently discussed as a key to understanding outcomes on issues as varied as counter insurgency, gender mainstreaming, and institutional reform (c.f. Cassidy 2005; Hillen 1999; McFate 2005; Murray 1999; Snider 1999). This greater emphasis on culture might be understood as exemplifying the difference between studies focused on implementation rather than policy, which some scholars of politics have drawn upon (Howard 2004; Yanow 1996). One exchange in Armed Forces and Society is of particular relevance to this dissertation project. Hills (2006) argued that the operational failures that U.S. forces suffered in assaulting, besieging, and securing Fallujah stemmed from a variety of failures of U.S. military culture. Pointing to Washington's culture in the Bush administration, she argues that conflicted priorities, lack of consensus, and a tendency to "reduce complex security problems to a clear narrative based on a Manichean assessment of the world" (2006: 631) led to a heavy-handed approach to Sunni insurgency in Iraq. 47 Compounding the problem, she points to military culture itself, and the ways that antagonisms with the Fallujan population were aggravated by disproportionately violent responses to protests and large gatherings, including several instances of firing into crowds. Both cultures, Hills argues, share a bias towards "technological solutions" (2006: 635) and a focus on "the identification and destruction of targets from a distance" (2006: 636). Using a Foucauldian interpretive framework, she argues that a failure to take into consideration the types of governmentality in use by local Iraqis meant that U.S. commanders, for all of their gunships, laser guided bombs, and artillery, were unable to accomplish their mission. Had U.S. forces hesitated, they would have played into the hands of Sunni militants,23 while any heavy handed response would only provide legitimacy to the story the 'crusading occupation' that they promulgate. The biases shared by Washington and military planners alike, she argues, set the entire operation up for failure. In a response in the same issue, Hauser (2006) emphasizes a small point Hills made, when she argued that the war in Iraq is unique. Hauser responds by elucidating a number of ways that Iraq and Vietnam are similar, from the forced pretext of self- defense, to the ambitious goal of spreading democracy, to the failure to commit to a counter-insurgency strategy with the requisite patience. He argues that the U.S. military has not sufficiently integrated the lessons of Vietnam, commending Hills' analysis, and 23 A note on vocabulary: it is a tricky task to narrate an on-going conflict without unduly collapsing disparate elements or groups. For this reason, I have tried to avoid referring to those Iraqi (and other nationals) who use violence to try and expel or harm U.S. forces using the all-purpose 'insurgents,' which is semi-official military-speak for anyone hostile to the U.S. occupation or Iraqi government. In this dissertation I have tried to provide more specific information where available, referring to Sunni nationalists or Shia militias inspired by the cleric Muqtada al Sadr as such. When no such information is available, I will refer to Iraqis who use violence against U.S. forces as 'armed resistors.' 48 emphasizing his hope that the Bush administration would not withdraw U.S. troops in such a way that a Yugoslavia-style ethnic conflict would erupt. In studies of the American military, a number of authors have pointed to "an American way of war" (Echevarria 2004; Weigley 1973) which emphasizes rapid battle- field victories and the seizing of an enemy capital. Failures to consider or plan for governance, human needs, and regional shifts in power have undermined the ability to translate U.S. military power into effective strategic capacities. Brigety's (2007) study of the Tomahawk cruise missile, an incredibly expensive single-use weapon, is indicative of the technophilia that Hills pointed to in her discussion of Fallujah. She and others have called for a new approach to urban operations, one that would require modern militaries to show more patience and sensitivity than recent wars in Iraq, Chechnya, Palestine, and elsewhere have evidenced (the essays in Graham 2004; Hills 2004). Against the dominant way of conceptualizing U.S. strategy in terms of 'great wars,' Boot (2002) reminds readers that the U.S. has a very long and bloody history of "savage wars of peace." Instead of seeing military operations in the third world as somehow less relevant, Boot calls for military planners and scholars to look to the history operations in the Philippines, throughout the Caribbean, and elsewhere to recover a tradition of fighting 'small wars.' 3.3: History and the study of warriors: As folk wisdom would have it, the only sufferers of colonialism are the subject communities. Colonialism, according to this view, is the name of a political economy which ensures a one-way flow of benefits, the subjects being the perpetual losers in a zero-sum game and the rulers the beneficiaries... This view 49 has a vested interest in denying that the colonizers are at least as much affected by the ideology of colonialism, that their degradation, too, can sometimes be terrifying. - Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, (1998: 30) Historians have asked why and how the 20th century has been so genocidal (c.f. Bartov and Mack 2001; Gellately and Kiernan 2003; Levene 2000; Rummel 1998). They have also been joined by those focusing on particular instances of wide-spread massacre in a variety of conflicts, including: Nazi Germany (c.f. Browning 1993; Goldhagen 1996; Heer 2000; Rummel 1994), Rwanda (c.f. Odom 2005:), European colonialism in the Americas (c.f. Churchill 1997; Churchill 2003; Diamond 1997; Stein and Stein 2000; Todorov 1984a; Zinn 1995), as well as colonialism in Africa and Asia (c.f. Bitterli 1989; Cesaire 1972; Fanon 1963; Memmi 1991; Nandy 1984). These scholars ask how identities are produced that permit individuals to exploit or annihilate others. Rather than focusing on top-level decision making, these studies of genocide and colonialism explicitly engage the question of how a relation is established between two parties where one can brutalize another. Whereas IR assumes a unitary state that acts, these authors ask how people who can do such things are produced. For many studies of conflicts in the past, historians have relied on documentary records produced in the course of the war. Prior to the telecommunications revolution of the 1990s, letters home were the primary technology for 'keeping in touch,' and provided the basis for long-distance relationships. Scholars have used these letters, along with diaries and other documents, to reconstruct the experience of war (c.f. Bourke 1996; Bourke 1999; Goldstein 2001; Keegan 1994), since they often represented the most private space a soldier had for expressing emotions, making observations, and 50 commenting on what they saw. In turning to private communications, scholars uncover patterns of meaning-making that are shared by combatants, with Bourke's (1999) analysis of 'face-to-face killing in 20th century warfare' as a paradigmatic comparison of such patterns. Examining letters and other primary sources from the first and second world wars, as well as Vietnam, Bourke's text arranges the thoughts and observations of U.S., British, and Australian service members by topic, exploring the enjoyment of killing, the work of medics and clergy, and women's experiences of war, among others. She argues that despite training and other techniques devised to prod combatants into battle, there are pleasures and joys associated with killing and combat that have been under-appreciated in previous literatures. Another author who uses the documentary record of combatants to interpret the meaning-making activities of war is Thewelweit (1987), who studied German Freikorps volunteers in post-World War I fighting in and around Germany. Examining the letters, diaries, novels, and poetry of the time, he argues that there were profound linkages between gender, sexuality, politics, and war. The Freikorps were deployed against socialist uprisings around Germany and the Baltic states, and in their writings, the whore- like socialist women were a powerful and recurrent theme. Thewelweit's choice of topic is of particular historical concern, because Freikorps veterans and their literary works were lauded in the early Nazi movement. Their experience in brutal civil war against socialists was both practically and ideologically deployed to consolidate Nazi control of the streets, and served as a literary allegory for the anti-Soviet posture of Nazi nationalism. 51 Thewelweit's unnerving thesis is that fascism is not a unique or special phenomenon, but is the widespread political application of patriarchal relations between men and women to the whole of society. Arguing that fascism's links to patriarchy are both psychological and organizational, Thewelweit's portrait of the Freikorps brigades points to images of idealized feminine purity, a disgust toward (relatively) empowered working class women's bodies, and persistent discussions of war and the barracks as masculine spaces free from the contamination of women's filthiness. In Freikorps writings, Communists, like women, threaten to 'flood' and 'drown' masculine virtue; who must stay strong and unmoved amongst a 'sea' of enemies. In their killing of working class activists in the many post-war battles, Thewelweit argues that the Freikorps were not engaged in any type of oedipal substitution, killing was a joy in and for itself. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's critique of Freud and Reich, Thewelweit presents a psychology of fascism in which the pleasure in brutality, in and of itself, is unleashed. His work, as Barbara Ehrenreich's forward notes, points to the fact that not only might fascism return, "it is already implicit in the daily relationships of men and women" (Theweleit 1987: xv). Tzvetan Todorov's (1984a) study of the documentary record of the Spanish conquest of the Americas seeks to draw moral lessons for the contemporary world from this exemplary encounter between cultures. Using the journals kept by Columbus, Cortes, Las Casas and other participants, Todorov focuses on the ways that Europeans and indigenous Americans understood one another, with particular interest in those aspects of European behavior which anticipate or pioneer modern ways of engaging with others. 52 Presenting a typology of relationships between Spanish and Native Americans through his reading of different authors, Todorov argues that there are two ideal-typical orientations towards 'otherness.' He characterizes these as either difference (and therefore inferiority which calls for annihilation or subjection), or equality (and therefore sameness which calls for assimilation or conversion). For Todorov, these are exemplified first by Hernando Cortez, who knew a great deal about the Aztecs, and used this knowledge to destroy them; and secondly Bartolome de Las Casas, who loved the Natives as primitive Christians, and based on this love, converted and assimilated them. Both lack any ability to perceive that 'others' are different and equal, an orientation which might allow for the possibility of learning from 'others.' In terms of killing and warfare, Todorov makes a distinction between what he calls "sacrifice societies" (like the Aztecs) and "massacre societies" (like the Spanish) (1984a: 143). The difference, he argues, helps us understand the relationship between violence and shared cosmologies: Sacrifice, from this point of view, is a religious murder: it is performed in the name of the official ideology and will be perpetrated in public places; in sight of all and to everyone's knowledge.. .The sacrifice is performed in public and testifies to the power of the social fabric, to its mastery over the individual (Todorov 1984a: 144). Characterizing the Aztecs as a society where social codes and rigorous conformity to tradition held sway, Todorov argues that Aztec cosmology was unable to grapple with the startling fact of European armies invading their lands. Noting that the Spanish held a modern view of warfare, he argues that: Massacre, on the other hand, reveals the weakness of this same social fabric, the desuetude of the moral principles that once assured the group's coherence; hence it should be performed in some remote place where the law is only vaguely 53 acknowledged: for the Spaniards, America or even Italy. Massacre is thus intimately linked to colonial wars waged far from the metropolitan country.. .Far from the central government, far from royal law, all prohibitions give way, the social link, already loosened, snaps, revealing not a primitive nature, the beast sleeping in each of us, but a modern being, one with a great future in fact, restrained by no morality and inflicting death because and when he pleases.. .What the Spaniards discover is the contrast between the metropolitan country and the colony, for radically different moral laws regulate conduct in each: massacre requires an appropriate context (Todorov 1984a: 144-5). In Todorov's analysis, massacre becomes the hallmark of European and modern societies' approach to violence, shorn of its ritual or redeeming value, violence is externalized and hidden. The massacre victim, anonymous and in every way unparticular, differs greatly from the sacrificial victim. Rather than choosing the bravest and most honorable enemies to kill ritually (as the Aztecs would have), the soldier committing massacre does not discriminate between victims. Thus the Spanish killed whole villages simply to enjoy newly sharpened swords (Todorov 1984a: 141), hung infants from the feet of their mothers (Todorov 1984a: 142) and, as one Spanish judge was overheard saying (around the year 1570) "that if water were lacking to irrigate the Spaniards farms, they would have to be watered with the blood of Indians" (Todorov 1984a: 142). Similar behaviors were exhibited by other Europeans in the New World, including the French and British, as well as agents of the U.S. government (see the detailed survey of these genocidal activities, some arguably ongoing, in Churchill 1997). America becomes an 'outside' to the early European explorers, a place where cannibals, devil worshippers, and evils of all sorts abound. Whereas in Europe, soldiers were at least nominally limited by the fact that they were fighting fellow Christians, America was beyond the view of church or royalty, a place where anything might be 54 done. Interestingly, the treatment of indigenous Americans became a template for the treatment of heretics (a term used by both Catholics and Protestants against one another), and eventually, the European peasantry itself (see the extensive discussion of 'Indianization' in Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: chs. 1-3, 5). That this same type of 'outside' zone is operational in the practice and discourse of contemporary soldiers seems only to reinforce Todorov's argument that this 'atheistic murder' is a hallmark not of the deep barbarity of the human psyche, but a particularly modern phenomenon. As the end of the rather distinctive historical isolation of the Americas, one can think of contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans as the beginning of the modern era. Adam Smith certainly said as much, in that "The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind" (Smith 2000: 209). Karl Marx concurred: The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production (1967a: 703). For Todorov, the world-historical shifts in power, wealth, and violence that colonialism brought began with a Spanish willingness to cast aside social norms, and discover the joy of conquest for its own sake. Unable to conceptualize of other humans as simultaneously different and equal, the Spanish bequeathed the modern world a double bind in which annihilation (difference and inequality) or assimilation (universality and sameness) are primary modes of relating to others. 55 A distinctive strength of this literature is its emphasis on moral accountability, rather than presuming that a given state decision is legitimate. They ask how legitimating knowledge makes such actions seem acceptable, focusing attention on identities and relationships that legitimate such behaviors, an insight lacking in statist or liberal accounts. Studies of genocide and colonialism connect shared discursive formations to the actions of combatants, but do so in ways that cause methodological and moral controversy. Goldhagen (1996) argues that a unique form of anti-Semitism that he calls "eliminationist" enabled the participation of so many Germans in mass killing. He does so by arguing that Germans involved in the holocaust were enthusiastically cruel, and free from compulsion. His thesis is therefore that German cultural anti-Semitism was unique, and largely responsible for the events that unfolded. Dismissing social- psychological explanations of group conformity, Goldhagen argues that the existing literature cannot explain the holocaust without reference to his concept of 'eliminationist' discourse, critiquing the ideas that Germans were compelled to participate, that they were obedient to state authorities, forced by peer pressure, motivated by personal advancement, or that the bureaucratization made tasks related to mass killing unreal (1996: 379-415). In short, he sets out to disprove the idea that "Germans were more or less like us" (1996: 27). Browning, whose study of a reserve police battalion assigned to ghetto clearing and other genocidal operations in Poland and Russia, questions Goldhagen's insistence that German anti-Semitism is uniquely able to account for what took place. Arguing that the killing of Soviet POWs was widespread, and dwarfed the number of Jews killed in 56 1942, Browning notes that the massacre of Soviet prisoners continued even after the orders to do so had ceased (1998: 203-207). Describing Nazi mass-killings of disabled Germans as falling outside of Goldhagen's explanatory framework (c.f. Friedlander 1995), Browning also notes that widespread killings of Polish intellectuals and POWs began before the 'final solution.'24 He argued, "as of September, 1939, the regime was increasingly capable of legitimizing and organizing mass murder on a staggering scale that did not depend on the anti-Semitic motivation of the perpetrators and the Jewish identity of the victims" (1998: 203). Browning's (1998: 191-223) rebuttal of Goldhagen's critique argues that while German anti-Semitism cannot be ignored, neither can Germany's unsuccessful democratization in 1848 and 1918, its history of authoritarian movements, or the interactive group dynamics studied by political and social psychologists (1998: 195, 217- 18). The question of the uniqueness of the holocaust is the implicit normative controversy at the heart of their debate. Browning critiques Goldhagen's insistence that Germans were uniquely cruel to Jews, more so than to other victims of Nazi genocide, arguing that treatment of Poles and Russians was not qualitatively distinct, and pointing to Romanian, Croat, and other Nazi allies participation in mass killing. Browning, on the other hand, cites other genocidal conflicts in 20th history, looks to 'crimes of obedience' in Vietnam, and emphasizes the findings of Social Psychology to explain how people are capable of such horrific acts. 24 The systematic mass killing of Jews started in occupied Russia in 1941, and then was extended to Poland and the rest of Europe in 1942. 57 While Goldhagen argues that the holocaust is a unique product of German anti- semitism, historians have developed a literature on comparative genocide (c.f. Bartov and Mack 2001; Gellately and Kiernan 2003; Levene 2000; Rummel 1994, 1998). Looking at how governments have organized the mass killing of their own and neighboring peoples, these authors have consistently looked to how ideological legitimation combines with institutional context to enable participation in mass killing. 3.4: Political and Social Psychology: obedience to orders and group conformity Thus, group authoritarianism is more than just in-group identification. Rather, group authoritarianism represents possible consequences of a threatened identification for persons with authoritarian dispositions. Such consequences are reflected in a demand for behavioral and attitudinal conformity with in-group norms and rules of conduct, in intolerance of and punitiveness towards persons not conforming to in-group norms and rules, and a demand for respect and unconditional obedience to in-group leaders and authorities. -Jost Stellmacher & Thomas Petzel, "Authoritarianism as a Group Phenomenon" (2005: 262-263). After World War II, political psychologists addressed the question of whether or not Germans were uniquely given to following orders, and conducted a number of experiments with American volunteers to assess willingness to comply with instructions to harm others. Milgram's (1975) famous study found that most people would cause incredible pain to others, if instructed to by 'proper authorities.' Believing that they were under the direction of legitimate scientific experts, 'average' Americans were willing to administer what they believed to be powerful electrical shocks. In terms of actual research design, the participants were asked to turn up the voltage meter and administer a shock whenever a person (an actor, in reality) answered a question falsely. Despite 58 warning labels on the equipment, most participants were willing to administer what they thought were near-fatal shocks when they were directed to. In a similar vein, the 'Stanford Prison Experiment,' in which male students were randomly assigned as 'guards' and 'prisoners,' found that participants assumed their roles with such brutality that the experiment had to be cancelled after four days (Zimbardo 2007). Despite screening designed to exclude participants with sadistic or other potentially problematic tendencies, the students assigned as guards ended up using forced nudity, sexual humiliation, and other types of abuse. Zimbardo and Milgram both found that the context of officially authorized power over others was both necessary and sufficient for most people to commit sadistic acts towards others. These studies consistently build from psychoanalytic accounts of an individual 'authoritarian personality' (Adorno et al. 1982), but point to the bureaucratic, discursive, and social environments which shape individuals' sense of self and what is permissible to do or say (Arendt 1963, 1968). This literature on the political psychology of authoritarianism and abuse points to legitimate official sanctioning, group solidarity, normalization of violence, compartmentalization of information, and a host of bureaucratic procedures that combine to enable ordinary people to brutalize others. Some recent approaches to research on authoritarianism utilizing a 'social identity' model have highlighted the ways that identification with group norms shape, without dictating, individual actions (Duckitt 1989; Stellmacher and Petzel 2005). Arguing that 'in group' identifications are often strongest amongst those with fragile or endangered senses of self, these studies point to how external authorities serve as a proxy for the identities of authoritarian individuals, leading them to fiercely guard and enforce group norms. 59 In Browning's study of reserve police units that were sent from Hamburg to Poland and Russia as part of the 'final solution,' he found that the wearing down of moral standards on a day-to-day basis was a stronger explanation for participation in genocide than individual sadism or other attributes. Browning noted how reserve police members were sent to the eastern front, a freshly pacified war zone at that point, and then put in charge of searching, rounding up, escorting, and generally repressing the Jewish population. From their first shootings as part of ghetto clearing, to the massacre at Jozefow, and on into their role in shipping Jews to concentration camps, what the men reported was that it got easier with repetition. When first shooting large numbers of Jews at close range, the unit took to drinking. Later on, they used Lithuanian militia to do the actual firing while they formed rings to prevent escape, eliminating entire communities in the process. Browning notes how certain men escaped 'shooting duty' by pleading weakness, but that overall participation in genocide fell out along similar lines to the Zimbardo "Stanford Prison Experiment," with the majority participating. Commenting on the similar relevance of the Milgram experiments, Browning wrote that "Controlling the manner in which people interpret their world is one way to control behavior" (1993: 176). Browning summed up how this works: "Those within the hierarchy adopt the authority's perspective, or 'definition of the situation' [... and] normal individuals enter an 'agentic' state in which they are instruments of another's will [and] no longer feel personally responsible for the content of their actions but only for how well they perform" (1993: 173). 60 The men he studied were subjected to regular ideological instruction along S.S. standard lines, although Browning does not believe that alone explains what the men were doing. Instead, he argues that small group dynamics, loyalty to one another, desire to avoid passing off the 'dirty work' to others, and concern about appearing 'masculine enough' were immediate mechanisms. Indeed, he argues that those who tried to avoid killing did so in a way that made them seem 'too weak' and "reaffirmed the 'macho' values of the majority" (Browning 1993: 185). 3.5: Gender, war, and masculinity: We might also assert that each people, from the beginning of time to our own day, sacrifices its victims with a kind of murderous madness, and we might speculate if this is not a characteristic of male-dominated societies (since these are the only ones known). -Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America, (1984a: 143) While some scholars regard male aggression as a natural part of human reproductive strategy (c.f. Buss and Shackelford 1997; Thayer 2004; Wilson and Daly 1993; Wrangham and Peterson 1996), I reject this explanation for multiple reasons. The first is logical, and derives from Kenneth Waltz's Man, the State, and War, in which he argues that "While human nature no doubt plays a role in bringing about war, it cannot by itself explain both war and peace, except by the simple statement that man's [sic] nature is such that sometimes he [sic] fights and sometimes he does not" (1959: 29). Waltz dismisses what he calls 'first image' explanations of war-making, since if biology or divine curse cause 'human nature' to be evil, they surely also cause human nature to be cooperative. 61 The explanations of socio-biologists, though more refined than the stereotypical 'cave-man' stories many of us heard in school, are still underspecified arguments. By saying males have a reproductive advantage by killing rivals and raping women, this line of argument both legitimizes contemporary male violence as inevitable, and it ignores the fact of sociality in human evolution (would communities really have tolerated such behavior for the millennia of human evolution?). Instead of explaining relations in the present in terms of the processes of production, as this dissertation and other relational studies do, these arguments grant scientific legitimacy to some of the least commendable aspects of contemporary gender relations. The philosopher Ian Hacking (1999, 2004) has described a 'looping effect,' whereby people who are classified by social scientists, or others with the institutional position to undertake such an operation, come to see and explain themselves in terms of that label. In a horrifying example, McCaughey recently argued that a 'caveman mystique' based on evolutionary theory permeates popular culture, granting privileged epistemic status to 'scientific' discourse such that men experience their sexuality as "acultural, primal" (2008: 3). In one case she points to, a woman was raped by several men in New York's central park while a witness recorded the events on video. One of the attackers was heard telling his victim "welcome back to the cave man times" (2008: 2). In articulating a discourse that explains male violence as natural, socio-biological claims may be reinforcing the very tendencies they seek to explain. Providing cover for desires to harm and control women, arguments that ground male violence in genetics and evolution undermine progress made through women's and queer liberation movements, and remove male violence from the realm of ethical evaluation. 62 Considered a leading voice in the study and theorization of men's lives, Connell (1993; 2005) has argued that masculinity does not function as an essential disposition, but rather as a relational and interactive performance of self, meaning that men must continuously express their identity in terms of a number of contextually available or recognizable masculinities. Connell describes 'hegemonic masculinity' as the expression of masculinity in a particular context most aligned with the domination of women, and describes male subordination of females as requiring the vigilant disciplining of male identity. West and Zimmerman's (1993) ethnomethodological analysis of the accomplishment of gender in interaction argues that gender is an omnipresent factor to which individuals can be held liable. Following from this inescapability of gendered evaluations, a person can be held accountable for his or her perceived gender, and because of the violent stakes involved in male gender presentation, it is important to theorize masculinity, patriarchy and homophobia together (Heasley 2005a). Just as inequalities between masculinity and femininity are accomplished through everyday interactions (West and Fenstermaker 1993), so masculine gender disciplining through feminization, homophobia, and violence is part and parcel of diverse male interactions. Given that the military is largely composed of men,25 the hierarchical ranking that is produced and sustained through competitions, demonstrations, pranks, and hazing is a constant possibility in combatants' interactions. 25 As of September 2007, males comprised 86.6% of enlisted soldiers in the U.S. Army. See: http://www.armvgl.armv.mil/HR/docs/demographics/FY07%20Armv%20Profile.pdf. accessed October 25, 2008. 63 Sasson-Levy's study of gendered identity practices amongst Israeli combat soldiers has drawn scholar's attention to the discursive productivity of soldiers' attachment to the ideals of "self-control" and their pursuit of the "thrill" of danger. Amongst the soldiers she interviewed, Sasson-Levy found that the emphases on self- control and thrill "creates someone who ostensibly has the agency to take charge of his destiny - a man who can control his body and emotions - and dares to take risks and enjoys them in the interviews, soldiers often framed their growing obedience to military discipline as increasing physical and emotional self-control, which created a strong sense of agency and empowerment" (2007: 315). Using Goffman's notion of framing experiences and activities, she argues that these discursive frames encourage soldiers and others to see submission to the state (and the suffering incurred therein) as an expression of individual teleology; of training and combat as self-mastery. Phillips (2006) argues that men go to war, at least much of the time, to avoid being called 'sissies,' and points to homophobia as a mechanism for masculine accountability to nationalist and imperial projects. Goldstein, an IR scholar, explains historically gendered war roles through small biological differences between sexes, as well as the "Cultural molding of tough, brave men" (2001: 406), the sort of molding that takes place throughout the gendered life course. One of the insights of studies of masculinity and war is that popular culture influences the production and meaning of masculinity in a variety of ways (c.f. Goldstein 2001; Hooper 2001; Jeffords 1989, 1994; Kronsell 2005; Messner and Sabo 1994; Phillips 2006). If men were not so easily seduced by this story about who they are supposed to be, if U.S. culture did not make so many images of heroic but brutal 64 initiation available, military organization as we know it would likely be quite different. Would young men really be willing to sign away 4 or 5 years of personal decision- making in exchange for paltry pay and brutal employer-labor relations? The association of submission to state authorities with hyper-masculinity is an important factor in how combatants conceptualize the loss of basic liberty that military service, especially combat deployment, entails (Rosen, Knudson, and Fancher 2003; Shatan 1977). Drawing on discourses of 'self-mastery,' combatants see themselves as more masculine, and thus more powerful, than civilians or those in non-combat roles, even when they are women (Sasson-Levy 2002, 2003, 2007). This mirrors the political process by which combatants "feminize their enemies to encode domination" (2001: 406). As Thewelweit (1987) argued, violent and oppressive relations of domination resemble the gendered and sexualized hierarchies associated with patriarchy. Those males who seek to dominate other males deride them as feminine, drawing on the subject positions of masculine dominance and feminine subordination as a prototype for other types of relations, as in colonial processes which produced a racialized feminization of India (Nandy 1998). Thewelweit argues that the generalization of patriarchal dominance is one of the core operations of fascist movements, while Nandy points to gendering as one of many discursive binaries that British colonialism drew on to legitimate the violence and exploitation that accompanied it. It is useful to note that gendered dehumanization can take place between communities or individuals, and recurs as a relational pattern at different scales of interaction. 65 4: Putting the pieces together [T]he experience of war for soldiers bears little resemblance to the experience of war for diplomats and political leaders." -Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa, (2001: 410) Recent interest in culture by IR scholars (Gibson 1994; Halliday 1999; Inayatullah and Blaney 2004; c.f. Jackson 2002c; the essays in:Lapid and Kratochwil 1996; Ross 1997; Wedeen 2002; the essays in:Weldes 1999b), as well as by those within military research institutions (c.f. Cassidy 2005; Mastrioianni 2005; McFate 2005; Murray 1999; Snider 1999; Varoglu and Bicaksiz 2005), has opened a domain of empirical inquiry into how particular possibilities and outcomes are produced by the cultural context and associated identities of those who embody policy. Doing so also helps to clarify the mediating role that interaction plays in implementing and enacting policy (c.f. Howard 2004; Yanow 1996). Focusing on how combatants produce descriptions and coordinate joint activity using social scientific techniques, this study operationalizes 'culture' as intersubjectively-shared discursive frameworks and narratives, which are drawn upon and reproduced in particular interactions. Soldiers can follow orders faster or slower, with enthusiasm and creativity or with resigned compliance. All of these orientations reflect the meaning they have assigned to their activities, meanings articulated publicly that become shared with comrades, transforming individuals and groups. This dissertation shows how, and by what means, shared identities are produced. Scholars who focus on the creation of policy and doctrine cannot predict or explain particularly vicious actions on the basis of national interests or 66 force projection strategies. Nor can methodologically individualist accounts describe the social relations which make such actions sensible. The literature on 'norms' in IR has attempted to do so (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Katzenstein 1996), but these studies have underspecified the mechanisms by which norms are 'internalized.' The presumption of pre-given individual subjects limits the explanatory power of norms, as authors have struggled to empirically demonstrate norms in action. Historians and psychologists alike have looked to group dynamics and officially promulgated ideology to explain how 'ordinary' people find themselves killing in the name of the state. Building from these observations, this study of combatants' interactions can help to explain the things they do, no matter how 'extreme.' In illustrating how normalization and disciplining take place among combatants, this study will also contribute to policy and moral debates. By showing the ways that 'accountability' to shared expectations operates in interaction, the role of discursive frameworks in shaping action can be explicated. Building on the extensive and growing literature on the connections between gendered hierarchies and military and state practices, this dissertation returns repeatedly to questions of how emotional labor (Hochschild 1983), practices of risk-taking (Courtenay 2000a; Courtenay 2000b), and other aspects of military life are profoundly gendered. Although this study does not extensively explore themes of racial, linguistic, and ethnic discrimination within the military, the racialized politics of occupation and associated dehumanization will certainly be present. In utilizing publicly accessible documentaries and web-based video, the goal of this project is to 'witness' the processes that make war possible. Unlike traditional studies 67 in IR, which presume that militaries are instruments of power that are functionally integrated into a single state-actor, my intention is to show IR scholars what war looks like through carefully witnessing audio-video recordings of deployed combatants doing their jobs. The answer is that war looks like a collection of constantly reproduced relationships amongst combatants, their equipment, and the people, animals, and land they are deployed amongst. CHAPTER TWO: FROM QUESTIONS TO ANSWERS VIA METHODOLOGY "Everything has been studied by social scientists, from the island of Bali to the ghettos of Los Angeles, from the street-corner peddlers to jazz band players, from automobile workers to autistic children - everything, that is, except laboratories, executive rooms, computers, engineers, and weapon systems." -Bruno Latour, "The Impact of Science Studies for Political Philosophy" (1991: p. 6) In the first chapter, the discussion focused on three bodies of literature that address the linkage between state violence and individual identity, in order to make sense of how combatants make themselves available as instruments of national security policy. The first and most broad literature, International Relations (IR) theory, would seem to be the field most appropriate for interpreting international conflict, but, as I argued, IR's epistemological commitment to generalizable knowledge based upon the correlation of variables makes it difficult to apply most IR theory or methodology to the study of identities. The exceptions to this characterization emerge from constructivist, poststructural, postcolonial and feminist critiques of traditional IR, which have provided much of the inspiration for this project. Two other literatures on state violence and individual identity have also been important in imagining and situating this project: studies of participation in mass killing and studies of links between masculine-gendered identity and violence. Both depart from conventional political science, drawing on interdisciplinary insights from Political Psychology, Sociology, Gender Studies, and 68 69 History. By focusing on combatants'26 relations in war time, which are the 'object' of this study, it is possible to utilize interdisciplinary modes of analysis and methodologies of inquiry. This chapter provides a bridge from the three bodies of literature discussed in the first chapter into the methodological and data collection techniques used to conduct this research. It begins with a critique of 'normal' ways of talking about war and conflict, arguing that these vocabularies are not adequate to address the research question posed in this study, and necessitates some shifts in how war is described, analyzed, and interpreted. After clearing some intellectual space for rethinking the identities and activities of combatants, I present the particular theoretical and methodological literatures and analytical tools utilized in producing later, empirical chapters. Then I will turn to how the 'data' for this project was collected, transcribed, coded, and interpreted. 1: The ontology of things: implications of a processual approach We cannot avoid using narratives, metaphors, or theories, but what we can avoid is becoming entrapped within their confines by claiming any one of them to be the 26 A note on vocabulary and spelling: as of October, 2003, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker ordered that all official information products from the Department of the Army capitalize the word 'soldier.' "The change gives Soldiers the respect and importance they've always deserved, especially now in their fight against global terrorism," said Schoomaker according to a directive issued from the Office of the Chief of Public Affairs, and quoted in the Stars and Stripes (Coon 2003). The army has also encouraged Webster's dictionary and the AP Stylebook to adopt the same convention. In some, but not all, dictionaries and style guides, 'marine' is capitalized when referring to an individual. In this text I will follow the Chicago Manual of Style in not capitalizing 'soldier,' 'marine,' 'sailor,' or 'airman.' I concur with the editor at Merriam-Webster who was interviewed in the Stars and Stripes article, "I don't see how he could do that.. .The word (soldier) is already established in the language. It's a generic word" (Coon 2003). When generically referring to ground combat troops deployed in Iraq, I will use the term 'combatants,' in order to avoid the cumbersome 'combat soldiers and marines,' or the less specific 'service- members.' Another directive issued on January 1st, 2004 by the Air Force requires the use of honorifics even in repeated references to a particular person. I will follow existing convention and introduce individuals with their rank and position, referring to them by their last names in subsequent references, unlike Air Force publications. 70 single correct narrative, metaphor, or theory. They are instruments, not depictions. -John Shotter, Conversational Realities, (1993: 132) This project builds off of the insight that 'normal' ways of talking about states and the instruments used to achieve national interests are not only descriptive, but productive (c.f. Doty 1993; Jackson 2002c; Jahn 2000; Weldes 1999a). This means that "conversational realities" (Shotter 1993), especially "common sense" (Pascale 2007, 2008), are part and parcel of the processes of production that result in the world we see and find ourselves subject to. By insisting that vocabularies are not innocent descriptions of pre-constituted or self-evident objects, many of the familiar ways of characterizing war and combatants become problematic in light of the insights of processual ontologies (c.f. DeLanda 2006; Deleuze and Guattari 1977; Hilbert 1990; Shotter 1993). Treating the world (and the things and events that compose it) as an effect of ongoing human and non-human processes, rather than a law-governed realm of stable objects and actors, allows for an analytical focus on how aspects of life that we encounter are produced. In a physical sense, a processual ontology means that talking about a person's body as if it were a stable object is 'freeze framing' the effects of dietary, exercise, leisure, and work practices (Tilly 1998: 1-6), all of whose repetition over time literally shape bodies (not to mention the long term effects of water, air, and food toxicity, infectious disease, and medication on experience and physiology). Indeed, neurologists have concluded that the brain itself is such a plastic organ, that '"natural kinds' can be produced developmentally, as well as linguistically" (2000: 123). Indeed, studies have found increased testosterone levels in men who win chess matches (Mazur, 71 Booth, and Dabbs Jr. 1992) or view the victory of a favorite sports team (Bernhardt et al. 1998). Where some draw mind/body distinctions, a processual account sees both as the product of ongoing interactions in the world. Similarly, social institutions, hierarchies, and identities are seen as the results of ongoing interactive processes, and the appearance of stability in much of public life is a reflection of practices that hide or cover over the processes of their production. Mainstream social scientific language refers to social actors, objects, or processes as given, and then analyzes the variable components of those objects or actors to infer what causes them to do what they do (i.e. King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). Though linked to traditional IR debates about the origins of state-sponsored violent conflict, this project uses a processual ontology influenced strongly by the writings of Deleuze in philosophy (DeLanda 2006; Deleuze 1994; Deleuze and Guattari 1977) and Tilly (1998, 2002, 2003) and Ethnomethodology (EM) (Garfinkel 1967; Heritage 1984; Hilbert 1990; West and Fenstermaker 1993) in the social sciences, all of whom call for attention to the interaction of multiple, simultaneous, and often contradictory processes that shape the flow of events. Rather than precisely specifying particular objects and dissecting them, the goal is to illustrate the ways that stability is produced. At a broad level of ontological commitment, the processual turn involves attending to means, rather than ends. Where some assume unified and rational state actors (c.f. Keohane 1984; Waltz 1979), and others would build models from unified and rational individuals (c.f. Moravcsik 1997), this work presumes that identities are always partial, provisional, and dialogical. In interacting with one another, we produce our relations as ongoing achievements of recognition and coordination. Unlike the 'constructivist' models of norm 72 diffusion in IR and Political Science more broadly, Sociology's Ethnomethodological (EM) tradition is focused on explicating how it is that shared descriptions and coordinated activity are accomplished through the skillful work of participants (c.f. Garfinkel 1967; Heritage 1984; Maynard and Clayman 1991; West and Fenstermaker 1993). The insights deriving from EM's focus on interactions as accomplishments is similar to IR constructivists who regard statements about 'who we are' and 'what we must do about X' as political, rather than empirical, claims (c.f. Bially-Mattern 2005; Campbell 1992; Jackson 2002c; the essays in: Weldes 1999b). But even that distinction is problematic, because when President Obama states that "We believe we can abide by a rule that says, we don't torture, but we can effectively obtain the intelligence we need," (Shane, Mazzetti, and Cooper 2009) he is making a 'performative' statement. That means a speech act whose enunciation transforms a situation, as in 'I now pronounce you...' or 'the jury finds the defendant.. .'(Butler 1988). Such statements are easiest to recognize in official or legal situations, but they occur in everyday talk. Any time a description of social reality is made, it can also be a performative utterance that alters and specifies the content of those relations (Butler 1997). This takes place when a gym teacher asks a little boy if he is really a girl, resulting in the laughter of others, when a boss assigns a project to an employee, when a lover says 'we need to talk,' or when, to misuse Althusser's own example, a police officer shouts "hey, you there!" (1971). These examples illustrate the ways that power and meaning flow through relationships, often utilizing widely shared cultural background knowledge which Pascale calls "common sense" (2007), and Foucauldians would call 'discourse.' When members 73 of dominant groups use 'put-downs' related to historical injustices, they are drawing on these intersubjectively held categories of meaning to emotionally harm their targets, and reproduce the power imbalance they are drawing on. Taking seriously the idea that descriptions of social relations contribute to their production as ongoing achievements, there cannot be any significant differences between scholars' descriptions of reality and everyone else's. While politicians and other media, financial, and military elites may wield inordinate influence in projecting their descriptions of the world, uncritically repeating such descriptions or building them into our methodologies as variables contributes to rendering their depictions as 'common sense' (Pascale 2007), and therefore uncontested. In light of this insight, much of the conceptual architecture of traditional U.S. Political Science has proven too cumbersome and pre-loaded with assumptions to evaluate the ways that identities shift in interaction. Even a narrative of how a particular cultural attribute was 'constructed' in a given debate may miss the recessive counter-constructions which form the basis for resistance and contestation. 2: The shift from subjects to intersubjective relations "No 'science' is absolutely free from presuppositions, and no 'science' can prove its fundamental value to the man who rejects these presuppositions. [... T]he one fundamental fact, that so long as life remains immanent and is interpreted in its own terms, it knows only of an unceasing struggle of these gods with one another. Or speaking directly, the ultimately possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion." -Max Weber, Science as a Vocation (1946: 153, 152) 74 For the purposes of this study, I have sought to avoid the normative entanglements of presuming either pre-existing individual actors or ontologically stable states. I have taken both normative and methodological cues from scholars who have focused specifically on participation in mass violence. Browning (1993), Thewelweit (1987), Todorov (1984a) and others who have fore-grounded the writings and records of perpetrators of genocide, have indicated that the responses and experiences of individuals vary in important ways that cannot be explained in terms of national interest or bureaucratic rationality. The "contact zone" (Pratt 1992) of encounter with others requires the active negotiation and interpretation of those in contact, even groups of combatants in situations of systematic mass killing. Empirically examining military conflicts as intersubjective and culturally contingent events yields some shifts in level of analysis and analytical methodology from traditional IR theory or social scientific individualism. Individuals do not appear as unchanging atoms in these studies, war and slaughter profoundly transform the self-conceptions and relationships of combatants. Neither pre- given rational individuals nor functionalist state apparatuses appear as stable or pragmatic units of analysis. Instead, there is an interdisciplinary research space shared by the political psychology of obedience to orders, feminist critiques of masculine performance as violent dominance, poststructural and anti-colonial critiques of self7other demarcations as dehumanization, and the detailed histories of colonial and genocidal atrocities. Those conducting research in these areas always seem to find their explanations in intersubjective relations between people. In the Milgram (1975) and Zimbardo (2007) experiments, the vast majority of civilian participants were willing to torture or humiliate 75 arbitrarily assigned victims when they saw these actions as legitimated by scientific authorities.27 Neither the existence of scientific bureaucracies or individual pre- inclinations to violence are offered as causal explanations, instead both authors reference the intersubjective relations established by research staff, participant victims (or actors, in Milgram's study), and participants willing to torture. In Thewelweit's (1987) study of "warrior male" violence by the 'Freikorps' (veterans of the first world war who fought and massacred socialist workers throughout Germany, the Baltic states, and Poland), he argues that 'traditional' male dominance of females was ideologically and practically re- inscribed into relationships between Freikorps and socialists, enabling and legitimating the waves of mass killing. Over and over again in studies of mass violence, the explanations come from the interactions, hierarchies, and relationships of combatants, rather than their individual psychologies or locations in history. A turn to focusing on embodied interactions yields empirically rich, morally compelling, and politically important sets of relationships that otherwise seem epiphenomenal to the actions of states. As Enloe (1990, 2000) and others have demonstrated in a number of studies of civilian women's extremely negative experiences of nearby military basing and exercises, militaries are complex assemblages that produce a number of effects. In feminist analyses of military activity, IR blindspots in terms of gendered sexual violence and sexual commercialization are noted and filled in. Shifting from viewing states as functional holisms or metaphorical people allows for analyses of 27 One UCLA Psychology professor has replicated the original Milgram experiments, and found that little has changed in willingness to obey scientific authorities, see the New York Times editorial describing the study: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/opinion/29mon3.html. accessed January 3, 2009. 76 complexity and heterogeneity in the ripple effects of military activity. Beyond policy implementation, armed forces produce, consume, and transform the environments and economies around them; they occupy space, disrupt flows of goods and people, produce refugees, and carry cultural products with them. In all of these interactions, soldiers, marines, sailors and other uniformed combatants act and produce in ways that state-level narrative constructions miss. From a functionalist perspective that treats the state as a unified actor, this is a realm of 'unintended consequences.' Wherever military forces are marshaled, deployed, or allowed to conduct 'live-fire' exercises, they participate in the lives of those around them in important, and politically consequential, ways. 3: Identity and language: a processual approach "The relationship of a person to that world is to be understood through the idea of skillful action. A human being can live in the world of symbols and intentional normative activity only through the skills they have acquired, and thereby become and continue to be a person." -Rom Harre, The Discursive Mind (1994: 99) Taking my cue from the persistently relational emphases of the literatures on participation in mass killing, as well as my own theoretical commitments to feminist, queer, and poststructural theoretical insights, this project focuses on the relationships and interactions of particular combatants, complicating functionalist or instrumental constructions of combat activities. Unlike 'systems level' realism or 'state-system co- constitution' constructivism (see Chapter One), this means focusing on activity and meaning-making that take place at the level of embodied human relationships. Attending to empirical instances of interaction allows a focus on combatants' relations and 77 identities, without pre-committing to an individualist or functionalist ontology. Embodied interactions take place between human beings, but they also take place between people, machines, animals, and ecosystems (Haraway 2003). As indicated in the introduction, explicating how relations between combatants, weapons, trucks, other humans, animals, etc., are achieved, explained, and justified is the goal of this study, helping to answer the question of how combatants make themselves available to be instruments of state power. Rather than treating individuals as pre-constituted agents, relational approaches to social science look at how groups of people produce social identities and roles through interactive processes. As Harre stated above, the 'self,' is not something we 'have,' but rather something we do with and to ourselves (Foucault 1988c) and in our relationships with one another (Denzin 1993; Hammington 2002). This insight allows research to elucidate the practices of identity production, meaning those acts and statements whose reiterative effects are what we think of as self-identity (Butler 1988, 1993). Individual human beings are focal points of activity, in that speech, violence, and labor all originate in a particular body.28 But this does not imply that explanations of human activity require 'getting inside' someone's head, because the substance of activity is social and public (Shotter 1993). Indeed, Vygotsky and Bakhtin both argued that children learn how to act upon themselves, use language, and articulate their desires 281 am certainly aware that machines are capable of various sorts of linguistic interaction, as well as the robotic assembly lines and semi-automated weapons systems that are becoming more and more common. From my perspective, robotic and AI systems are produced by human beings for social purposes, making them technological appendages of human/machine hybrids (Haraway 1991), not autonomous agents. There may come a time when the political and ethical construction of personhood should be applied to self-actuating machines, but that still seems far off to me. I also want to note that animals engage in communicative practices, in food gathering and storage, in construction and other types of labor, as well as play. Thus not all communicative agents or laboring bodies are human, and bomb sniffing and riot-control dogs have certainly been actors in the unfolding of the occupation of Iraq. For ways of thinking relationally that need not over-privilege the human subject, see Haraway's work on human-animal relationships in the context of scientific research (1978a, 1989, 2003). 78 through an interactive process of applying the same words or acts to themselves as their caregivers do (Bakhtin and Holquist 1981; Harre 2000; Todorov 1984b). Similarly, Wittgenstein describes teaching a pupil to count (2001a: § 143-146), and argues that we can tell a pupil has 'learned' something when she can do so "correctly, that is, as we do it" (2001a: § 145). In exhibiting the ability to do or say something "as we do it," learners adopt the practices that are applied to them by others. As Blumer, from a very different school of Sociological theory stated: By virtue of self-interaction the human being becomes an acting organism coping with situations in place of being an organism merely responding to the play of factors. And his [sic] action becomes something he constructs and directs to meet the situations in place of being an unrolling of reactions evoked from him" (1966: 542). The ways that children come to be language using bearers of names and individual identities reveal that personal development consists of acquiring and utilizing skills modeled by others. People become who they are through adopting the practices of those around them, from counting to saying "please." A processual or relational approach also means that scholars cannot draw on 'human nature' as an all-purpose explanatory crutch, which Waltz neatly dismissed when applied to war (1959: 29). Instead of asserting a pre-given human nature or transcendental subject, scholars of identity must look to the particular types of practice that achieve individual social selves. This is a step away from traditional liberal political theories or social scientific methodologies which are premised upon a Cartesian or Kantian subject which Latour aptly described as a "brain in a vat" (1999: 4). No longer assuming that people do things because of their unique internal attributes means that we must look to the webs of relationality and interactivity into which people speak and act. 79 One implication of both feminist and interactionist understandings of identity for this study is a rejection of the normalization of male violence and sexual dominance as intrinsic properties of maleness (c.f. Dusek 1999; Fausto-Sterling, Gowaty, and Zuk 1997; Messner and Sabo 1994). This in turn allows the questioning of research that deploys evolutionary theory as an explanation of jealousy, spousal abuse, rape, and violence, all as mating adaptation in males (c.f. Buss and Shackelford 1997; Delton, Robertson, and Kenrick 2006; Sadalla, Kenrick, and Vershure 1987; Wilson and Daly 1993). In light of critiques of the assumptions built into pre-feminist studies of primate hierarchies and mating patterns (Haraway 1978a, 1978b, 1989), and more recent explorations of the much more complicated sex and social lives that our nearest relative species seem to lead (Setchell and Kappeler 2003; Small 1993), it becomes harder and harder to accept the bio-mythology of male dominance, as popular culture has done with the "cave man mystique" (McCaughey 2008). Acknowledging primate and archeological studies that undermine the naturalness of 'alpha male' behaviors undermines religious or genetic origin myths that insist on the natural and hierarchical binary of gender. This insight, that gender is something we do, not something we have, has spawned a new interdisciplinary literature on masculinity as social performativity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Incorporating feminist and queer theoretical critiques of heterosexist/patriarchal assumptions, the study of masculinities as multiple and situational has opened spaces for asking how constructions of masculinity are produced and reproduced, and how homophobia is used as a disciplinary technique for holding males accountable to gendered norms (c.f. Cleaver 2002; Connell 1993; Heasley 2005b; Kimmel 2000). 80 Abandoning the accepted 'boys will be boys' narrative of male behavior, the men's studies literature is now carrying out the empirical study of how men and boys in particular contexts participate in "hegemonic masculinity," the "configuration of gender practice, which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of the patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women" (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005: 77). One exemplary study of a California high school illustrates the linkages between numerous intersecting hierarchies based on gender, race, class, and age, and concludes that for the students "masculinity was defined [...] as a publicly enacted interactional style that demonstrated heterosexuality and dominance while at the same time repudiating and mocking weakness, usually represented by femininity or the fag" (Pascoe 2007: 166). Noting that definitions of masculinities in particular sites are variable and irreducible to one meta-narrative of patriarchy (Connell 1993; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), Men's Studies scholars have nonetheless developed the concept of 'hegemonic masculinities,' which are linked to the domination of women and non-hegemonic males (for implications for IR, see Higate 2003; Hooper 2001). Manliness is thus not an intrinsic characteristic or evolutionary trait, but a type of intersubjectively recognizable performance that is specifically linked to sexual and physical dominance of others. Beyond empirical instances of masculine gendered activity, Seidler (1994) has questioned the ways that traditional social theory and epistemology emphasize an emotional non-investment in the world that claims to be 'rational' and 'rigorous,' but is dependent on (and reproduces) the seemingly neutral norms of masculinity in post- enlightenment European and American culture. He asks why it is more rational to allow 81 analytical reactions to data, but not emotional ones, and why 'dispassionate' functions as a synonym for 'objective.' In critiquing the enlightenment construction of rational masculinity, Seidler's reading of the canon of social theory argues that what have come to seem like 'normal' practices of scholarly rationality and emotional withdrawal are culturally particular and historically situated. Similarly, Nandy's (1998) striking study of the psychological relations between Indian and British cultures under colonialism argues that the very image of Victorian masculinity was, at least in part, a repudiation and 'othering' of the British construction of Indians as effeminate, other-worldly, and infantile (and/ or senile). The scientific, modern British ideal of manhood was thus formed as a counterpart to stereotypes of effeminate and superstitious Indians. Having attuned to the historically and politically contingent definitions of masculinity, as well as the broader conception of human identity as emergent from interactive performance, it is time to turn to the methodology of this dissertation project's empirical analysis. Rejecting 'normal' ways of talking about states, individual subjects, and men all involves a sacrifice. Forfeiting a certain amount of parsimony and comfortable vocabulary, I utilize an approach to empirical processes that does not presume either transcendent personal identities or causal transhistorical structures. Instead, the goal is to focus on interaction between people, things, and the world, attending to the reproduction of gendered and other identities in particular encounters. To conduct such a study is to leave behind much of the vocabulary and methodology of traditional political science, but it does not mean having to start from scratch. The next section draws on fields of research that have designed rigorous empirical methodologies for interpreting interactions in a way that does not depend on either stable 82 individual subjects or ephemeral causal forces. Like poststructural and constructivist social theory and IR research, these literatures are interested in processes of production, but they focus on specific embodied interactions to see how the world is made sensible by practical conversational activity. One common assumption of these approaches is that language is primarily used to create, rather than represent, meaning. This means that language and discourse offer people the conceptual resources for creating meaning (Foucault 1994), ordering their environments (Heidegger 1977: 3-35), and giving themselves a sense of narrative continuity (Nelson 2001). There are a number of schools of thought that pertain to language use, how to make sense of it, and what relationship words have to things (see: Hacking 1999). Starting with Ethnomethodology (EM), and leading to Science and Sechnology Studies (STS), I will point to examples of the kind of analysis that I utilize in later chapters. There is no toolbox of precise methods that can be copied and applied like a statistical package; rather there are approaches to language and human interaction that serve as exemplars of empirical research techniques and their interpretation. 4: Identity and meaning-making as observable processes "[T]he doing of gender, race, and class requires situated conduct (including feelings, aspirations, and self-assessments) that is locally managed with reference to and in light of normative conceptions of what constitutes appropriate behavior for members of particular sex, race, and class categories...Thus, accountability presents to each of us the ever-present possibility of consequential evaluation with respect to our "essential nature." Accordingly, we align our beliefs, our behavior, and ourselves to the possibility of that evaluation." - Sarah Fenstermaker & Candace West, Doing Gender, Doing Difference (2002: 212-213) 83 The advantages of a processual approach to identity are both analytical and normative (as noted in the preceding section). The analytical advantages of focusing on the actual processes of identity performance and interactive coordination are what I turn to now. By bracketing everyday assumptions and asking how such 'everydayness' is achieved, social scientific research can yield insights into problems that might not occur in traditional analyses based on stable objects with variable components (Certeau 1984). This approach was pioneered in American sociology, where Garfinkel's (1967, 1986) classic studies illustrated the ways that conversational interaction 'achieves' shared understandings and permits joint action (see also: Mills 1940). Under the rubric of EM, Sociologists and others have developed accounts of how the apparent 'objectivity' of everyday social situations are produced and sustained based on the competent interactions of those involved (Coulon 1995; Garfinkel 1967; Heritage 1984). As one review of its various strands summarized: "The principle aim of ethnomethodology is to investigate the procedural accomplishment of these activities as actual, concerted behaviors .. .[meaning that] Sociologists can rigorously explicate ... actors' concerted work in making social facts observable and accountable to one another in their everyday lives" (Maynard and Clayman 1991: 387). As a research strategy, EM has yielded insights into how people are conversationally accountable to gendered expectations in nearly universal ways (West and Fenstermaker 1993; West and Zimmerman 2003), how the slippery categories of 'race' are made meaningful in everyday interaction (Pascale 2008), how the perception of normative neutrality is achieved (Clayman 1992), and a great many other aspects of everyday social interaction. Ethnomethodologists study the skillful use of language by 84 participants, looking at how they produce and utilize shared descriptions of reality, with a focus on the method, rather than the content, of their accomplishment. In Woolgar's (1981) "radical" - as opposed to "reformist" - explication of EM, this means that analysis must be neutral as to the epistemic truth, ethical implications, or ontological status of the claims made by participants. What matters are the methods people use to achieve the production of shared descriptions, not the judgment of the analyst, and a radical reflexivity in relation to descriptions is required for the radical potential of EM not to settle into the "suburbs" of Sociology (Pollner 1991). EM, like other interpretive methodologies interested in talk (Heritage 2004; Perakyla 2005), presumes that meaning is something that is actively produced in interaction, and not something that inheres in the object under discussion by participants. These research techniques emerge from systematic interpretive enterprises devoted to explicating the skillful use of language in everyday life to construct conversational worlds (Holstein and Gubrium 2005). Utilizing methodological and theoretical tools from EM allows analysts to interpret the work that people do to produce and sustain meaning in their interactions. Instead of treating people as rational individuals with preference schedules, EM emerges from a tradition of qualitative Sociology that sees identity as something which is achieved in social interaction (Garfinkel 1967; Goffman 1959, 1969). As people engage with one another, they produce locally stable descriptions of themselves, providing cues for action towards others. These descriptions can be overt and collective, as when President Bush said that "The legacy that our troops are going to leave behind is a legacy of lasting importance, as far as I'm concerned. It's a legacy that really is based upon our 85 deep belief that people want to be free and that free societies are peaceful societies" (White House Office of the Press Secretary 2004a). Here the President was directly signaling how he wanted U.S. actions and identity to be interpreted. This can be more subtle when descriptions of ourselves are implied, as when we ask a retail worker where to find an item, we implicitly describe ourselves as potential customers. EM represents the methodological tradition most consistently interested in how such descriptions are achieved and how conversational activity permits joint action (Maynard and Clayman 1991; Pollner 1991; Woolgar 1981). With a similar ontology to post-structural and some constructivist research in IR, but a more defined place in debates about analytical methods in U.S. social sciences, the research traditions of EM and STS ask how participants in interaction produce characterizations and descriptions that permit shared understandings, allow participants to coordinate their activities, and hold one another accountable. Ethnomethodology, meaning "people's methods," offers an interpretive strategy for exploring the ways that people accomplish seemingly natural features of social relations (Garfinkel 1967; Heritage 1984). STS focuses specifically on how scientific knowledge and technology are produced, validated, and disseminated, again, focusing on the interactive methods used by scientists and technicians to coordinate their relations with each other and their apparatuses (c.f. Collings 1997; Latour 1991; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Lynch 1997). Both offer ways of specifying the practices that (re)produce individual social identities, corporate actors, and other entities as linguistic objects, causal explanations, and bases for accountability. 86 Instead of searching for signs of (or simply inferring the existence of) an internal genetic or metaphysical essence at the core of each individual's subjectivity, the analysis of identity as interactive allows researchers to describe how identities are inscribed on bodies, "a process of materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter" (1993: 9). Identities, even when 'common sense' would describe them as visibly written on a gendered or racialized body (Pascale 2007), are produced through interaction. EM has a concept that is similar to Foucault's notion of disciplinary techniques, but emerges from their empirical studies of interaction (Heritage 2004; West and Fenstermaker 1993; West and Zimmerman 2003), arguing that 'accountability' can be empirically traced. Heritage argues that accountability to shared normative frameworks "permits actors to design their actions in relation to their circumstances so as to permit others, by methodically taking account of circumstances, to recognize the action for what it is" (1984: 179). Developing this notion to describe the ways that race, class, and gender function in situated interaction, West and Fenstermaker developed the notion of "doing difference" (Fenstermaker and West 2002). They argue that the potential to be held accountable to intersubjectively shared norms of racial, gender, or class expectations are omnipresent aspects of social life. Thus a 'female pilot,' 'black Sheriff,' 'country mechanic,' or 'immigrant attorney,' are potentially subject to evaluations by others in terms of their assigned identities. Regardless of what they are doing, or how competently, people anticipate the potential reactions of others to their ascribed identites. Fenstermaker and West's formulation bears some similarity to the formulations of other authors who have written about gender in interaction. Their description of 'doing 87 gender' builds from, but also critiques, Goffman's notion of 'gender display,' which he defined as: "If gender be defined as the culturally established correlates of sex (whether in consequence of biology or learning), then gender display refers to conventionalized portrayals of these correlates" (1967: 69). Rather than seeing people 'perform' gender through 'drag' (Butler 1991), 'passing' (Garfinkel 1967), or 'gender display' (Goffinan 1967), Fenstermaker and West argue that gendered practices permeate social life, as opposed to being a specific signaling activity. They instead look to how conversational participants orient themselves towards the classificatory practices they share with those around them, creating the possibility of accountability. Goffman's understanding of interaction emphasized the intentional display of various social roles, an idea that Fenstermaker and West reject (Fenstermaker and West 2002: 6-8). Instead of 'performing' roles, EM looks to how people 'do gender' in the course of living their lives, noting that gender is considered to be a condition of subjectivity.29 While many ethnomethodological studies of everyday talk have focused on the sequential organization of conversation in terms of utterances and pauses, situational contexts also provide resources for creating meaning outside of the specific content of preceding statements themselves. As Goffinan noted in an essay published posthumously, someone whose work is widely read by EM scholars despite their differences, "our activity must be addressed to the other's mind, that is, to the other's capacity to read our words and actions for evidence of our feelings, thoughts, and intent. This confines what we say and do, but it also allows us to bring to bear all of the world to which the other 29 The first question so many English speaking parents hear is: "is it a boy, or a girl?" In English, a child as in "it" until becoming a "he" or "she." This is not so in German and other languages, which have ungendered terms for "the child." 88 can catch allusions" (1983: 51). These allusions are invoked by participants as part of the normal flow of conversation, drawing on shared cultural and situational references, and are the basis for EM's concept of accountability. People in interaction may also allude to, request, or interact with objects within the scope of participant's vision and action, or any other conceptual or physical resource that may be referenced. Along these lines, although using different methods, ethnographers of workplaces have also developed fascinating studies of how people construct knowledge of machines, assigning them characteristics and personalities which facilitate their operation, repair, and usefulness (Orr 1996). In interaction, participants produce meaning and share information about the things and places around them, in effect, producing a knowable world. Shotter argues that linguistic concepts work as tools, both for interaction and for thought, and that "it is acting through such 'instruments' - that is, out towards the world - that people can reveal aspects of its nature otherwise unavailable to them- such as the blind person's stick as a sensory prosthetic" (Shotter 1993: 71). By confining its analysis to particular empirical interactions, rather than texts, EM has not found wide usage in constructivist and post-structural work in IR or Political Science more broadly. One field where the insights of EM have enjoyed tremendous intellectual success is in the empirical study of scientists and scientific communities (c.f. Latour 1999; Lynch 1997; Shapin 1995). STS is a field that assumes the interactive production of knowledge, techniques, and technologies, relying on empirical accounts of how scientific communities produce networks of relationships between themselves, their devices, and the organisms, chemicals, minerals, or celestial phenomena that they seek to 89 understand. Latour argues that STS demonstrates that traditional 'positivist' accounts of how the scientific method reveals natural laws and intrinsic properties (Hempel 1965, 1966) are as useful as descriptions of history as the unfolding of inevitable structural forces.30 In both cases, analysts presume that they have unmediated access to a force outside of contingent human activity: scientists don't make knowledge, they find it in things; people don't make history, they are compelled by its forces. In Latour's (2002, 2004b) formulation, there are two ideal-typical2,1 perspectives to characterize the relationship between human interaction and knowledge: constructivism and fundamentalism. Constructivism assumes that complex mediations and translations produce well constructed knowledge, while fundamentalism assumes that such translations and mediations pollute or undermine the validity of the knowledge •I1? obtained. Like iconoclastic Protestantism (Eire 1986) and Islamic modernization movements (see the collections of such thought in Donohue and Esposito 1982; Kurzman 2002), positivist epistemology assumes that human interaction introduces error into an encounter with an extra-social source of truth. Latour counters that the findings of STS reveal the exact opposite, at least in terms of the practical work of scientists for whom 30 As Hegel argued in terms of India: "the East India Company, are the lords of the land; for it is the necessary fate of Asiatic Empires to be subjected to Europeans; and China will, some day or other, be obliged to submit to this fate" (Hegel, in Mirsepassi 2000: 30). 31 Following Max Weber, an ideal-type is not an empirical representation, but a conceptual tool that accentuates given features of a debate or tendency, in order to clarify thought. 32 Some scholars of religion have argued that fundamentalism is a uniquely modern phenomenon, because it applies the epistemological certainty of enlightenment natural law to religious texts, yielding a non-mystical and self-confident assertion of the literal truth of every single word of scripture (ie. Armstrong 2000). For excellent discussions of the problematic nature of certainty in philosophy and epistemology, see Wittgenstein's On Certainty (2006) and Moyal-Sharrock and Brenner's reading thereof (2005). For a pragmatic approach to taking religious experience seriously while bracketing the content of theological descriptions, see William James' path-breaking work in On the Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). 90 there is never an unmediated access to knowledge. He insists that the work of generating knowledge is a collaborative, contingent, and profoundly interactive set of processes in which scientists invoke their mediations and methods to convince one another of their claims (2003, 2008). For Latour, the activity of scientists constantly involves shaping, diagramming, and interacting with non-human elements, jointly producing shared actions and meanings via a number of very complex mediations. Studies of science and technology build off of ethnomethodological tools, but do not confine themselves to the analysis of verbal interactions. Noting the manifold practices of note-taking, translating, classifying, and tinkering that characterize the daily practice of laboratory and field scientists, Latour (2005b) and his colleagues in STS have developed an approach to mapping out networks of people, devices, objects, and concepts. In this analysis, actors, or 'actants' need not be individual human beings, since devices, animals, and other non-human beings contribute to the final results of scientific practices (1996a, 1996b). In some debates, this type of analysis could be construed as falling on the 'micro' side of the micro/macro debate, or perhaps on the 'agent' side of agent/structure. But as Hilbert (1990) argued, EM is not micro-sociological in the sense of micro-economics or rational choice theory, since it does not assume self-interested individuals, or subjects of any particular kind. But that does not make it a structural account either, since it does not posit a structure of language that acts on people as "cultural dopes," to use Garfinkel's term. Instead, EM is indifferent to structure, bracketing the world outside a single interaction, and focusing on how subjects, objects, structures, histories and other interactive achievements are produced by participants. Hilbert points to practices of 91 counting, measurement, and tabulation (which can be ethnomethodologically interpreted) that produce the descriptive effects of structures and institutions. Thus 'structures' of macroeconomics are not objects, but effects of collating data, analyzing trends, and other operations of bureaucrats, accountants, scholars, and clerks. Like Hilbert, Latour also locates 'structure' in the moment to moment interactions of people. For Latour, 'structure' is the name we give to the results of centralized data collection practices. But structures also involve infrastructures, charts, databases, and communication technologies. The "GDP" is not a thing, but rather an effect of certain aggregating and record keeping practices, any of which could be located quite specifically by empirically studying those who conduct them. As he argues: attend a conference, participate in hearings - what will you see? Nature? Of course not. You will see a collective of practicing scientists turning with skill around instruments, trying to interest and to convince each other, and, in order to do so, introducing into their exchanges slides, tables, documents, photographs, and reports, coming from far away places of quite different scales (very small particles, very big galaxies, very abstract models, very tight calculations, very extreme experiments). Depending on the heat of the discussion, on the mustering, mobilization, and use of these resources, other colleagues will or will not be convinced (1991: 8). From an ethnomethodological standpoint, 'the government' is a interactive achievement that participants create through assigning meanings and making descriptions. To Latour, that makes perfect sense, but he would also point to the buildings, computers, and weapons that people interacting in terms of 'the government' use to do their work. Given the focus of this project on combatants' interactions while deployed, I have sought to model my own analysis and methodology on other studies of 'workplace' interactions, particularly those examples drawn from STS. 92 5: Beyond interaction: bridging EM and STS with philosophical approaches "What makes for the class of possible roles that a person can adopt at some place and time? Everything from genetics to education, for sure. But also the very space of roles that anyone can adopt, in a society at a time, is both limitless (there are any number) and yet bounded by a surrounding of, to use Sartre's words, 'a kind of absolute, unthinkable, and undecipherable nothingness.' Foucault gave us ways in which to understand what is said, can be said, what is possible, what is meaningful - as well as how it lies apart from the unthinkable and indecipherable. He gave us no idea of how, in everyday life, one comes to incorporate those possibilities and impossibilities as part of oneself. We have to go to Goffman to begin to think about that." -Ian Hacking, "Between Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman: Between Discourse in the Abstract and Face-to-Face Interaction" (2004: 299-300) EM and STS studies of language, talk, and meaning concur with C. Wright Mill's assertion that the "postulate underlying modern study of language is the simple one that we must approach linguistic behavior, not by referring it to private states in individuals, but by observing its social function of coordinating diverse actions" (Mills 1940: 904). Yet there has been a great deal of philosophical confusion about how exactly language fulfills this function. EM and STS remain pragmatically neutral to theories of language and self, but both would find the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein inspiring, if not social scientific in tone. Wittgenstein's notion of'language games,' in particular, shares an orientation to meaning-in-use that STS and EM use to orient their studies of interaction. Like social scientists interested in interactive meaning-making, he argues that words do not take their meaning from the objects they refer to, rather, people do things with words as they would 93 -1-J tools (Shotter 1993: 100; Wittgenstein 2001a: §11). Instead of assuming that meaning is based on a correspondence with ontologically distinct 'natural kinds' of things (as in the realism of: Bhaskar 1998; Searle 1995), Wittgenstein argues that language is composed of a series of 'language-games' through which rules and possible moves are made available to speakers through their coordinated interaction (2001a: §23-24, 82-84). Language-games are linked to a certain 'form of life' (2001a: §241), an insight that comes as no surprise to those who have learned a second language while living abroad, or when considering the forms of communication that take place through internet chat programs. For Wittgenstein, language cannot be treated as a separate domain from the instances in which it is used. This is in stark contrast to structural linguistics, which treats language as a coherent system of signs which derive their meanings from their differences and similarities (de Saussure 1959). Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (2001a) opens with a quote from, and critique of, Augustine's Confessions, in which Augustine claims that as a child he learned language in order to communicate his desires which arose 'inside' to those 'outside' who might satisfy them. Augustine goes on to argue that words take their meaning from things, as Wittgenstein summarizes his 'mirror' theory of language: "the individual words in language name objects," meaning that "sentences are combinations of names" (2001a: §1). Refuting the Augustinian conceptualization of words as names of discrete objects forms one of the major objectives of the remaining text, in which Wittgenstein argues 331 am indebted to the lectures on Wittgenstein offered by Rom Harre while I was a graduate student at American University. At the time, he was finishing his co-authored work entitled Wittgenstein and Psychology: A Practical Guide (Harre and Tissaw 2005), and much of my thinking on how language functions in constituting individual psyches grows out of his work. 94 that language takes its meaning from use in particular language game situations. Using the example of a radically simplified language that consists only of names of different types of building materials, Wittgenstein points out that for a builder's assistant to perform the job of fetching the correct type of material, the words "block" or "slab" must go beyond the denotative meaning; simply naming the object is not sufficient, it must be fetched and properly handed to the builder, giving the words meanings far beyond the objects that they are supposed to name (Harre and Tissaw 2005: ch. 4). Wittgenstein's interpretation of language-in-use as a series of creative but rule governed responses to the particular contexts of language-games (2001a), has a counterpart in the 'materialist' and 'dialogic' approach to language and interaction that was pioneered in the early days of the Soviet Union (Bakhtin and Holquist 1981; Todorov 1984b). Though mostly known in the former Soviet-bloc until recently, Bakhtin argued that every statement necessarily implies a possible response, thus also implying a relation with the listening other (or at least the potentially listening other, as when we talk to ourselves or write to our diaries). The dialogical character of language derives from the interaction of self and other, which forms the relational basis for meaning-making. To Bakhtin and those he has inspired, this relational property of language is more than an ontological or analytical insight on talk, it is also the basis for a normative humanism, an ethical recognition that human beings are innately social, and depend on interaction with one another to produce meaning, identities, or communities. Ethnomethodologists have avoided making strong ontological claims or normative evaluations, but the Marxist tradition has long linked the ontology of human relations to a critique of existing practices (Avineri 1971: 'homo faber,' 65-95). Like most variants of critical theory in the 95 Marxist tradition, this means an insistence that human relationships are necessary to our beings, and this relatedness carries ethical implications. In order to bridge more normatively oriented approaches like feminism, critical race theory, or poststructuralism with EM, this necessitates an unorthodox reading of the ethnomethodological program. Both EM-inspired empirical research and Wittgensteinian language philosophy are interested in how people create meanings, identities, and coordinate activities, moment-to-moment, through interaction. Both are suspicious of 'getting inside someone's head' or assigning a priori meanings to the world, and both are interested in the creative use of language to give things, people, and relationships meaning. Wittgenstein was a philosopher, and his works were designed not so much to demonstrate the empirical validity of his arguments, as to lead the reader to see language-games in action. EM emerges from American Sociology, on the other hand, and carries an empiricist orientation to studying situated interactions as a means of grasping the methods people use to create meaning (Heritage 1984). While offering inspiring examples and a powerful set of analytical tools, EM confines analysis to immediate and particular speech situations. Historical, political, and cultural 'background' knowledge is suspended from the analysis of empirical conversations, unless it is present in the content of the conversation itself. For this reason, Pascale (2005, 2007) has argued that ethnomethodological tools can be usefully, if not unproblematically, combined with poststructural discourse analysis. The goal of such bridging exercises is to build off of the empirical tools for interpreting people's skillful production of meaning through interaction, while retaining an interest in historical or political processes of more general scholarly or political concern (Miller 1997). While 96 Ethnomethodology traditionally avoided or bracketed discussions of ideology, structure, and other generalized descriptions of social relations, the influence of British Cultural Studies, particularly Stuart Hall, has led to new directions of research, and efforts to use these tools to 'ground' discussions of'macro' processes (Musolf 1992). Denzin (1993, 2001) has sought to combine the detailed analysis of particular interactions with analyses of media products and historical domination in terms of race and gender. The bridging of Ethnomethodology with poststructural and critical theories allows analysts to develop detailed empirical explications of particular situations, and then to build up from them, showing the situational reproduction of historical or political processes of interest. What EM and STS specify in terms of empirical, embodied, face-to-face interactions, discourse analysis does at a broader and more diffuse level of shared cultural resources. This study follows in the footsteps of those who have used the Foucauldian notion of power not merely as repressive, but "it traduces and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse ... [and] needs to be considered as a whole network which runs through the social body" (Foucault 1980: 119). Following Pascale, in this work, discourse "refer[s] to 'clusters of ideas, images and practices' that provide frameworks for understanding what knowledge is useful, relevant, and true in any given context" (Hall 1997: 6; Pascale 2007: 121). In social life, the "clusters of ideas" that provide categories and frameworks for making sense of the world help to constitute it. In a similar vein, Miller helpfully defines discourses as: "diverse configurations of assumptions, categories, logics, claims and modes of articulation.. .[which] provide persons with coherent interpretive frameworks and discursive practices for constructing different social realities within which particular 97 kinds of people reside, relationships prevail and opportunities are likely to emerge" (1997: 32). Discourses are conceptual resources that are drawn on whenever making arguments about what is true, what is ethical, or how to evaluate something. Discourse analysis, on the other hand, is the use of these concepts to explain some aspect of life in terms of the assumptions and epistemic criteria people use to make sense of it (Foucault 1977, 1990) and themselves (Foucault 1988a, 1988b, 1988c, 2005; Hutton 1988; Martin 1988). Taking a step back from everyday categories that render things like 'states' and 'armies' into discrete objects allows for empirical reflection on how these objects are composed through actions that presume them. As Foucault argued, historical power struggles leave their mark on how we organize and explain our lives, "Politics is the continuation of war by other means. Politics, in other words, sanctions and reproduces the disequilibrium of forces manifested in war" (2003: 16). The reforms, revolutions, and beliefs of the past all contribute to what we consider appropriate, just, or sane, and these distinctions are reproduced and enacted by military, juridical, religious, family, and other institutionalized settings. As Foucault's work indicates, we would not be who we are today without the mental institutions (1965), clinics (1973), and prisons (1977) of the past two centuries that were production sites for much of the knowledge that shapes the "normal" human beings we fashion ourselves into. Foucault's later writings concerned, what he called "technologies of self' which comprise "a certain number of operations" that people perform "on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being" (1988c: 18). We do so, Foucault argued, on 98 the basis of expectations that are communicated in discourse and policed through a variety of practices, some official, some informal. Discourses offer ways of evaluating ourselves and each other, and are used to legitimate the 'disciplinary' techniques (Foucault 1977, 1990) that various institutions adopt. Definitions of normality, sanity, and healthiness, to take one of Foucault's frequent examples, are discursively constituted but have very profound effects for those who are subject to institutional sanctions in their names. A number of authors in IR have used Foucault's concepts to argue that ways of framing debates -the discourses used to make sense of arguments and evaluate claims- contribute to the processes that shape international politics (Doty 1996; Epstein 2008; Hansen 2006; Sasson-Levy 2007; Woodward and Winter 2004). Few have turned to his later writings about technologies of the self, and how they link very intimate bodily practices to shared discursive expectations. There is a tension between discourse analysis and agency, a theme that has been discussed at length in philosophy and social science (c.f. Bleiker 2003; Butler, Laclau, and Zizek 2000; Denzin 2001; Emirbayer and Mische 1998; Ermarth 2000; Honan et al. 2000; Scott 1991; Shotter 1993; Somers 1994; Zizek 1999). This tension can be seen in both Miller's definition of discourse (above) and in Bleiker's: discourses are subtle mechanisms that frame our thinking process...[that] determine the limits of what can be thought, talked and written in a normal and rational way. In every society the production of discourses is controlled, selected, organized and diffused by certain procedures. This process creates systems of exclusion in which one group of discourses is elevated to a hegemonic status, while others are condemned to exile (2003: 27, emphasis added). 99 Miller, a researcher interested in mixing the tools of discourse analysis with ethnography and conversation analysis, seems to emphasize agency. Bleiker, an IR scholar, seems to emphasize control on the other hand. In the abstract, these issues are difficult to reach resolution on. That said, in empirical situations, agency and constraint are co-present, and agency can be seen as people negotiate the complex intersubjective systems they find themselves within.34 Many critics of Foucault, and Foucauldian work in IR, have argued that the discourse and disciplinary techniques are difficult to trace causally or empirically. Inspired by Pascale (2007) and Miller (1997), this study uses EM and STS with Foucauldian discourse analysis in order to situate discourses and the intersubjectively shared meanings they carry within empirical interactions. In this section's epigraph, Ian Hacking calls for a space "between discourse in the abstract and face-to-face interaction," which he suggested was a space between Foucault and Goffinan. This project, like those that inspired it, seeks to build from Hacking's argument that face-to-face interaction and discourse analysis are both necessary to understand the relationship between speech, freedom, and discipline: "This is not because how we are can be freely chosen, but because the choices that are open to us are made possible by the intersection of the 34 Michel Foucault described the upshot of his research on the history of penal practices and discourses of criminality in an interview with Rux Martin, "All of us are living and thinking subjects.. .Everybody both acts and thinks. The way people act or react is linked to a way of thinking, and of course thinking is related to tradition. What I have tried to analyze is this very complex phenomenon that made people react in another way to crimes and criminals in a rather short period of time" (Martin 1988: 14). He also stated that: "My role- and that is too emphatic a word- is to show people that they are much freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as evidence, some themes which have been built up at a certain moment during history, and that this so-called evidence can be criticized and destroyed" (Martin 1988: 10). Noticing that thought draws on discourse, and that discourse thus transforms history, does not mean that people are compelled, it only means they will need new framings if they wish to change. 100 immediate social settings, target of the sociologist, and the history of that present, target of the archaeologist" of discourse (Hacking 2004: 288). By focusing on the particular interactions of combatants, this study maps how they and those around them construct their relations intersubjectively. Combining a performative understanding of identity with Wittgenstein's philosophy of language and the empirical tools of EM yields an approach to interaction in which both individual identities and group identifications are reproduced on an ongoing basis. Taking a cue from the inspiring work of STS scholars adds 'things' to interactive situations, also a necessity for those interested in armed conflict. A conversation between an Iraqi mechanic and a marine on patrol is not simply a linguistic exchange between floating subjects of language, especially when an armored personnel carrier (APC) is parked nearby and the marine is holding an M4 rifle. The rifle, the night vision mounted to the science fiction looking helmet, the tank, and the helicopter gunship circling overhead, are all participants in the unfolding of the situation, something which is blatantly obvious to those involved. Yet 'things' do not have intrinsic meanings, the same rifle that means safety, routine cleaning, and proper attire to a marine can be an implicit death threat or reminder of slain loved ones to others. Using ethnomethodological approaches to meaning-making, studies of work places look at how interactions assign temporary meanings to things, and how 'ecologies' of place and stuff provide resources for meaning-making (Heath and Hindmarsh 2002). In the analysis that follows in later chapters, I draw on tools from EM and STS in order to explicate precisely how participants in particular interactions construct shared understandings, looking to how they use spatial and other embodied resources to 101 coordinate their activities. I will also point to how combatants hold themselves and one another accountable to shared expectations of action and speech. Noting the ways that relations between combatants and non-combatants are managed in interaction, a portrait of how power inequalities and state sanctioned violence occur at the face-to-face level will be offered. 6: Method: access via video recordings This study offers an interpretation built up from the highly-mediated remote witnessing of U.S. combat forces as they perform their missions inside Iraq. Following the examples of Heath and Hindmarsh (2002) and West's (1984) ethnomethodological approach to studying doctor-patient interactions through video recordings of their conduct, I pursued a strategy of accessing video recordings of situated interaction by soldiers and marines. Starting with audio-visual recordings, all produced either by combatants or filmmakers interacting with combatants deployed in Iraq, I analyze the interactions of soldiers and marines as a window into how they produce their relations with each other and the world. By focusing on the meaning-making practices of deployed combatants, what I hope to show the reader is the contemporary 'American way of war'35 that continues producing events in Iraq in ways that cannot be explained by state-level realist, liberal, or constructivist accounts of war fighting, as I argued in the first chapter. The chapters that follow offer analyses of a wide variety of audio-visual recordings of soldiers and marines at war. The data was gathered and sorted in a multi- stage process of: data collection and transcription, field noting, and inductive category 35 For historical context, see the list of U.S. military interventions and covert actions conducted every single year since 1776 in Ward Churchill's On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, (2003: 39-85). 102 creation. First, I gathered a universe of recordings using Boolean search techniques. Using search phrases: 'Iraq,' 'Baghdad' and 'Gulf War,' I included every documentary film and collection of news reports that came up, excluding feature films. The search was made from the largest repository of films that is publicly available: Netflix.com, which has a library of over 100,000 titles,36 and supplemented with an identical search of Amazon.com.37 Discounting those eight non-fiction films that did not utilize primary source recordings from Iraq (only using stock footage and interviews with experts), 35 titles were left, ranging from 36 minutes to 452 minutes in length. Of those 35, four consisted only of interviews with combatants after they had returned, and 31 had primary video material recorded in Iraq.38 Using a 'field noting' technique (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995), I generated not only transcripts of dialogue and notations about situations and activities, I also recorded my own thoughts and reactions in a separate set of documents. In this way, analytical observations and naturalistic impressions were kept distinct from the transcription process, but both were recorded. Once the transcripts were complete, I used inductive category analysis to generate a list of the types of activities depicted, i.e.: sitting for an interview, combat patrols, convoy driving, perimeter security details, house searches, interacting with animals, etc, expanding the number of categories until no new types activities were witnessed. This process is inspired by Max Weber's notion of the ideal- type: 36 http://www.netflix.com/HowItWorks?lnkctFma08Thiwl0#faq2. accessed September 12th, 2008 37 Searches were conducted in November 2007, and again in May of 2009. Amazon searches did yield some documentaries that are privately distributed by individual sellers, and these were not included due to their very limited distribution. 38 See Appendix One for the complete list. 103 An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified thought construct. In its conceptual purity, this mental construct cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality. It is a Utopia (1949: § 'Ideal Types'). Like Weber, I am aware that my categorization of particular interactions into types of language games linked to particular activities is an analytical heuristic, not a description of pre-existing or stable aspects of the universe (see also Jackson 2002b, 2004). This is a useful way of developing cuts into large amounts of data, and of developing an interpretation of the data itself, rather than importing 'off the shelf constructs which can lead to conceptual "stretching" (Sartori 1970). Having generated ideal-typical types of scenarios, I supplemented this collection, using standard Boolean searches to look for more examples of my ideal-typical scenarios. Combing through youtube.com, the richest collection of publicly accessible web based video clips, yielded more material than could possibly be evaluated.39 To ensure that I was drawing on widely viewed clips, I focused on those linked to or described in military blogs or activist publications. From these titles, as well as extended reports from embedded filmmakers produced for public television, 22 additional titles were added to the original 31 featuring primary video recorded in Iraq, leading to 52 documentaries40 that were transcribed, yielding hundreds of pages of typed interaction. For each film, I transcribed interactions between U.S. soldier or marines amongst themselves or with 39 As of October, 20,2008, a search of youtube.com for "Iraq" generated 503,000+ hits. 40 See Appendix One for the complete list. 104 Iraqis, their answers to questions in interviews, as well as numerous instances of combatants clowning around and making home videos.41 The choice of audio-visual recordings as data has several advantages and several disadvantages. Because I was both unable and unwilling to become a full participant- observer in combat operations in Iraq, the best rendering of day-to-day interactions I could hope to access was in recordings. Many recordings are made by soldiers and marines and posted online. Many are also made by embedded journalists and filmmakers for television series and the documentary film circuit. Both types of recordings were selected for public viewing by other people, meaning that many interactions I might have found useful were likely dropped in editing or never uploaded. On the flipside, the internet is teeming with recordings of combatants, many of which were not at all useful for my purposes. While providing excellent access to the front seat of Humvees on patrol, video recordings are non-interactive, and had I been present, there were a great many interactions I would have wanted to ask the participants about, or to have witnessed events preceding or following them. Video recordings do have the distinct advantage of being publicly available. Any of the internet clips or documentaries analyzed in this dissertation can be accessed by the general public, giving these sources an added benefit of transparency and referentiality. One last advantage of audio-video recordings is that they entail, by default, a certain level of collaboration between myself and those whose interactions I am 41 For a far more comprehensive study of online video published by combatants in Iraq, and how it fits in the wider cultural politics of post-Vietnam war films, see the excellent MA thesis by Lindsey Ann Hagan (2007). 105 interpreting. For whatever reasons, they have chosen to upload videos of their experiences in Iraq, or agree to be filmed by an embedded reporter. As consenting participants in the production of a public record of what happens in Iraq, the combatants, filmmakers, and camera operators whose work I have built upon are co-creators of this project. Without their openness to being filmed and sharing their experiences, this study would not have been possible. In terms of transcription notation, I have elected to use the simplest possible format, rather than the somewhat esoteric conventions of some ethnomethodologists and conversational analysts, who measure pauses in tenths of seconds (c.f. Fenstermaker and West 2002: 165-6; Heath and Hindmarsh 2002). When producing transcripts, any descriptions of activity are marked inside brackets, while statements are quoted, as in this excerpt from a documentary produced for the guardian.co.uk news website: [Three soldiers surrounding Iraqi man who is sitting next to wall in the shade, one has rifle aimed at man's head] Soldier with rifle pointed: "Shut the fuck up!" [kicks man's leg] Second Soldier: "Put him right in front of this fuckin' truck in the fiickin' sun." [he is led into the middle of the street, and made to sit, handcuffed, in the sun, a rifle is pointed at his head throughout] (Smith and Smith 2008: 10:50-11:08) When two people speak at the same time, or one interrupts another, I indicate this with dash marks, as in: [Soldiers are searching house; Iraqi woman shows them what is in the cupboard] Soldier 1: "No, got some-" Soldier 2: "-What's that up there-" [aims his flashlight at mixing bowl on top shelf] Soldier 1: "-Medicine, a mixing bowl, [she brings it down to view] eggs- Soldier 2: "-Eggs, yeah" (Scott and Olds 2006: 4:45-4:52) While giving up some of the precision that extremely detailed transcriptions can provide, I have elected to emphasize ease of reading, and have therefore tried to keep transcripts 106 as basic as possible. I have used standard punctuation to indicate pauses (,), questions (?), and emphatic statements (!). Strongly emphasized words are rendered in bold. If there is some uncertainty in my transcription, despite my best efforts, this is noted by a bracketed double question mark ([??]). In places where I have edited or shortened the text I am quoting, I mark this fact with a bracketed ellipsis ([...]). Since I do not speak Arabic, I have relied on subtitles, these sections are written in italics and indicated. My own descriptions in brackets are meant to provide key details involving ongoing action, not to be exhaustive or some sort of mirror that captures the reality of the recording. From the situated activity of deployed combatants, the mediation of film-makers, cameras, and editors allows the possibility of witnessing, which my own transcriptions then further mediate before they can be included in this text. There is no possible way that I could or would claim to have a statistically representative sample of all of the kinds of activities and interactions of the hundreds of thousands of combatants who have served in Iraq. Instead, I have sought the broadest possible collection of audio-visual recordings, developed categories to describe what I saw, and presented exemplars of these ideal categories. Chapters Three and Four consist of a series of close readings of particular interactions that exemplify the ideal-typical categories of calling home, performing tricks, 'pulling rank,' combat patrols, and other sorts of activity. Using ethnomethodological and STS inspired interpretive tools, I explicate the interactive accomplishments of identity- production that combatants use to shape their relationships and describe the world. This indicates how seemingly stable attributes of identity, like masculine competition, warrior- stoicism, and willingness to kill are achieved on an ongoing basis through interaction. It 107 also enables a look at how the EM concept of accountability helps to make sense of seemingly stable identities and institutions. Chapter Four focuses specifically on how assemblages of combatants, machinery, and technology become 'units,' analyzing interactions between U.S. combatants and the people, animal, land, air, and water around them. Chapter Five covers the complex overlapping metaphors that shape military norms and how they are handled, by looking at instances of prisoner abuse, accidental killings, and how combatants are held accountable to multiple discourses and their standards of acceptable action using media reports, leaks, and official documents. The chapter also examines how the decision not to count Iraqi dead was legitimated by official spokespersons. Leaving the narrow focus on video-taped combatant interactions and turning to these forms of accountability, Chapter Five utilizes a Foucauldian approach to interpret the combinations of discourse and practice that discipline individual combatants, and draws upon film, as well as a variety of textual sources to do so. CHAPTER THREE: A TYPOLOGY OF COMBATANTS' INTERACTIONS This chapter presents a series of interactions between deployed combatants, offering a typology of conversational settings or situations, which Wittgenstein called 'language games.' This chapter will illustrate some of the ways that individual expression and agency are achieved through interaction. In play, communications with family, prayer, and everyday talk, this chapter foregrounds the accomplishment of individual identities and social relationships through interactive practices of naming the world. Rather than assuming that identities are pre-given, or institutionally structured, the goal is to explicate the practices which form the 'means of production' of social identity and relations for deployed combatants. Using analytical perspectives described in the previous chapter, the discussion that follows seeks to draw out the discourses that combatants use to assert their identities in the course of their interaction. Doing so allows for an exploration of the multiple masculinities that are in use when combatants hold one another 'accountable' to shared norms (2002: 212-213; 1984: 179). Although EM typically does not explore the basis or logic of shared norms to which people are held accountable, using a perspective influenced by gender studies and Foucauldian research, the discussion will also point towards the multiple discourses of gender expectations that circulate in the military. 'Masculinity' is not a single, universal category, and expectations of'normal' manly 108 109 behavior may differ quite strongly between conversational contexts (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). 1. Playing and showing off One comparison of mammalian orders found "a significant positive relationship between play and brain size" (Iwaniuk, Nelson, and Pellis 2001: 35), an observation from natural scientists which accords with the inventiveness and diversity of human playfulness. As the following section suggests, this is true even when those humans are organized, equipped, and mobilized to occupy another human community's land. Long a staple of war films42 since the John Wayne era, as well as the popular imaginary of the military more broadly, the comradery of soldiers goofing around until yelled at by their commanders is a cinematic and literary trope in discussions of war and warriors. This section looks to the specificity of particular playful acts, seeking to demonstrate what these acts produce in the process of constituting social relations. Combatants post a lot of videos of themselves rapping, singing, playing ball, telling jokes, and engaging in the types of potentially self-destructive antics that many associate with the aptly named MTV show Jackass. 'Goofing off can involve explicit performance, a way of gaining attention as combatants make each other laugh, impress one another with their dance moves or freestyle rhymes. In "Back To Iraq" (Unknown 2008a), Marines can be seen playing horseshoes and catch with a baseball, singing and playing a guitar, and riding bicycles, all while they enjoy the relative calm of their 42 For scholarly treatments of fictional war films and their contribution to public discourses of masculinity and nationalism, see the studies by Jeffords (1989, 1994) and Boose (1993). For an earlier, psychoanalytic reading of Marine Corps boot camps, popular media, and masculinity, see Shatan (1977). 110 deployment in al Anbar province, an area in which Sunni militias started taking U.S. funds in exchange for their help with 'law and order,' as well as anti-al-Qaeda operations. A great deal of the play seen in the recordings is non-verbal, as in jumping rope together (Smith and Smith 2007: 4:43), riding bicycles (Unknown 2006b, 2008e), dancing (Alpert and Kent 2007: 12:40; Unknown 2006a, 2006b), and beating a pretend enemy (Kennedy 2007: 22:00). Any time such antics are recorded, others are nearby, and an interactive context forms around the demonstration and witnessing (including recording) of various acts. While goofing off, combatants sometimes show off for an audience, as in "Bored in Iraq," an edited clip in which soldiers dance for the camera, and one soldier repeatedly rides a mountain bike off an incredibly steep ramp leading onto a pile of dust and sand, flipping over backwards on each attempt, sometimes landing it, sometimes crashing into the sand (Unknown 2006b). While combatants may practice such dance moves or athletic tricks on their own, they become public events, parts of their recognized identities, when they are witnessed. In the process of making recordings and watching stunts, they joke with one another as they are witnessing the performance, as in this interaction: Camera Operator: "I don't know, I think he's gonna wuss out halfway through." 3rd male voice: "Dude go off it again, man, I wanna see you really do it" 4th male voice: "Jump that shit, come on" Camera: "Well, I don't think he's gonna wuss, I think he's gonna not commit" 4th male voice: "I got, I can't, don't even wanna watch this shit, man. If he kills fucking kills himself-" Camera: "-I'll carry him to the TNC, I don't think it's all that far." [Bicyclist enters the frame going quickly from upper right to lower left of screen] Camera: "Yeah, I don't feel good about this." [Bicyclist moves across screen, camera follows him off a ramp, he goes across a gap, but the front tire hits the front of the ramp on the other side of the gap, he flips over the handlebars, landing off camera] Camera: "Oooh, you all right? Ill Cyclist: "yeah, I'm good" Camera: "Holy shit, I hope I got that on tape, man!" Cyclist: "Yeah!" [his arms up in triumph, sitting on the ground, the bicycle in front of him] (Unknown 2008c) This interaction is both straightforward, and yet revealing. On one level, it is good to notice that even the most stressful and highly disciplined combat deployments leave some time and space for soldiers and marines to fill with their own interests. These soldiers used their time to construct ramps inside their secured base, and record themselves playing on it with a bicycle. At the level of the interaction, one soldier is performing for the others, who comment to each other (and the camera) on his capacity to accomplish a challenging task. They encourage him to do something potentially quite dangerous, but one soldier also expresses concerns about his safety. Those watching play two meaning-making games, one in which they are witnesses, and the other in which they position themselves in terms of the performer's masculinity: will he "wuss out," or will he kill himself? Will he fail in his masculine behavior, or will he succeed and smash his body? His best option is to escape this risky situation without being tagged as a wuss (which could have ramifications for his place in the local masculine hierarchy including hazing, taunting, etc.), and without harming himself, but the chances seem slim even to his friends, who note the availability of medical attention as if an injury would be a mundane occurrence. In offering to carry a wounded comrade, the soldier simultaneously positions himself as a rescuer, and the cyclist as a potentially helpless victim. In the end, the cyclist lands the jump but flips over the handlebars. The other soldiers rush over to him, and he is the 112 center of attention for a brief, heroic moment. In terms of his group position, he has come out well, apparently unharmed, but considered willing to take risks. By taking a beating without complaint, yelling out "I'm good" despite having fallen to the ground quite dramatically, the cyclist holds himself accountable to an image of masculinity as stoicism. In making the whole incident 'no big deal,' he ignores whatever pain he may be feeling in order to be seen as a "tough, brave" man (2001: 406). Displaying his ability to withstand pain without complaint, he and those around him can see his actions in light of shared expectations of manliness. Despite others' speculations about his 'wussing out,' the cyclist escapes the situation without the humiliation of backing down (showing fear) or harming himself (showing weakness). Like men in civilian life in the U.S., combatants engage in risk-taking for fun and use it as an enjoyable way to build status in the eyes of other men. Drawing on a discourse of masculinity in which bravery in the face of danger is a marker of manhood, such activities reproduce identities, hierarchies, and a shared narrative of male imperviousness to fear. Courtenay, a scholar interested in male risk-taking and health related habits, notes that "Risk-taking behavior among males of all ages is a major contributor to their injury rates, which are much higher than those of females, except in old age" (2000a: 98). In a separate piece, Courtenay asks why men take more risks than women. Arguing that traditional studies of the topic essentialize male behavior instead of questioning its expressive and interactive origin, he argues that a relational approach to male health helps us see that "Men also construct masculinities by embracing risk. A man may define the degree of his masculinity, for example, by driving dangerously or performing risky sports - and displaying these behaviours like badges of honor" (2000b: 113 1389). The search for the thrill of danger is associated with 'doing' masculinity, and the lionization of the bicyclist above, following his crash, indicates that the strategy worked in this particular interaction. Following Courtenay's analysis is useful for unpacking the interactive work that is being done in context of the bicycle-soldier-ramp-camera game: "health-related beliefs and behaviours that can be used in the demonstration of hegemonic masculinity include the denial of weakness or vulnerability, emotional and physical control, the appearance of being strong and robust, dismissal of any need for help, a ceaseless interest in sex, the display of aggressive behaviour and physical dominance" (2000b: 1389). Note that in the vignette above, four out of six of these demonstrations of masculinity are present. Going through Courtenay's typology of masculinity-producing acts one at a time, there is a relatively close match with the recording discussed above: the soldier on the bicycle goes over a jump with no helmet, denying his vulnerability. By bicycling quickly over a jump, he demonstrates his control of his fear and body, while also demonstrating his strength and agility. After crashing to the ground, he demonstrates that he needs no help. There is no mention or display of sexual interest, nor is there any overt conflict. Yet in the performance of risky behavior for the titillation of his buddies, the cyclist is 'doing' his masculinity in a way that is recognizable to the others around him as such. This is, of course, a temporally unique activity done by particular men and recorded on that camera, a highly specific interaction in which all participate as performers and witnesses. But a similar scenario could also have been played out by young men jumping stairs on their skateboard, racing on four-wheelers or dirt-bikes, or jumping off cliffs into water. 114 Play takes many forms, and can be based on physical activities like knocking over the porta-potty someone is sitting in (Unknown 2006c), verbal teasing, rapping, or singing. It happens during 'down time' in which combatants do not have required duties, times in which they can remove their cumbersome armor and protective gear and move their bodies more freely. Such moments allow individual expressions of talent, whether in freestyle battling, doing tricks on bicycles, or planning pranks on one another. As in their consumer product choices, playful activities are a narrow band within which combatants can embody their individual predilections, the spaces in which they are most 'free.' But they are also spaces in which performance of masculinity is incredibly important. By engaging in activities that may be dangerous, some combatants may hurt themselves while pursuing status, thrill, or both. Playful activities are also used to reproduce hierarchies, since those who can be pranked, teased, or insulted must always be of equal or lower rank, and are typically deemed 'softer,' and therefore less masculine. Avoiding being called a wuss might be worth some risks, while demonstrating physical prowess yields immediate situational rewards in terms of other men's attention. In a short video recording cited above (Unknown 2006c), soldiers knock over a portable toilet that another soldier is using, a violent and humiliating display of their own aggressive masculinity, and an incident that the victim can be reminded of in future interactions, echoing and compounding the masculinity differential achieved in the prank. A similar dynamic of status-enhancement outside of the chain of command can be seen in rap battles. Though the rap battle is a very particular language game, with its own rules and norms, it is also an example of the verbal play and jockeying for position that are present throughout the materials reviewed. In a rap battle, two competitors take turns 115 rhyming, often praising themselves and insulting one another while onlookers provide a beat (either through an audio device or through beat-boxing, using their voices and bodies). As we see in video-recordings from Iraq, the immediate witnesses play the role of judges, deciding who has won with their cheers, laughter, or comments. A hip hop battle is like an ideal-typical language game. It has rules that are unenforced yet shared, it has players, and like many other dialogue situations, speakers must skillfully engage with their surroundings and draw on shared assumptions to create intelligible meaning. Freestyling, which is like a battle without competition, allows combatants to verbally construct themselves in rhyme. Spc. Devon Dixon, AKA "Little Man," describes being at war while producing an image of himself as a professional killer: Spc. Dixon: Fifty-cal. blowin' your brain, I'm little man, and I'm goin' insane; It's all about this shit right here, the sandbox; Yo, blow Haji right out his fuckin' socks; Off camera voice: [boom!] Dixon: Yo, he's steady smokin' trees, yo, I'm runnin' up and I'm blowin' they Bs; I got a M4, and I got a perfect aim, one shot, one kill, and it ain't shame to my game" (Tucker and Epperlein 2005: additional scene 12, 4:08-4:28). Here Dixon refers to himself as going insane, and then describes shooting and killing Iraqis with different weapons. Comparing himself to a "Haji"43 who smokes "trees," or marijuana/hashish, he claims to blow "Bs" or brains, with his "perfect aim." In freestyling, rappers are free to lyrically construct themselves, in this case, in reference to the operational demands of killing. Bragging, self-promotion, and a cartoonish presentation of self are all strategies of self-definition in hip hop poetry, but so is taking the surrounding cultural environment and weaving it into one's narrative. 43 In Arabic, the Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars required for living out the Islamic faith. Haji is thus a term of respect for a person who has made this pilgrimage, though in the slang of U.S. forces it is often a racial epithet. 116 Most of the soldiers and marines seen rapping in these films are African- American or Afro-Latino, but hip hop culture pervades the military, and white soldiers listen to rap as well as heavy metal. Combatants in Iraq often have access to laptops, CD players, iPods, and other stereo equipment, and are even able to patch music devices into their vehicle's communications systems (Moore 2004: 1:12:32), as one white tank crewman stated, after showing how the system works "as we're going down the road, I'm listenin' to Tupac" (Shami and Shami 2007a: 123:40). The only example of a white soldier rapping was in a home video made by Military Police (MPs) stationed at Abu Ghraib. The soldier rapping is alone in the room as the clip starts, looking down into the camera: Rapping soldier: "Do I actually have a choice in my placement? Do I really have a voice in my displacement, Am in the front, running with my face whipped, Or am I in the back one's, lookin where base went, Don't wanna face it, feel like I'm in space, kid, Lost me all time, the hallways is lit [??], All they do is take, all I do is give, I'm so fuckin' tired of livin' in this pattern, Is everybody else on earth also livin' Saturn? Am I the one who's crazy? People's minds seem lazy, Way god made me, they can't fade me." [Interrupted by others goofing around, grabbing camera] Other white soldier: "That's right, Abu Ghetto" (Kennedy 2007: 21:24). Where the soldier expressing himself in a quiet room seems to use the opportunity for introspection, to let himself feel the craziness and lack of certainty around him, the soldier interrupting him renames the situation. Taking the fact that someone was rapping as indicative of a 'ghetto' situation, the soldier racializes their situation and the activity of rapping. Referencing their living situation at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as America's 117 inner city ghettos,44 he holds the rapping soldier accountable to the racial community where rap began. Despite hip-hop culture's broad appeal among young American consumers, it remains deeply connected to the African-American experience of post-civil rights urban struggles (Dimitriadis 2001; Smitherman 1997). In rap battles, unlike the introspective freestyle seen above, diminishing the masculinity of the opponent is a common strategy for making the audience laugh and gaining the applause that brings 'winner' status. Gendered dominance is a discursive resource that can be drawn on in relations between men, or, more specifically, between masculinities, a move that can be seen in this extract from a rap battle in Iraq: "Not gonna sit around, cuz you a bitch, I bet you piss while sittin' down... While you look so disabled and dumb, I'll fuck your momma get her pregnant with your new brother, and make you my son" (Unknown 2007a). While these rhymes easily lend themselves to a straightforward critique of the verbal content of rap music as disseminating misogynist and homophobic discourse (Armstrong 2001; Armstrong 2004), this verse also participates in the everyday reproduction of interlocking hierarchies of sexual and gendered identities. In the quoted passage, the speaker draws on a host of socially shared images of oppressive and unequal relations: masculine subordination of and violence against the feminine, able-bodied discrimination against differently abled people, and parental domination of young people. By drawing on all of these collectively held images of domination, the speaking soldier's rap verse assigns himself dominating positions vis-a- vis the other soldier. The creativity involved in rap battles can be more difficult for some 44 See the discussion of inner cities as 'war zones' in chapter five, for more analysis of this discourse. 118 listeners to appreciate given the misogynist language which so frequently accompanies them (Morgan 1995; Smitherman 1997), but the rhythmic and poetic skill set required to 'spit' freestyle rhymes spontaneously takes dedication and practice to acquire. Creating hierarchies of masculinity is both a strategy for winning the rap battle, and a part of everyday life for those in the military, much like civilian males in the U.S. (Heasley 2005b; Pascoe 2007). While such exchanges can be seen as examples of the performative or 'drag' nature of gender (Butler 1991), it is important to bear in mind that masculinities are intimately linked to oppressive relations vis-a-vis feminine, meaning that the 'doing' hegemonic masculinity is linked to domination. Seen in the light of Masculinity Studies, such hierarchies deploy homophobia as a means of disciplining male behavior and speech, producing dominating and subordinated constructions of manhood. Accountability to standards of aggressive masculinity means that those whose masculinity is expressed differently may find themselves subject to verbal, emotional, and physical abuse (Pascoe 2007), not to mention the more subtle forms of disciplining described by EM. What we see in the interactions above are soldiers having fun, something they seem to post more video recordings of than anything except direct combat situations. Judging by the results of a youtube search for "Iraq fun,"45 there is certainly enough material there alone for several book length analyses of off-duty play by deployed combatants. In playing together, hierarchies and individual identities are both co- produced through the interaction of participants. Whether showing off a trick on a bike, demonstrating sultry dance moves, playing music, or displaying verbal skills while 45 There were 3080 hits, as of October 20, 2008. 119 rapping, the social identity of the performer is interactively linked to the language games that those watching play in response. Seeking acknowledgement, status, and praise unifies these activities, in that all are non-mission related activities that nonetheless confer prestige on successful performers. In witnessing, commenting on, judging, and later referring back to the antics of individuals, the wider community constructs their identity in relationship to such interactions. Being held accountable in future interactions is an important aspect of how participants 'do gender' and 'do' their identities (2002: 212-213; 1984: 179). Military communities sometimes gather for 'battle of the bands,' talent shows (see the pool parties and concerts held by the 2/3 gunners while billeted in a palace, Tucker and Epperlein 2005), boxing matches (Alpert and Kent 2007: 3:57-4:29) or rap battles, but such activities are usually informal. Gathering in small groups based on shared interests, combatants play in ways that draw on hierarchies of rank, of gendered and racialized oppressions, but also of affection, closeness, and friendship. Their play, like everyday conversations, draws on culturally shared images of manhood, of selfhood, and on the particular surroundings they experience. In their use of video cameras, not just to record what they do, but as props that shape interactions, combatants also play as actors. The presence of a camera creates the possibility of doing something that will be remembered. Mocking their own videos of combat in Najaf, one unit recorded a short 'war movie.' A soldier with a dirty face, shirtless, is lying on the floor pretending to be in a firefight. He looks dramatically into the camera, holding his rifle as if ready to fire. He claims to have been shot, stabbed, and poisoned, and plays the part up: 120 Soldier: "[...] Don't know how much longer we can make it [... ] Hajis everywhere, we need to get out as soon as possible [...] Mom, I love you, this could be my last transmission, so I wanted you to know, make waffles (Mortenson 2007: bonus ch. 5 "waffles"). The explicit reference to themselves as characters within a film recurs in a number of the documentaries (Langan 2004: 1:17:00; Scott and Olds 2006: 49:34), but this is the only example where this metaphor is extended to an embodied parody. The clip illustrates the ways that war films impact the popular imaginary, shaping the meanings that combatants give to their experience of war. In playing up the motif of the desperate soldier, the punch line comes when the soldier makes his last request: that his mother make waffles. Reinforcing the association between mothers and domestic labor (Berk 1985; Rich 1986), the fictitious soldier's final request for waffles while under fire elicits laughs from those in the room. Having a camera present also allows the person holding it to construct a different interactive space than they could without it. In one clip, the soldier operating the camera puts it directly in a soldier's face as he is trying to sleep on his cot. Noticing the camera, the sleeping soldier asks: Soldier: "What, have you got cancer of the butt?" Camera: "No." Soldier: "What." Camera: "You joined the army, and now you're in Iraq." [laughing] Soldier: "Yeah, huh...yeah." [laughing] Camera: "But hey, there's good news." [laughing] Soldier: "Yeah what's that?" Camera: "I'm here with you." [reaches out, pets the top of his head] Soldier: "Ohhhh." [laughing] (Mortenson 2007: 23:04) Unlike some of the highly competitive behavior discussed earlier, acts of affection between soldiers contribute to a different style of masculinity and relationships between 121 men (Heasley 2005a, 2005b). Despite the risk of potential accountability to homophobic norms in male friendships, there is a sweetness to this exchange which belies the idea of a completely hegemonic masculinity. Instead, these two friends share a moment of noticing their surreal situation, and connecting to one another. Although the most explicit example of such an exchange, the friendships between combatants are far more emotionally complex than homophobic jockeying for position may imply. Unlike play, which happens at the margins of official social life for combat forces, prayer is explicitly and formally organized, both for regular weekly services, as well as 'informal' Christian prayers before missions. The following section looks at how those who identify with religious teachings and authorities negotiate their military service and their missions, in both formal and informal settings. 2: Praying In play, combatants achieve recognizable identities through performative and competitive practices. A less interactive, but emotionally significant 'language game' is played out in group prayer. Many units say prayers before each mission, two examples of which will be presented below. But military bases, including combat outposts, also have regular religious services for Catholic and Protestant combatants, as well as occasional meetings or visiting chaplains for service members who are Jewish, Muslim, or of other faiths, and particularly festive services at Christmas (Shiley 2004: 43:27-47:00). From an institutionalist or neo-fiinctionalist reading of culture and ritual within the military, such prayer presents a leap in analysis, since the meaning of Christian rhetoric is so easily contested and not reducible to functional necessities. 122 The Army's internet recruitment page for Chaplains states that their mission is to take: "responsibility of caring for the spiritual well-being of Soldiers and their Families" and thus "the Army chaplain is crucial to the success of the Army's mission."46 This reading of the Chaplain's interactions with combatants would fit into the functionalist depiction of the Army as an institution with its own apparatuses of social services targeted at combatants, a language that contributes to the reproduction of such an institution (Heritage 2004; Latour 2005a). While such collective 'we-making' rituals do serve institutional functions, Christian rhetoric within the American military milieu is a set of resources for interpreting war in very different ways. Highly ritualized language games disperse and reproduce a discourse which can have varying consequences for combatants' self-conceptions, as can be seen in a Catholic mass held on a combat outpost in Iraq. The Chaplain stands in front of a large U.S. flag behind the altar, and like everyone else in the tent, he is in desert camouflage. The soldiers have their hats off, and rifles slung across their backs as they rise in prayer: Chaplain: "Let's pray to God with all our hearts, presenting our needs and those of others. For our holy father, our President, and all church and state leaders, that they may be instrumental, in promoting peace and justice, we pray to the lord." Soldiers: "Lord hear our prayers" (Scott and Olds 2006: 16:14). In the prayer offered for the group's ritual response, they are encouraged to link their own thoughts and prayers to the two formal hierarchies of the Roman Catholic Church and the United States government. Asking soldiers to pray for the leaders of church and state can be interpreted as an explicit emotional appeal to group identity, an example of the public rituals that reproduce and normalize the "stories of peoplehood" that Smith discussed at 46 See: http://www.goamv.com/JobDetail.do7ich317. accessed November 18, 2008. 123 length (2003). Such group identifications have been identified as essential to the production of political communities by comparative scholars of nationalism (Anderson 1991; Brubaker 1996; Marx 2003). But this prayer is not merely an expression of hegemonic discourses as they meet the lived identities of Catholic Americans in uniform. Rather, the chaplain prays that the leaders of church and state will be "instrumental, in promoting peace and justice." This can be interpreted in a number of ways. In one reading, combatants (and their mission in Iraq) are establishing peace and justice, following the logic of the legitimating language of former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld or President Bush. His famous 'Mission Accomplished' speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego argued that: "In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world."47 In such a description, combatant activity is service to both their state and to their god, since peace, freedom, and justice are linked as the teleological outcomes of violent interactions. In the ritual of praying for the traditional patriarchal figures of church and state leaders, soldiers are actively reproducing this narrative and related self-conception, if, that is, the prayer is interpreted as a conservative endorsement of the hierarchically organized activity such authorities are dependent upon. In many group prayers, the 'god on our side' discourse is made personal, asking for spiritual support from the cosmos while performing military assignments, as in this pre-patrol prayer: Chaplain: "Dear lord Jesus Christ, we pray to you every day that you continue to give us strength, and praise in everything that you provide us with, and continue 47 See: http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPQLITICS/05/01/bush.carrier.landing. accessed July 2, 2009. 124 to take care of all soldiers deployed and around the world. We thank you for that. You continue to give our families strength and guidance [unintelligible] you provide with us on a daily basis, and you continue to keep them safe on a daily basis. And we praise you for that, as well. Dear lord Jesus Christ, we praise you, amen." Soldiers: "Amen!" Lt. Col. John Allen: "Mount up!" (Roberts 2005: chapter 3:12:11) Here the association of Christian rhetoric with the U.S. occupation of Iraq is emotional and immediate, not framed in terms of hierarchies of masculine authorities, but in terms of the safety of soldiers and their families. The soldiers are about to get in their vehicles, they are wearing their armor and bearing weapons, but before they do, the Chaplain leads them in a prayer that god will "continue to take care of all soldiers deployed and around the world." This yearning for an extra level of protection in addition to their armored vehicles and flak jackets is clearly heartfelt. Most combatants participate in prayer services without adopting a pacifist interpretation of Christian religious teachings. Instead, a narrative position vis-a-vis god is taken in which he is a source of hope in an otherwise terrifying environment. First Lieutenant Mason, the commander of a platoon, led a prayer every time the Arkansas National Guard left their base for a patrol or other mission. In the two prayers that follow, one from early in their deployment, and one much later on, we can see a shift in emphasis: [As soldiers stand in a circle for prayer, Spc. Hertlein has his arm around another soldier's shoulders; all stand with their eyes closed.] Mason: "Father, we just ask for safety today. Lord we're gonna be on some dangerous roads. Lot of car bombs, lot of IEDs recently, father we just ask for your hedge of protection around us, send your angels of mercy with us. And be with us wherever we go, lord we ask for your forgiveness where we fail you and where we fall short. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d2, ep 4: 37:40). 125 Mason: "Before we mount up, we'll have a prayer. Father God, we thank you for this day, we thank you for all you've done for us in the last ten months. Lord, you've kept us safe, we just ask that as we close on the last seventy days of this deployment, you stay with us. Cause the enemy to be confused, protect us, keep us safe. In Jesus' name, amen" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d3 ep 7: 27:50). Notice that in both prayers, god is asked to watch out for the unit, to offer spiritual protection against the dangers that their activities in Iraq entail, much as one might expect of the prayers of those in danger. But only in the first prayer, earlier on in the unit's year in Iraq, does Mason admit the possibility of God's judgment on their actions being less than total approval. Early in their deployment, their prayer was a way of reaching out to the universe, of asking to be forgiven and protected. These two concepts are linked in Mason's Christian theology, divine forgiveness for falling short is directly associated with safety in battle. Who would not want 'angels of mercy' to accompany them, especially in Baghdad in the summer of 2004? The second prayer is based on the psalms in which King David and the warriors of ancient Israel call upon their god to aid them in battle, as read from the Bible by a member of the Arkansas National Guard: "May those who seek my life be put to shame and confusion. May all who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d3 ep 7: 14:20).48 The hope that enemies will be confused and unable to fight effectively is obviously one that has immediate relevance and importance to those in battle. What is more interesting is the contrast between the two prayers. In the first prayer, their god was positioned as a judge of conduct, a celestial being who could provide added security, but also might judge soldiers for their failings. In the second prayer, despite deaths and many 48I am not sure which translation the soldier read, c.f: "Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt" (King James Bible 1611: Psalms 70: 2). 126 injuries to their unit, God is thanked, and asked to "protect us, keep us safe" as they near the end of their tour. There is no doubt left that God is with the Arkansas National Guard, since he is thanked for their past safety, he is surely responsible. Yet if god were to grant the soldiers' prayers, insurgents would mis-time their explosions, aim their weapons poorly, and be immediately slaughtered by the considerable killing technology that a National Guard unit can unleash or summon. Thus God is hailed as an ally in the fighting between American and Iraqi combatants, a situation made more strange by the frequency of prayers for victory from so many of those fighting in Iraq. While this is an entirely logical application of a Christian worldview, and one exhibited by a great many combatants in these recordings, there are other possible interpretations of this rhetoric as well, which do not provide the same kind of metaphysical endorsement of war aims. In Off to War, the normative flipside of an interpretation of military service as helping to bring about universal justice is explicitly articulated, pointing towards another usage of Christian discourse to interpret the war: Priest: "In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit" Soldiers: "Amen" Priest: "Now today, the way to eternal life is by loving God, and then of course, by loving others, as we love ourselves. Whole peoples, whole nations, whole groups, are not able to behave consistently toward each other as the Good Samaritan did. I think if that were so, we wouldn't be here today. Now, the reality of being in a combat zone, is that, if necessary, we take the life of the enemy. Who here can say, that he or she loves those who ambush our convoys? However, if we love only those who love us, we are wrong." (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d 2, ep 4: 12:10) In this passage, the priest introduces a tension between warrior and Christian identities. By pointing to the normative structure of Catholic theology which calls on all Christians to emulate the Good Samaritan, the priest points out that they would not "be here today" 127 if "peoples, whole nations, whole groups" enacted Christian teachings in their relations with others. Instead of directly linking lived Christian faith to service in the U.S. military, the priest calls on soldiers to account for themselves and their actions in terms of Christian teachings. He does so in a qualified way, pointing to "the reality of being in a combat zone" and the necessity of taking "the life of the enemy." This qualification allows the priest not to directly challenge the morality of the missions that soldiers conduct, while still hailing them as spiritually accountable for what they do. Military chaplains are unarmed but uniformed soldiers accountable to the same 'chain of command' disciplinary practices as all soldiers. In this position, the priest is responsible both to the institutional practices of the Roman Catholic Church and the Department of the Army.49 His own normative tension is reproduced in his homily, which calls the listening soldiers to view themselves as torn between the morality of their faith and the "reality" of their combat deployment. The homily exposes the tension, but also backs away from it, allowing "reality" the trump card in terms of soldiers' behavior. Not to have done so might have put the chaplain into conflict with those he reports to.50 Instead, he points to the difficulty of loving those who attack U.S. forces, and states "if we love only those who love us, we are wrong." This is a curious way to formulate the 49 For a summary of recent controversies around these dual commitments, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dvn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082902036 pf.html. accessed November 6, 2008. 50 Recent examples of Military Chaplains being reprimanded for the content of their sermons or prayers do not indicate that pacifist or social gospel teachings have been problems. Rather, prominent cases concern the influx of new evangelical Chaplains who have broken with the tradition of public non- denominational prayers, instead emphasizing sectarian interpretations of the gospel. See: http://pewforum.org/news/displav.php?NewsID=6254: in turn, evangelical lawmakers pressed the White House to protect 'free speech' of evangelists: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=31559&archive=true. accessed November 6, 2008. 128 position of soldiers, acknowledging that they take lives, while saying that failure to love their enemies is "wrong." What the soldier is left with is a military duty to perform, that may involve acting in ways that "are wrong," unless she or he is able to walk the path of the spiritual warrior, loving enemies even while answering the calling to defend the community by slaying them.51 A second option might bring severe consequences, if a soldier began enacting Christian compassion in the pacifist tradition and refused to fight. For those unable to walk either of these paths, there is a potential for producing a divided self, a potentially guilt inducing construction of overlapping identities. In group prayer services, the linking of individual identities to larger normative discourses related to the divine, the state, and hierarchy vies with the capacity of combatants to utilize religious rhetoric to imagine themselves as sinners. Both processes are a result of identity-producing interactive speech, and their overlapping and cross- purposes cannot be predicted in advance. Whether seeing faith and patriotism as fused, or distinct, both nationalist and Christian imagery depend on images of powerful male authorities. Whether the great father in heaven, the Holy Father in Rome, or the Commander in Chief, combatants find themselves called to see themselves in a deferential position to their leaders. 51 The Baghavad Gita, one of the many sacred documents of Vedic Hinduism, is an extended discussion between the god Krishna and Prince Aijuna about the latter's refusal to fight in a fratricidal civil war. Krishna tells Aijuna that freedom from greed, lust, pride, and other egoistic attachments is the path he must walk, even as a warrior: "Those who do not understand this think of themselves as separate agents. With their crude intellects they fail to see the truth. The person who is free from ego, who has attained purity of heart, though he slays these people, he does not slay and is not bound by his action" (Easwaran 1985: p206, 18.16-17). 129 While military Chaplains themselves face a tension around how to interpret and present the teachings of their scriptures, Off to War illustrates what happens when a minister is deployed as a soldier: loading bullets into a clip while sitting on his bunk]: Sgt. Betts: "You know, I was just thinkin' about, uh, conflict that we're goin' into, me bein' a minister, I was thinkin' about, you know, I possibly, you know, could have to kill a person. I just don't know how I'll be able to handle or deal with that" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: dl, ep 2, 31:33). While any soldier or marine could face the psychological and ethical dilemmas involved in killing other people, Betts articulates his struggle in terms of his civilian identity as the minister to a small church he helped to found. Though Betts has concerns about his ability to take a life, he does not overtly take any steps to declare himself an objector, or to seek non-combat status. As someone others might turn to for spiritual leadership, Betts has little comfort, even for himself. Following an argument with his wife, he states to the camera, and to himself, "I'm going to do, what I have to do, servin' my country, and I'm goin' home, and I'm going back to my kids and my wife, I'm gonna love them, they're gonna love me. And we're gonna be happy" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d 2, ep 5, 9:34). This attempt to paint a storybook over his struggles didn't last, however. Being plagued by fainting spells when exposed to the heat, and a recurrent painful shoulder, Betts is sent back to the U.S. for medical evaluation, and eventually, physical therapy and a 'desk job' at his local National Guard armory. In the next section, we will to follow Betts from Iraq into the army medical system. 3: Healing and Medicalization 130 While Sgt. Betts' speaks explicitly about wishing to return to his unit in other segments of the episode, he notes that "If I don't go back to Iraq, it's definitely gonna help my marriage, it definitely is gonna be a plus for my marriage, of uh, for me holding my family together" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d2, ep 5, 26:31). In an institutional 52 context in which neither political nor religious objections to war are recognized, illness or injury are the only ways out of a combat deployment. While other men in the unit are also sent home early, due to shrapnel and other wounds, Betts' diffuse symptoms bring him to Fort Hood, Texas, where an MRI shows that his spine curves abnormally in his neck. In his case, his spiritual unease and marital problems are relieved when his body is not able to do the things a soldier's body should. Betts asks the doctor, "what are my chances of going back to, in country, or going back to Iraq?" The doctor replies, "In the next three months? Zero. And in three months we'll see how you feel" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d 2, ep 5, 40:31). This is, apparently, his blessing. In his weakness and inability to perform combat duties, Betts is removed from the war zone in a way that re- confirms the strength and masculinity of those who remain. For Betts, and many other wounded or ill veterans, a paradox opens in terms of their own recovery. If a soldier does in fact heal from wounds, completes physical therapy, and regains strength, she or he will be promptly put back into combat rotation. As Betts says to his children, prior to his diagnosis, 52 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, whose refusal to deploy to Iraq led to a series of trials, argued that the orders to deploy were illegal, and that following them would make him a party to war-crimes. The court- martial judge ruled that no military court was competent to hear such arguments, and they thus amounted to a guilty plea. Upon multiple appeals through the federal court system, the case was quietly dropped by the Obama administration in May, 2009. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/us/23refuse.html and http://www.seattlepi.com/local/405941 watada06.html?source=mypi. accessed July 9, 2009. 131 And, if I, you know, if I'm doing better, then they decide whether or not I go to, go back to Iraq, or whether I get to come home. So, I want you guys not to, not to get so excited about daddy being home. Ok? Because I may have to go back over there (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d 2, ep 5, 27:18). The problem becomes one of interests. Is it really in the interest of a soldier to recover from injuries, PTSD, or other symptoms? Too complete a recovery may put the soldier back into battle, while a persistent disability is one of the easiest ways to get out of military service with an honorable discharge. At the intake interview at Fort Hood, Betts sits next to a warning posted on cubicle wall, which states that: "MALINGERING, Feigning (faking) an illness or injury in order to attain secondary gain, such as missing formation or duty, receiving a profile, or getting quarters, is a violation of Article 115, UCMJ, And is punishable by this article" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d 2, ep 5, 39:35). Aware that injuries are the only way out for many soldiers, they are explicitly warned against trying to benefit from them. Where prayer provides a ritualized space for combatants to gather and share common sentiments, some of which bolster the legitimacy of their missions, and some of which don't, in the medical system one is radically individualized. Away from his or her unit, attended to by doctors and nurses who outrank most combatants, the experience of entering the military medical system, and later the Veteran's Administration (VA) can be extremely jarring. The speed with which the wounded are whisked away, operated on, and transported overseas ensures that a great many severely wounded veterans survive. Their struggles with traumatic brain injuries, amputations, and emotional disorders are specifically addressed in two documentaries (Alpert and Kent 2007; Foulkrod 2006), and 132 features in several others (Epstein 2006; Mortenson 2007; Renaud and Renaud 2005; Russell, Regan, and Zalvidar 2005). An embedded filmmaker produced Baghdad E.R., a documentary about the 86th Combat Support Hospital, which shows this process in vivid and gory detail (Alpert and O'Neill 2006). But once a wounded combatant has been stabilized and put on a plane, a long, slow, painful process of repeated surgeries, interacting medications, physical therapy, and financial struggles begins. A soldier with a bullet in her arm is a hero in need of urgent help, but a disabled veteran who is 21 years old is a patient who will require years of assistance. This switch from the emergency room to long term, bureaucratized care renders combatants as 'patients' or 'wounded vets,' as people who must be scrutinized. The problem is, the sooner veterans heals, the sooner they are re- deployed. So individual veterans adapt to a bureaucracy bent on policing them; they struggle to heal, to get out of the army, and to make sure all the bills are covered. Full-benefit medical discharges are very expensive, and difficult to negotiate (Dao 2009), and are, perhaps, the reason that wounded soldiers are required to give weekly (or even more frequent) urine samples for drug testing.53 By prosecuting everyone possible for drug violations, advocates for veterans argue that many with PTSD and other 'psychological wounds' are not receiving the treatment they need. As one retired Brig. General and Psychiatrist argued, "We're seeing that a number of soldiers are getting discharged for behavior reasons or personality disorders when they are, in fact, suffering 53 My preliminary fieldwork at base communities in Germany, and the western United States, (2006-2007) provided a number of opportunities to become involved in the lives of, and hear the stories of veterans struggling with the military and veteran's health systems. The testimony of veteran's involved in the peace movement (Iraq Veterans Against the War 2008) is also quite clear on how frustrating the health system is, as is the documentary The Ground Truth (Foulkrod 2006). 133 from PTSD or blast concussions... We need to revisit our policies and procedures on that" (Malcolm 2007). Indeed, a series of investigative reports by journalism graduate students sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation and published by ABC news found drug abuse related to self-medication by wounded and emotionally traumatized veterans was widespread, while substance abuse treatment was hard to access, and disciplinary actions frequent (Hill and Forti 2007; Lewis and McCarthy 2007a, 2007b; McCarthy and Lewis 2007; Schneider and Mehan 2007). Coupled with the over-medication of injured soldiers, especially anti-depressants and sleeping medications (Mehan and Schneider 2007), the contemporary American distinction between pharmaceutical 'good drugs' and illegal 'bad drugs' means that long-term dependence on powerful prescription drugs is fine, so long as they come directly from the military. Otherwise, they endanger a veteran's retirement, medical, and other benefits, regardless of the severity of the injury or trauma that gave rise to their use. Where the hospitals, treatment centers, VA clinics, and military officials are concerned, combatants are collections of bodies and paperwork, both of which can be intrusively inspected for signs of criminality. In the course of moving combatants out of danger zones, both geographic and in terms of their injuries, their identity vis-a-vis the military shifts. Instead of mission performing instruments who require maintenance and inspection, they become potential frauds, drug-addicts, or troublemakers. Betts got a diagnosis that led him straight out of the war, and back to his family. But to do so, he had to submit to a disciplinary gaze that combines elements of the ideal typical doctor-patient, the warden-prisoner, and the officer-soldier relations. 134 In becoming 'damaged instruments,' combatants lose both the social environment of their units, as well as the self-image that comes from military service. 1st Lt. Dawn Halfaker, a member of the 293rd Military Police in the U.S. Army at the time that she lost her arm and shoulder in an RPG attack named the feeling well in an interview: "I feel so high-maintenance. I mean I went from being a soldier, you know? [pause] I peed in water bottles" (Alpert and Kent 2007: 24:30). The loss of independence that comes from a debilitating injury is compounded by the fiercely tough self-image of combat forces, a sudden transition that brings a tremendous psychological shock, compounding the original injury. Masculine norms about showing weakness and vulnerability are not the sole province of males, women in the military adopt the same sense of empowered authority for their submission as men. They do so, however, in institutions which are fundamentally masculinist in culture and history, and their negotiation of these challenges is complex and ongoing (Sasson-Levy 2002, 2003; Woodward and Winter 2004). The next section returns to the immediate social lives of deployed combatants, looking at how retaining contact with loved ones 'back home' allows an awkward but important channel of individual self-crafting. In the phone call home, the soldier or marine is a unique family member, an individual with a particular history and set of social ties. Yet such identities are recessive while in a highly disciplined military environment, particularly in the medical and legal systems. How individuals and their families negotiate this tension will be examined in detail. 135 4: Calling home Another interactive context in which combatants express themselves in terms of individuality is in contacts with family and lovers who are 'stateside.' The availability of telecommunications for U.S. combatants yields a subject-position in which phone calls, emails, and video chats hail the combatants back into the identities they maintain vis-a- vis their civilian communities. Worried parents, siblings, friends and lovers wait for calls and updates from deployed combatants, an experience I shared when my friend was in Iraq for two combat rotations and while another close friend's husband was in combat in southern Afghanistan. Waiting for word amidst news reports of ongoing violence is nerve racking for those with loved ones in combat. Yet these calls and messages can be difficult for the combatants themselves. As mentioned in the first chapter, previous wars relied on postal mail as the primary technology for retaining contact with those 'back home,' which is no longer the case in the era of telecommunications. In an exclusive contract issued to AT&T in 2005,54 the Army Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) worked with AT&T to set up call centers throughout Iraq. Unlike Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), which provide laundry, cafeteria, and other services through their taxpayer funded contracts, AAFES allows deployed soldiers and marines to spend their own 54 See the brief announcement of a contract potentially worth $2.5bn with DoD on December 15, 2005 at: http://www.nvtimes.com/1995/12/15/business/companv-news-at-t-gets-contract-for-military- telephone-services.html. This came despite earlier complaints by soldiers and U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D- NJ), about inordinately high prices and the inability to use alternative phone cards in the AT&T system: http://monev.cnn.com/2005/Q3/07/news/international/iraq att/. In 2008, the S.19-.21 per minute calls through AT&T are now subject to limited competition from high speed internet and the non-profit Freedom Calls Foundation, winner of a Newman's Own award on September 5, 2008: http://www.armvtimes.com/monev/financial advice/military phones 091808w/ (all accessed July 12th, 2009). 136 combat pay abroad on whatever officially issued supplies they damage or loose, upgraded equipment, comfort foods, or electronic items they like. To that end, AAFES operates thousands of retail stores, fast food restaurants like Burger King, Subway, and Popeye's, as well as barber shops and other services at military installations around the world, with revenues of $9.7 billion in (FY) 2007.55 AAFES is the primary institutional means for bringing private-sector products and services to deployed combatants. As part of the Department of Defense, AAFES uses earnings to reinvest in their retail distribution system and to support morale, welfare, and recreation programs. AAFES stores can be seen in a number of the documentaries, as there is one on every major post. In Off to War, soldiers celebrate Thanksgiving at the base in Taji, Iraq. They find a Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut, and a 24 hour PX store selling non- alcoholic beer "the size of a Wal-Mart supercenter" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: disc 3, ep 7, 34:26). One of the most intimate and detailed portraits of life for combatants in Iraq, Off to War is a 10-episode series in which two filmmakers embedded for two years with members of the Arkansas National Guard as they prepared, trained, deployed to, and returned from Iraq. The series is unique in that filmmakers not only accompanied the soldiers for their entire active-duty mobilization, but also left a film crew in Clarksville, AR, the town in which the featured soldiers all lived. One of the individuals who is followed from beginning to end, Spc. Matt Hertlein, explains what calling home means for him: I'm on my way to go talk to my mom on the telephone. I haven't talked to her in about a week and a half, ish. [camera shows a long line of soldiers in full kit, with weapons, the front 8 people in line have plastic chairs] The line is always pretty 55 See: http://www.aafes.org/pa/historv/docs/JUN08.pdf. accessed July 12th, 2009. 137 long like this. I usually just tell her that everything's goin' pretty good, that we just work, and that's it. You know, I don't tell her about nobody dyin' or the rockets comin' in or any shit like that. You know, that way, she won't worry (Renaud and Renaud 2005: dl, ep 2: 40:30). As Hertlein explains, calling can be burdensome; there is a guilt factor in the interactive context of calling home, as combatants are rarely offered the time and privacy that routine calls home would require, never mind time enough for rest. On top of the emotional difficulty of calling someone who wants more attention, combatants also have to contend with long lines and extremely high prices. Hertlein indicates that he does not want to describe his circumstances to his mother, but nonetheless braves the line and the high prices in order to make the call home. The maintenance of connections back home is a challenge for combatants, one that enables their civilian relationships and tests them as well. Calling home, for Hertlein, represents something of an obligation, not as a chance to narrate or represent experiences, or to seek emotional or spiritual reassurance, but simply to report that he is still unharmed. Hertlein makes the call, but his primary pre-occupation before making it is not interpersonal communication, but avoiding worry on the part of his family. As mentioned above, Off to War has a unique production strategy, allowing viewers to witness both ends of the call, and is worth attending to at length: Ms. Suzanne Hertlein [to her daughter]: "This is a newsletter they gave us, it's about, what you should and shouldn't talk to em about. You're not supposed to ask em anything about what their missions are. [reading from sheet] 'Any soldier known to be calling with classified information will be dealt with in a court martial." [cut in film] [Hertlein calls home, he is in a plywood and laminate building with rows of AT&T pay phones, he is in battle armor, in a row of men on payphones. She is in their home with his sisters] [Hertlein dials, his mother answers] Ms. Hertlein: "Hello?" 138 Hertlein: "Hey, whaddaya doin'?" Ms. Hertlein: "Waitin' on you to call [voice partially cracking] Hertlein: "You're waitin' on me to call? [chuckling, slightly] Ms. Hertlein: "Are you alright?" Hertlein: "I'm alright, just, I dunno, I'm here... Tryin' to stay positive. Ha ha hu [laughs]." Ms. Hertlein: "We're not supposed to ask you questions. And you're not supposed to tell us stuff." Hertlein: "Well, trust me, I'll tell you. You know, but, just don't watch the news. We're all alright, we're all good." Ms. Hertlein: "Everybody sends their love" [wiping her face] Hertlein: "Sorry it's been so long since I got to call. I'll try to call again within a few days." Ms. Hertlein: "That's alright" [she is struggling not to cry] Hertlein: "Love you" Ms. Hertlein: "Alright, I love you" Hertlein: "I love you too Ms. Hertlein: "Bye" Hertlein: "Bye" Ms. Hertlein [crying]: "Be careful Matt!" Hertlein: "I will mom, quit cryin'. Bye, I love you." [he rubs his eyes] Ms. Hertlein: "Bye" [she hands the phone to her daughter, walking away dabbing her eyes] Ms. Hertlein: '"Quit cryin' mom" [in a, 'yeah right' voice] (Renaud and Renaud 2005: dl, ep 2 41:33) There is a great deal going on in this interaction, starting with the legalistic framework of encoded rules and hierarchies that the newsletter they received reproduces. By encouraging family members to think of their deployed loved ones as subject to judicial authority, the newsletter hails them as potential informants or accomplices, and warns them to be cautious. Hertlein calls his mother, she answers, and he nonchalantly asks what she is doing. Her answer, "Waitin' on you to call" confirms his depiction of her as worrying, waiting by the phone, concerned about the frequency of his calls home. He repeats her words, laughing. He has already told the camera that he does not like her to worry, and 139 his attempts to protect her by withholding information seem not to work very well. She, despite her profound concerns for her son's safety, tries to sound normal. She follows, asking if he is "alright." What it means to be alright in a war zone is doubtlessly a difficult question to answer. Answering the question at the most basic level, he affirms that he is unharmed; "I'm alright." But there is a great deal more to how he answers. He sidesteps any actual report on his life, or attempt to 'represent' his experiences, responding "I dunno, I'm here.. .Tryin' to stay positive" and laughs again. His response problematizes what 'alright' means. He does not know if he is alright, he is in Iraq, after all, where he is "trying to stay positive." This is revealing on two fronts. On one hand, it shows an ongoing interaction with himself, as he does not want to feel the depression, fear, and confusion that deployment to Iraq might arouse. It also offers his mother a small indication of how hard things are for him. In order to maintain his sense of self, he reports working on himself, pushing himself to be more positive. In this case, Hertlein shows his mother, ever so subtly, the emotional labor that is required for him to simply be in Iraq and "stay positive." His alternatives were likely even more unpleasant, given a legal obligation to be in that exact place for months to come. But that does not obscure the required emotional work that must be done simply to be there. Beyond the interaction he reports having with himself, he is also signaling to his mother that this is somewhat of a struggle, and is the closest he gets to indicating that his life is emotionally painful. Given that men from his company had been killed, he certainly had a lot to feel, even if he does not use his conversation with his family as an opportunity to do so. Between his care-taking through withholding 140 information, and her attempts not to show too much emotion, both limit their access to each other. Ms. Hertlein then offers her interpretation of the newsletter's message, "we're not supposed to ask you questions," going beyond the literal warning about classified information, generalizing the point. In cautioning family members about talking to deployed combatants, the support services of the Army seem to contribute to limiting the emotional and narrative depth of conversations, and in emphasizing the military's legal and disciplinary practices.56 But, as Spc. Hertlein and Ms. Hertlein show, it is the families and combatants who actually produce the transition from family member to warrior-male within their already existing relationships. By interacting with her son as someone she must not question, who can know about her life but not share his own, Ms. Hertlein participates in the production of an unequal relation with her son. Following powerful and commonplace signaling about what it means to go 'serve one's country,' she helps to limit the extent of their emotional or intellectual connection. In her position as the mother of a soldier, she is allowed to be concerned for him, to tell him about herself (although she does not, responding to his question with "waitin' on you to call"), but she is not allowed to ask him questions, and he "is not allowed to tell us stuff." 56 While these calls are supposed to remain private, the extent of NSA call interception makes the point moot. An ABC News story broke, in which a former NSA employee and an Army Reserve linguist who were tasked with listening to phone calls between the Middle East and the U.S. report that intercepted phone calls between U.S. military personnel and their loved ones were captured, recorded, and passed around. Apparently conversations featuring phone sex, in particular, were stored and enthusiastically traded by the personnel tasked with telecommunications surveillance: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5987804&page= 1. accessed November 1, 2008. 141 He, on the other hand, is most interested in limiting her emotional expressions, particularly her fear for his safety. She asks if he is alright, he replies that he is, "trust me, I'll tell you." But he does not tell her. As Hertlein had indicated before making the call, he tries not to talk about the conditions of his deployment and day-to-day life. Viewers of the documentary have been following him in that life, however, and are aware that his base is consistently attacked with mortars, while vehicles on patrol are fired upon and occasionally hit with improvised explosive devices (IEDs).57 In an effort to keep his mother calm, he gives a blanket reassurance, that he is fine, that he would in fact tell her if anything were wrong. Men in his company had been killed and injured in recent days, and he was keenly aware of that fact. Instead of reporting on his life, he pushes his mother not to watch the news. In not trusting his mother to be able to understand what his life is like, he circumscribes the possibility of her support. He seems eager to avoid her strong emotional expression, insisting "we're all good," immediately after encouraging her not to seek information about Iraq through the news. In not communicating his experience, and seeking to limit her television news consumption, Hertlein is calling upon his mother to be blissfully ignorant. Given the ubiquity of news updates in a 24 hour cable news cycle, this is a difficult position to maintain, especially when the fear of a dreaded knock on the door haunts the everyday lives of those with loved ones who are deployed. 57 See the scene preceding this one, (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d 1, ep 2: 39:31). Hertlein and his best friend are given a 'show and tell' by Sergeant Short, looking at bullet holes and blast damage from an IED on one of their company's Humvees. The vehicle's crew suffered injuries and two deaths in the attack, and Short uses the opportunity to criticize the two young men for not taking their duties seriously enough, saying: "I hope it gets real for you guys." 142 She responds with a non-specific "everybody sends their love" as she struggles not to cry, to which he responds as though it was his own calling frequency that upset her, and apologizes, promising to call again soon. They offer one another their love, say good bye, and then she cries out "be careful Matt!" tears running down her face. Her concern is desperate in her voice, and how can her son respond? He laughs, and says that he will, and tells her not to cry. Wiping his own eyes, he says goodbye again. They are both in emotionally difficult situations. Spc. Hertlein is at war, trying to stay alive while people he knows have died, and whenever he calls home his mother cries. Ms. Hertlein, on the other hand, wants her son home and safe, can do nothing to bring that about, and is afraid to ask her son any questions about his life. An enormous gulf of experiences is opened as their communication is limited through each of their actions. Spc. Hertlein does not tell his mother what is going on for him, reassures her that he would, encourages her not to watch the news, and not to cry. What does he expect of her then? What space for action is the mother of a soldier permitted? He leaves her very little. He assures her of his love, to which she can simply say "bye" and walk away muttering to herself. In this interaction, Hertlein cuts off his own opportunity to narrate his experience while also cutting off the potential support that might come in making his life communicable. Of course, he could be right, and sharing the details of living in a trailer park surrounded by walls and guard towers which is under nightly mortar fire might terrify his mother. It might terrify everyone who knows him. Rather than taking the risks involved in letting down a certain mode of masculine stoicism and telling someone about his life (as well as the risks of causing heartbreak amongst those who love him), he re- 143 affirms the warrior-male mask. He tries "to stay positive" by avoiding describing what his life is like, and by pushing his mother not to cry or worry. Hertlein ends up spending a great deal of energy to hold back his tears and to avoid talking about the details of his deployment. Instead of understanding this emotional outcome as inevitable, I see Hertlein and his mother working hard, and effectively, to produce it. The work of establishing our identities takes place within our relationships with one another. Some relationships, like mother-son, are lifelong, while others, like colleague, fellow passenger, boss, or commander, are more temporary. In all relationships, the interactive processes of describing ourselves, arguing for what we want or believe, and invoking outside authorities are all at work. 'Selves' are accomplishments of narrative, memory, and interaction with others. As we saw earlier, in the discussion of play, particular interactions may call upon culturally shared discursive resources. This happens when using a historically loaded insult, as we saw in the rap battle, when invoking violent and oppressive relations to construct our relationship with others. Stereotyping ourselves or others by explaining aspects of the self in terms of the properties of marginalized or dominant groups reproduces those stereotypes, but it also accomplishes shifts in interpersonal relations. In the next section, I turn to everyday talk amongst deployed warriors, looking at how identities are produced and sustained. Some identities, like being an officer in the U.S. military, carry privileges and power into every interaction. Attending to these self- crafting practices also indicates how hierarchies are produced in the process. 144 5: Banter and debate While play, prayer, and phone contacts with loved ones are all important arenas of identity achievement for deployed combatants, the everyday banter of young men goofing around, complaining, and arguing fills their time as they go about their missions and downtimes. This everyday talk takes place in an interactive context that is far more nebulous than the performance and witnessing of stunts and dancing, the competition of hip hop battles, or the highly ritualized speech acts that constitute prayer. Unlike conversations with loved ones back home which require expensive and frustrating technological mediations, everyday talk can and does take place everywhere. Soldiers talk while eating, waiting in line, reading newspapers, while on patrol, watching TV, before bed, etc. As one soldier said in an interview about the day he lost his legs in an IED explosion, "We'd always sit there and talk and bullshit, and, you know, make fun of everything we're doing. You know, just, trying to keep a sense of humor so we can keep our mind off, being scared" (Alpert and Kent 2007: 4:39). A BBC4 Reporter talked to an Army platoon living under a bridge in order to guard it, and one soldier described the role of conversation in survival: Sean Langan, BBC: "I'm just wondering what it's like, the daily, you know, you know, putting up with this every day." Soldier named Eric: (smiling) "You just handle it with stride. You know, every day is a new day. You just keep going. You know. You talk about family, talk 145 about things that you used to do back home. And, uh, you pretty much just take it with a grain of salt." (Langan 2004: 1:16:40)58 Here the soldier explicitly articulates the role of talk in everyday life. For soldiers, as for any human community, conversational interaction allows individual expression, storytelling, and other identity-grounding dialogic practices. Through such talk, individual personalities are reproduced and intersubjectively recognized, as when combatants share stories from home, describing themselves and the contexts from which they come. These conversations are the clearest contexts for soldiers (and us, as mediated witnesses) to think of each combatant as a free individual. As emphasized in Chapter Two, people always 'speak into' the social contexts in which they find themselves. Individuals are able to communicate with one another based on shared concepts, experiences, and contextual references. Despite pre-existing intersubjectively shared discourses, wide-ranging conversations are probably the loosest interactive situations people participate in. This does not mean, however, that they are without disciplinary sanctions. The use of swear words, racial epithets, or highly sexual language are considered inappropriate for some contexts, particularly when hierarchies established by deference are involved. 58 This same unit was hit with a truck bomb less than a week later. Ironically, the filmmaker had a meeting with the same insurgent cell that detonated the bomb, allowing him to see their preparations for the attack which killed several of the bridge guarding platoon members. Such incidents and coincidences illustrate the ethical dilemmas of being in a warzone. U.S. Military officials have criticized journalists for protecting sources known to be planning attacks on Americans, strongly preferring embedded reporters. Embedded reporters themselves might be criticized for failing to warn Iraqi civilians of planned military actions in their neighborhoods, by the same logic. Any departure from a strictly one-sided depiction of conflict seems to imply such dilemmas. 146 As in civilian society, conversation with strangers can be relatively predictable, depending on the context in which the interaction takes place. As Goffrnan observed (1959), the ways that different individuals present themselves to others depend on what they are doing, the kind of relationships they have, and where the interaction occurs. Much of the time such self-presentation is oriented towards the expectations of others, a form of accountability in the EM sense. The tendency of formal interactions to become routinized in particular contexts extends to the military, where relations between officers and enlisted combatants are ritualized and predictable. There is, however, nothing 'causing' such interactions to take the form they do, other than the active participation of those involved. Soldiers are 'free' to say anything at all to superior officers, in terms of necessary causation, yet very few tell officers what they think of them or their missions, due to the anticipated response. Self-policing is part and parcel of reproducing any hierarchy, and in the military, shared expectations are generated through repetition and public punishments for rule breaking. As Foucault (1995) noted in his theorization of the development of the penitentiary system in France, disciplinary and surveillance practices are maintained through institutional arrangements as well as by calling on the subjects of power relations to police themselves. In the context of the occupation of Iraq, combatants hold themselves and each other accountable to the regulations issued by the command hierarchy. Just as Spc. Matt Hertlein and his mother Suzanne Hertlein's conversation illustrated above, the regulations need not be specifically presented to have effects on conversational life. Similarly, a BBC journalist talking with a wounded soldier in the military hospital in Baghdad recorded an example of self-monitoring: 147 Injured soldier: "A lot of injured, a lot of injured. But not as much being reported on as the soldiers being killed. The public themselves, ya know, I'm saying, I don't want to get myself in trouble here, but I do believe a little bit are being misled." (Blackhawk helicopter circling loudly overhead) Langan: "Is that more people arriving?" Soldier: "Yes, I believe so."(Langan 2004: 49:00) In 'not wanting to get myself in trouble,' the soldier lying in his hospital bed references the rules regarding contact with the media, but goes ahead and continues his point anyway. Small, everyday interactions like this one reproduce and circulate rules, interpellating individuals as law-bound subjects (Althusser 1971), and maintaining the relations and activities that sustain the army as a linguistic and practical construction. In everyday conversation amongst war-fighters, certain themes can initiate official and bureaucratic sanctions. These disciplinary techniques require the active work of combatants to surveil one another, and are highly reliant on the non-commissioned officers (NCOs)59 who live amongst and work with privates and specialists. NCOs, unlike officers, don't have to be saluted off-duty, nor do combatants need to be as cautious around them in terms of language. Because lower ranked soldiers are more comfortable around NCOs, they are freer and more brazen in their speech, pushing NCO's into a difficult choice: to permit behavior that, if detected by officers, could lead to penalties for all; or to play ventriloquist for the official rules and procedures, in the process producing and sustaining military hierarchies as effects. Turning to one such interaction, one can see this process in action. The soldiers are sitting in their small bungalow on a base which 59 An NCO is a soldier, marine, or airwoman/man who has risen to the rank of Sergeant, or a Petty Officer in the Navy. NCOs are enlisted service members who have been given leadership positions by an officer. In terms of pay grade, an NCO is an E4- E6, while a senior NCO is E7-E9. See the discussion of basic unit organization at the beginning of the next chapter, for more information. 148 was once a resort for Baath Party members on the outskirts of al Fallujah. One of the soldiers, Sgt. Blyler, is looking through mail that has just arrived: Sgt. John Blyler: "Here's a good one, here's a good one, listen!" Staff Sgt. Chris Corcione, 1st Squad Leader: "Go ahead" Blyler: "Dear Private Morales and Sergeant Blyler. My name is Spencer Stuart, and I am fourteen years old. I like to watch Fox News, and my teacher, Tim, does not, because he is a loser. I especially enjoy watching Bill O'Reilly, once again, my teacher, Tim, does not [laughing as he reads], I support the war in Iraq-" Pfc. Turner: "I dunno-" Off camera: "here we go!" Turner: "-Republicans are just losers, Sgt., him, and him, [gesturing to men in the same tiny room, four beds in a row] I dunno, Sgt. Forbes and I, we kinda see eye to eye on politics a lot of times." Corcione: "I like watching Bill O'Reilly, he's a good dude." Turner: "Yeah you like watching Rush Limbaugh too." Corcione: "I don't think, I mean, really, what're they even so wrong, I mean." Turner: "Yeah, yeah, all these fuckin' right-wing... yeah, the Republican Party is like KFC, it's all right wings and assholes-" Soldier, [walking out of the room carrying mail for others]: "And what the fuck did the Democrat Party ever do for the fuckin' Americans four years ago? Absolutely a-fucking-nothing." Turner: "Four years ago, let me see-" Soldier: "-At least Bush got off his ass and fuckin' did something, and fuckin' Clinton, sittin' there bullshitting about war, when he didn't even-" Turner: "-Clinton was out of fuckin' office, jeez. He was a lame duck this time four years ago." Corcione: "Hey, everybody, look. We're not gonna talk about fuckin' politics. Ya'll were on camera, and you're bashin' the fuckin' administration, on camera-" Off camera: "-Who's bashing?"- Corcione: "-That's something that's not done on camera. Alright? [someone says something unintelligible] I do not care, alright." Turner: [nodding, face unexpressive] "Nah, that's cool" (Scott and Olds 2006: 34:35- 35:47) In this exchange, Corcione is a participant in the conversation about the young man's letter and American right-wing media personalities, but he is also the ranking soldier in the room. He exercises that authority by acting as facilitator of the conversation, "go ahead" and he 'pulls rank' with the performative utterance "we're not gonna talk about" 149 politics, insisting that "that's not done on camera." His authority is interactively produced by his assertion and demonstration of it. Notice that in this interaction, the explicitly stated reason for a problem is not the conversation, but its recording. This move by Corcione preserves the ideal of free speech while prohibiting its exercise under the particular conditions of that moment. He does not reprimand the other men for "bashing the ... administration" per se, but instead interrupts the conversation because it is being recorded. By shifting the justification for his intervention, he might be trying to preempt rights-based claims by soldiers, or his use of "that's something that's not done" might be an indirect appeal to outside authority. In this interaction, the possible interpretations for the way he phrased his intervention are multiple, and lacking any participant's challenge, remain so. Corcione's authority is produced by the declarative "we're not gonna talk about [...] politics," and when it is tested by a soldier's responses, he ignores the substance of the objection, "who's bashing?" and a subsequent interruption, stating "I do not care, alright." In his intervention in the conversation with a declarative statement, and subsequent refusal to engage in the argument as an equal participant, Corcione assumes a position of authority vis-a-vis the other soldiers in his room. This authority functions as part of a chain of command, and had soldiers disregarded his statements, he could have sought higher authorities, producing the sort of 'interaction chains'60 that lend 'social structures' their apparent stability and empirical concreteness (Hilbert 1990). 60 This phrase comes from Collins, whose attempts to link micro-structure with macro-structure recall Giddens and Bourdieu's similar efforts. While the concept of linked interactions as a 'chain' is useful, I would argue that Hilbert's (1990) ethnomethodological version is more intellectually consistent and analytically useful. 150 If the soldiers had not backed down in the cited conversation, Corcione could have followed the procedures, which both he and the soldiers have had explained to them repeatedly since they entered basic training. Failure to observe command authority could have been followed by Corcione bringing the matter to 1st Lieutenant Bacik, his Platoon commander, to reprimand the enlisted soldiers. If that interaction led to further refusal to obey a direct order, a series of judicial rituals and bureaucratic language games could have been set in motion, leading to demotions in rank, loss of pay, and potentially, time in a military prison facility.61 None of that is stated in this particular interaction, and a strict ethnomethodological analysis (Woolgar 1981) would require us to discount such "background knowledge," possibly losing analytically important context (Hilbert 1990: 802). In the case of military culture, however, such knowledge is part of the shared "repertoire of concepts" which constitutes the "resources people have for identifying and describing selves and persons in a specific culture" (Harre and Gillett 1994: 99). It is part of the knowledge that any participant in this interaction would have, and thereby constitutes a possible set of actions that take place within military jurisdictions. While Corcione's authority is deployed conversationally, recognizable in ways deriving from the empirical interaction cited above, it is also based on the threat of an entirely possible sequence of actions that instantiate 'command authority' as an interactional and discursive practice with serious consequences. Military authority is constituted in such a way that legal accountability to orders issued through the hierarchy is a trump card, its 61 Prisons are constituted by a language game which is nearly 'total,' in Goffman's sense (1961), the sites of a myriad of inspections, searches, and data accumulation (Foucault 1995), which are in turn analyzed by professionals who cross-tabulate these data and produce the conceptual object 'the American military prison system' as a discrete object, using the methods discussed by Hilbert (1990), Lynch (1997), and Latour (2005b, 2008). Such a view displaces prisons as objects or structures, instead of showing them as interactive accomplishments, with contributions from bars, walls, handcuffs, and video-surveillance. 151 use remains a possible action within any particular set of activities involving rank differential. In Occupation Dreamland, the conversation is broken up by an interview with Pfc. Turner, who talks to the camera about Halliburton and corporate profits, saying things that likely would have made Corcione unhappy, had he been present. But it cuts back to Corcione, shortly after the interaction cited above, who explains to the camera: Corcione: "I, I know everybody's got their political views and uh, some of em are pretty extreme, but, uh, bottom line is we 'follow the orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed above us' [verbally expressed as if cited], I have, and I have to enforce that." (Scott and Olds 2006: 36:25) In his explanation of why he intervened in the conversation, he appeals to the chain of command, but his tone of voice is indicative. He 'rattles off a statement that derives from the oath of enlistment that every enlisted soldier makes in a performative ceremony officiating the beginning of military service. By drawing on this symbolically important oath, Corcione links his actions in the bungalow to the swearing in of soldiers, reproducing and reminding them of their accountability to the military hierarchy that the oath explicitly affirms. His self-conception is expressed in relation to a structure of authority, and in reproducing it, he fashions himself as a legally and normatively bound part of a larger whole. Corcione's declarations in the bungalow affect the conversation, but they are also part of the constitution of military authority and its subjects. At the 62 "I, , do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God" [Italics added] (Title 10, US Code; effective 5 October 1962), see: http://www.historv.armv.mil/faq/oaths.htm; accessed November 3, 2008. 152 moment of performativity, individual identity, official hierarchy, and interpersonal dominance are all implicated and reproduced. Such disciplinary maneuvers are not without resistance. In the particular interaction above, soldiers 'talk back' to Corcione, challenging his description of their behavior as "bashing the .. .administration," one asks "who's bashing?" Ethnomethodologists argue that descriptions are always problematic (Woolgar 1981), and in this case, it is Corcione's authority that ends the debate. Thus, Corcione's description is constructed, objected to, and defended, in a sequence that produces the local effect of affirming his ability to interrupt and shape the flow of conversation. Though not directly depicted in the film, Off to War also shows the aftermath of a disciplinary action against soldiers who were speaking too freely on camera. In this clip, Hertlein is in his trailer in Iraq, talking directly to the camera, and therefore, the watching public. He has just returned from a short rest and relaxation (R&R) trip home to Arkansas. Photos of him with friends from home and posters of women in swimsuits are on the wall behind him. He is loading bullets into a clip and says: Hertlein: "We're a little pissed off. We had a big, uh, meeting the other day about what we could and couldn't say on film. Pretty much, they told us not to say that we didn't like it over here. Nobody likes it. I mean nobody. And then they're gonna tell us that we can't talk about [miming between himself and the camera] our feelings about this place, you know, to the camera or to whomever. Uh, that's, I don't like that, that's bullshit, I think. But, whatever, I'm just a... [touching his 'Specialist' rank insignia on his collar] I'm talking above my pay grade" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d3 ep 7: 26:53). Hertlein's statement can be seen in two distinct lights. In the first, this can be seen as an example of resistance to authority. Hertlein has been given instructions about what he can and cannot say on camera, and then proceeds to ignore those instructions by appealing to 153 a wider community for whom he speaks, "nobody likes it. I mean nobody." By generalizing his experience, he reduces his own culpability for disobeying orders. In a second light, however, this utterance can be seen as an example of 'blowing off steam.' Hertlein complains about the regulation, expressing his frustration by saying "we're a little pissed off' and "that's bullshit." He sarcastically notes that he is only a Specialist, and that "I'm talking above my pay grade," reproducing the rank distinctions that the army hierarchy is composed of. His protests are made in a sincere tone of voice, while his efforts to distance himself from his own position are sarcastic. Yet the overall effect is to register his private frustrations with policy without confronting those authority figures who have issued it. His expression of frustration assumes a freedom of speech to share "our feelings about this place," which it also seeks to defend. As a form of resistance, ignoring certain orders and privately complaining are endemic in the military. In small ways, everyday, some soldiers avoid doing what they are told to do, steer clear of those known to enforce rules enthusiastically, and grumble and complain amongst themselves. This private grumbling takes place in what Goffman called a "bounded region" (1959: 106) such as Hertlein's room, one set aside from casual observation by unintended audiences. As such, these interactional contexts allow for soldiers to maintain a self-image and a recognizable social identity amongst other soldiers that is not in complete conformance with military rules and formalities. Goffman discussed the various ways that people present themselves as 'masks,' an analogy that leads some to assume that he thought there was a 'real face' behind the masks. In distinction, I would argue such public/private contextual performances reveal the dialogic nature of expression. In some contexts, a persona of griping, frustrated, anti- 154 authoritarianism is entirely possible, and may serve as a relief valve for the reactions soldiers must suppress in more formal and hierarchical speech settings. That different contexts permit different types of expressions should not be surprising, nor should one be considered a priori as sincere or authentic. In many situations of social life, people are expected to discipline their own reactions, to work upon themselves and maintain an 'appropriate' demeanor. In the military this is more formalized, given the potential consequences, but is not unique in this regard. One aspect of accountability to the rituals of deference to military hierarchy is the presumption of a split or divided self, when it comes to questions of politics. In everyday civilian life, people are potentially accountable to the charge of hypocrisy for articulating a set of ethical or political positions that contradict the effects of the ways that they consume, work, or interact. In the military, this disjunction is quite commonplace, with combatants free to believe and think what they like, so long as they perform their duties without hesitation. This idea is articulated frequently in conjunction with statements that contradict official military descriptions of events or criticisms of decisions by the President and other senior members of the chain of command. Below, Corcione's Lieutenant expresses this logic clearly: 1st Lieutenant Matt Batik, Platoon leader: "I have the news, sitting right over there, I can watch it and be like, hey, maybe this is bullshit, but, and I can have that opinion, but I still have to, still gonna do my job to the best of my ability-" Soldier: "-right-" Batik: "-Over here. So, you know, you don't have to agree, necessarily, with what's goin' on Soldier: "-yeah-" Batik: -"It just so happens, that I, do" (Scott and Olds 2006: 36:39 ). 155 Bacik's explanation indicates no concern with the consistency of political positions and everyday activities. He reports that he has access to information in the form of television news, and he can have an "opinion" that contradicts official pronouncements but, he says "I still have to, still gonna do my job to be best of my ability." Notice that in mid- utterance he shifts from a description of self linked to institutional compulsion to one of voluntarism and self-improvement. In the first sense, disagreement with policy can be stated, while compulsion requires the performance of duties. In the second sense, the soldier is still accountable to duty, but as a voluntary linking of the self with the job, "to the best of my ability." He argues that soldiers don't "have to agree.. .with what's goin' on" to do their jobs. Rounding out his argument, Bacik asserts that despite his familiarity with the news and the possibility of dissent it seems to imply, he nonetheless agrees with his mission. The construction of personal accountability that Bacik accomplishes in the extract above emphasizes that performance of duties does not require any subjective or 'internal' assent. By implication, the work of soldiering is a bodily activity, and not a normative one. To be a combatant is thus to conduct a set of activities as demanded by those in the hierarchy of authority, but it does not implicate the internal life of the combatant in those activities. The upshot of this construction is the accomplishment of an inner self which is free while the bodily and verbally active self, the being in the world, is unfree. Bacik argues that the unfree active self is, in fact, free, since it is a voluntary push towards self- discipline and personal growth that leads him to submit to authority, and to "do my job to the best of my ability." This is an operation similar to that found in a discursive study of 156 Israeli combat soldiers, who positioned themselves within frameworks of both self- actualization, as well as pursuing 'thrill' (Sasson-Levy 2007). In the last vignette of this chapter, an extended conversation offers a fuller look at how the free internal self and unfree performative self are produced. In this interaction, three soldiers are sitting or laying down on their bunks inside their small bungalow on the Forward Operating Base, which was once a Baath Party retreat center. Sgt. Luis Pacheco, [alpha company medic]: "I think we're makin' more enemies than anybody, you know? Yeah, we're, we're, we're building a government, you know, we're helping out, but we're, we're, along the lines, we're, we're pissing off a lot of people, you know" Spc. Wood, [laying on his bunk]: "I mean, I, I can totally see too, if, if a, you put me in some of these guys' shoes, the way, the way Americans are and the way Americans think, I can totally see how these guys don't like, you know, don't like us." Pfc. Benjamin Vargas: "Yeah, you gotta question things. But, but, huh [small laugh] bottom line we gotta do what we're told, and they know that [his eyes indicating Pacheco and Wood] and, and they can't say that they're substandard soldiers, because, even with that doubt on their mind, they go out every day and put their life on the line, just like anybody else." Wood: "Yeah, Sure, you, you do what you're told but, you don't have to, believe what somebody else believes. You don't have-" Vargas: "-Yeah, exactly-" Wood: "-Nobody can force you to-" Vargas: "-That's what we're fighting for, is that freedom to believe what you're gonna believe" Wood: "Is that really what we're fighting for?" Vargas: "Yeah, uh, hmm-" Wood: "-I don't think so" Pacheco: "Everybody has their own reasons. And, uh-" Vargas: "I mean that's, I mean, to keep my peace of mind, hey that's what I, you know, that's what I have in place in my mind, you know what I'm saying, cuz I got, I got a long, long, long ways to go, I got almost four more years to go, and if I start thinking the wrong things, then, I'm not gonna make it" (Scott and Olds 2006: 1:07:25). Pacheco and Wood, in answering the filmmaker's questions, criticize various aspects of how their missions are conducted. It is important to note the way that Vargas describes 157 Wood and Pacheco as soldiers who "go out every day and put their life on the line," using this argument as an apologia for their expressed opinions of the effects of their missions. Vargas interprets their concerns as being disloyal, requiring him to 'vouch' for the fact that they are not "substandard soldiers" despite their belief that the occupation of Iraq as they are conducting it is "making more enemies" and is why Iraqis "don't like us." Wood responds with the same strategy that Bacik used earlier, appealing to an inner space of dissent. Vargas turns this rhetoric around, arguing "that's what we're fighting for." In the construction of freedom achieved in this interaction, it is the right not to agree with the things one does. This entirely subjectivist, internal, and politically mute articulation of freedom is then held up as the normative objective of the occupation of Iraq. Wood, not questioning the construction of freedom, instead questions whether that is truly "what we're fighting for." Pacheco interjects that "everyone has their own reasons" for fighting, a position that, if accepted as a fact, would come as a great shock to those scholars who see the military as an instrument for achieving rational, collective state interests. Pacheco's attitude undermines the idea of a unified national army, or national interest, instead asserting an individualist and subjectivist basis for war-fighting, implying that political and strategic objectives are irrelevant to the goal-oriented conduct of combatants. If every combatant is fighting his or her private war, for private reasons, it is no wonder that the conduct of so many soldiers and marines has undermined the political goals of the occupation. Vargas' final response is the most telling, however. He states that "to keep my peace of mind... that's what I have in place in my mind... I got almost four more years to go, and if I start thinking the wrong things, then, I'm not gonna make it." Here internal 158 subjective freedom is colonized by the necessities of outward action. Because he has over four years of military service remaining, he subjects himself to a disciplinary procedure whereby he polices his thoughts, worried that "thinking the wrong things" will make his remaining military service more difficult to survive. In this way, the private freedom that Wood, Pacheco, and Bacik all assume is collapsed into the practical necessity of continuing service. For Vargas, such an inner freedom is a luxury that his active self cannot afford. In order to survive, he produces himself as a willing soldier, subjecting his own thoughts and opinions to the disciplinary demands of maintaining the combat soldier identity. To preserve his sanity and avoid the doubled consciousness the others articulate, Vargas fashions himself in such a way that permits neither freedom of opinion, nor action. 6: Combatants and self-crafting In this chapter, we are witnesses to a diverse collection of practices that enable the production and accountability of selves in interactions between combatants. In playful, leisure-time activities, soldiers and marines can take on recognizable identities that are distinct from their rank or assigned duties. Machine gunners dance, mechanics verbally compete in rap battles, infantrymen do flips on bicycles, all while their friends record their antics. In the context of such activities, individual expression is recognized as such. But these activities also take place in a culturally laden environment of masculine competition and hierarchy. While off-duty combatants are free to play, their performances are subject to gendered evaluations by others, a type of accountability that can have status and hazing implications. 159 In prayer, the indeterminacy of discursive resources is visible, indicating a variety of possible relationships between combatant's selves and their god(s). 'God on our side' and 'God the judge of our acts' are two of the many possible human-divine relations enabled by Christian teachings. Whether god is hailed as a partisan co-warrior, a comforting ritual presence, or a potentially angry judge depends not on the content of Christian discourse, but on the narrative accomplishment of particular people in particular contexts. The distinctively patriarchal content of their prayers is worth noting, since in both military and Christian contexts, there is an image of an authoritative masculine figure who can bestow meaning and personal pride in those who pledge themselves to service. Phone calls home are also situations where individual personalities are presumed and recognized. In contacting loved ones, soldiers and marines are hailed into their pre- deployment relationships, although the contextual conditions of their calls can be challenging. Combatants in their helmets, body armor, and carrying their weapons, stand in long lines while hoping that no rockets or mortars land nearby. When they reach the front of the line, each calls those whom are most worried about her or his safety. In doing so, each becomes a son, daughter, lover, or friend, once the phone rings. The call home reassures loved ones of the combatant's health, but may not enable communication of feelings or descriptions of life, depending on how combatants and their loved ones accomplish their relationships across the gulf of divergent experiences. Gendered patterns of care-taking can affect this process, as combatants seek to remain stoic, and their family members try their best not to worry, cry, or feel too much. 160 Finally, in everyday talk, we see combatants as speaking and thinking individuals, but also as subjects accountable to the interpersonal hierarchies that produce institutional continuity and uniformity. While military authority is exercised in interaction, it is also based on disciplinary procedures that are always available. The presence of telecommunications, command staffs, and personnel procedures allow those with higher rank to summon 'higher' authorities in the event that they need 'back up.' Sometimes that might mean calling in an airstrike, other times it might mean filing charges against a subordinate, but the technical and interactive mechanisms linking local authorities to bureaucratic authorities remains the same. In each of these social situations, we see the production of socially-recognizable selves through individual expression and activity within particular relationships. But within relations, we also see the constitution and reproduction of historically available models of domination. Individual social personalities as well as the hierarchies of masculinity and formal authority are accomplished in relational interactions. When we foreground the self-production of combatants, the tensions between agency and structure do not play out as classical micro-sociology or liberal political theory might lead us to assume. Instead, we see combatants conversationally fashioning themselves (and each other) as split subjects, free 'inside,' while duty-bound 'outside.' Their descriptions of themselves, and the accountability practices they engage in, render an internal space of free-thought as a discursively available resource. By retreating to that private space, at least rhetorically, some combatants find it a base from which to engage in political arguments or to question or gripe about seemingly ideological orders. 161 Rather than a fundamentally essential parsing of reality, these rhetorically split selves are accomplished as solutions to problems arising from liberal normative self- images and highly hierarchical contexts. Some combatants do not seem to produce such split selves; instead disciplining their 'internal' lives according to the needs of the duties they are assigned. On some occasions, this split may be associated with physical, emotional, and/or spiritual symptoms of disease. On rare occasions, the split might be rejected, not in favor of duty, but of ethical self-image. The refusal to fight, 'conscientious objection,' is rarely invoked, but always met with vigorous official and unofficial sanctions. From an interactional perspective, we cannot presume what sort of selves individuals might produce, but it does become possible to ask what that production entails, and with what effects. Seeing some of the various and multilayered strategies of interaction that deployed soldiers and marines use to make sense of themselves, each other, and their relationships, it is also clear that such interactions do not, in and of themselves, explain how soldiers make themselves available as instruments of national power. This chapter did illustrate many of the techniques of self-description and relationship production that are at work among deployed combatants. The next chapter will turn to the accomplishment of the combat unit through interaction, looking at how hierarchy chains, local knowledge, and a great deal of conversation work together to sustain 'the unit' as an object. CHAPTER FOUR: THE COORDINATION OF BODIES AND THINGS IN COMBAT The previous chapter explicated those practices which produce and affirm a combatant's sense of him or herself as an autonomous individual with particular relational attributes. Looking at transcripts of conversations recorded while deployed, we saw the ways that a stoic-warrior masculinity was produced through the telephone interaction of a soldier and his mother. In other interactions, the focus was on the ways that 'pulling rank' in a conversation involves the local exercise of authority as well as the invoking/ threatening of a chain of procedures leading to institutional consequences. In this chapter, the analytical focus shifts, and instead of accounting for the production of individual social identities, the goal is to explicate those practices that yield a 'sense of self less tied to the individual decision-making subject of enlightenment political philosophy. This is also the point in the dissertation where I turn directly to the conversational basis of combat maneuvers. Though individual human beings remain the locus of activity, the functional and epistemic 'unit' of military tactics is not an "Army of One," as the advertising campaign for the U.S. Army between 2001-2006 might have 162 163 implied,63 but instead the 'maneuver element' of a platoon, a vehicle crew, a convoy detail, or some other assemblage of people, weapons, vehicles, and communications equipment. In this chapter, complex "assemblages" (Latour 2005a: 14) are the units of analysis, and the focus is on how they are achieved as practical accomplishments of verbal and physical coordination. In focusing on how assemblages are made to cohere, a number of interactions between U.S. forces, Iraqi people, land, water, and animals will be analyzed. Though still looking to interactions to try to understand the processes of their production, this chapter looks into non-verbal interactions, often mediated through weapons and machinery. As conglomerates of bodies, vehicles, weapons, and vast amounts of fuel, the effects of U.S. combatants on their wider "naturecultures" (Haraway 2003) as they move through the world will also be highlighted. Taking an STS-inspired look at interactions between humans and non-humans does not mean discarding a focus on processes of conversational productivity, but it does require a greater degree of contextualization, and an occasionally wider focus. Generally, combat teams are smallest when they are in vehicles, with four or five (occasionally six) soldiers per Humvee. The smallest unit of army tactics and organization is the squad, consisting of four to ten soldiers, and commanded by a 63 The announcement of the change from the 20-year 'Be all that you can be" advertising slogan to "Army of One" in 2001 can be accessed at: http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=866; while the subsequent switch to "Army Strong" appeared in an article that also noted the new, lower, entrance standards issued in 2006 to help recruiters meet their goals at a time of falling volunteer numbers: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/09/national/main2074099.shtml. In November, 2008, the Army began its first advertising campaign directly addressing life in Iraq, allowing viewers of the army website to ask questions to soldiers stationed in Iraq through a web-cast: http://www.nytimes.eom/2008/l 1/11/business/media/l ladco.html. all accessed on March 12, 2009. 164 Sergeant or Staff Sergeant. Squads often bunk together, and spend almost all of their time with each other. Squad leaders report to Lieutenants, who each command a platoon consisting of three to four squads. Each platoon commander answers to a Captain, in charge of the company, which itself consists of three to four platoons. Following a fractal-like pattern all the way up the chain of command, each unit is embedded inside a larger whole until one arrives at the unified combat command for the region. As of December 17, 2008, the 'Unified Command Plan' divides the earth into six commands, each with its own theater commander. These consist of: NorthCom (U.S.A., Canada, Mexico), SouthCom (the Caribbean and South America), AfriCom (Africa except for Egypt), EuCom (Greenland, Europe, and Russia), PaCom (the Pacific and Indian Oceans, India, China, Australia, and neighboring countries) and CentCom (Egypt, the Levant, Persian Gulf States, and Central Asian republics).64 Each region of the world has an area commander who reports directly to the Secretary of Defense, and through her or him, to the President.65 However, for the purposes of combat coordination, soldiers 64 For a map of the world divided into military commands, see: http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/ixnifiedcommand/images/unified-command_world-map.ipg. accessed January 9, 2009. Until the 2002 creation of NorthCom, U.S. military forces had never been officially tasked with 'homeland security,' but as of October 1, 2008, there is now a brigade combat team available "as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters," practicing with a variety of non-lethal weapons for crowd control, and officially tasked as a federal response force in the event of a nuclear or chemical attack. See: http://www.armvtimes.com/news/2008/09/army homeland_090708w/, accessed December 5, 2008. 65 Technically the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff (JCS) is the highest ranking military officer in the U.S. The Chairmen of the JCS, along with the individual Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, are all appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and report to the Secretary of Defense. However they do not have any operational command of forces, instead functioning as the bureaucratic, planning, and logistical center of the sprawling U.S. military, which operates more than 700 facilities in other nations, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2003/basestructure2003.pdf. accessed January 14, 2009. The DoD has a total combat strength, as of December, 2007, of 1,368,226, of whom 288,627 are deployed in foreign countries, http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/history/hst0712.pdf. accessed January 14, 2009. 165 and marines rarely have any contact with anyone above their company commander, and then only if they work for him (or for non-combat units, her66) or are in serious trouble. The day-to-day work of occupying a country, patrolling, responding to attacks, raiding the homes of suspected insurgents, etc., requires an incredible amount of communicative interaction to accomplish. Unlike the formal organizational charts that illustrate a top-down direction of authority, the flow of information which allows these groups to function as units is bottom-up. A superior officer may need to be radioed, in order to have him or her call in an airstrike, but the location to be destroyed, as well as a description of what people, activity, or things merits a large explosion, comes from tactical level soldiers and marines. As this chapter argues, the production and dissemination of descriptions is what allows groups to become units, and organizes the interactions that U.S. combatants have with Iraqis, animals, and the world around them. In Chapter Two, the idea of language as a set of tools for coordinating social activity was described in theoretical terms. In this chapter, transcripts will be analyzed to show precisely how combatants coordinate their movements, the gathering and dispersal of information, and how weapons and vehicles function as prosthetic extensions of their bodies, enabling certain types of activity. The chapter begins with a description of how the movement of units is produced through interactive accomplishments. The second section describes several types of activities engaged in by U.S. combatants in Iraq, while 66 Officially speaking, the Army and Marine Corps do not allow women to participate in combat missions. However, in November, 2008, Capt. Katherine Robertson, U.S. Army, took over a support company with the armored cavalry, after previously leading logistics supply for the company. Her prior job, like her current one, is not technically a combat role. However running convoys to outlying bases and positions is among the most dangerous missions in Iraq, so logical consistency, if not the letter of the regulation, is being ignored. See the press release: http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com content&task=view&id=23656&Itemid= 128. accessed January 9, 2009. 166 the third looks at the process of identifying and targeting enemies. The chapter concludes with a look at activities of U.S. forces from the perspective non-human animals, land and water, via the recordings of combatants themselves, followed by a brief set of concluding observations. 1: Moving through space: coordinating combatants in combat situations STS approaches to meaning-making suggests that language does not fundamentally 'represent' reality through naming, but works instead by producing contextual accounts and descriptions that temporarily permit joint action. 'Hand me that thing' is an example this shift in emphasis implies. As Wittgenstein pointed out, 'thing' is not a name that retains particular meaning across usages, instead, it is a local and temporary construction that nonetheless works just fine in embodied use. For communication to work does not require the positivist epistemological assumption that the world can be represented in language, because pragmatically, people can use words to generate joint action towards an object without naming it or describing its components. People can call things by the 'wrong' names, work together under 'false' assumptions, and yet still accomplish the goals that they share. In terms of combat units, I will make a similar argument about how spatial representations operate. In Combat Diary: The Marines from Lima Company, a documentary based on the photos and videos recorded by a unit that had 18 wounded and 8 killed in four days in May of 2005, one marine illustrates the accomplishment of coordination using local landmarks. He is laying down, on the radio, looking at a map in his hands: 167 Marine: "Know where we're at? Just go, uh, north up the road, hang a left after the mosque, and when you see the human leg in the road, that's where we are...Yeah, ok, good to go" (Epstein 2006: 45:14). This set of coordinates is apparently sufficient to coordinate this marine's unit with others. Yet in an idealized image of combat architecture along the lines of the heads up display (HUD) and transparent maps available to fighter pilots and video games players, the U.S. Army is developing a new 'Future Force Warrior' system. This electronic package would allow satellite and aerial photos to be directly networked to soldiers' individual electronic apparatuses, giving precise coordinates for 'friendly' and 'hostile' elements on the battlefield.67 This vision of combat uses technology to undergird a representational model of communication, hoping that the use of electronic equipment and wireless technology will permit accurate locational data using 'objective' measurements based on satellite triangulation and line of sight laser marking. Exact grid coordinates and wireless friend or foe identifiers would technologically solve the practical and moral dilemmas of establishing who is who in a combat situation. In fact, the U.S. Army's newest units utilize a similar system both in their Stryker fighting vehicles, and on the bodies of platoon and squad leaders. The 'Land Warrior' system is built on a Microsoft Windows platform, and represents a temporary solution until the Future Force Warrior system is widely issued in a standardized form. For those soldiers, the equipment they carry into battle includes not only their weapons, ammunition and body armor, but also a helmet-mounted transparent video display linked 67 As one sales representative for a potential system stated: "If an Apache helicopter was deployed forward and recorded real-time video of the enemy, the helicopter can send the video back to an individual soldier to observe," while constant data flow will allow a medic to "see how the soldier's core body temperature is rising (and) heart rate is falling, and the soldier then knows to go directly to the medic for treatment," he adds, "The computer will drop down a map to direct the soldier where to find the medic for help." http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=25636, accessed December 3, 2008. 168 to a chest-mounted mouse, wireless communications gear, and a small computer. Soldiers can mark locations on maps, access the locations of incoming reinforcements, and see symbols marking incoming air-strikes.68 The considerable expense of this equipment has been seen as a challenge to widespread adoption, but in a bureaucratic and highly profitable system that spends $1.5 million to fire a single Tomahawk cruise missile,69 some version of the program may survive the Obama administration budget cuts.70 Taking their cue explicitly from science fiction, the Future Force Warrior project is one step in an effort to realize armored exo-skeletons for infantry: "The 2010 Future Force Warrior system will meet the more immediate, short-term demands of our fighting warriors in the battle space, while the 2020 model will remind you of an ominous creature out of a science fiction movie."71 The Army's ideal is to have a mobile, heavily armed, and networked fighting force which can be directed from long distances through 68 For an information sheet about Landwarrior and its use by different Stryker brigades, see: http://www.peosoldier.armv.mil/factsheets/SWAR_GS_LW.pdf, and: http://www.peosoldier.army.mil/factsheets/SWAR PDMS MS.pdf. accessed December 9, 2008. 691 use the price per unit given by the Federation of American Scientists at: http://www, fas.org/nuke/intro/cm/index.html. However, price estimates vary wildly, depending on how one assigns per unit costs given the complexity of federal budget language. For the FY2006 budget order, the Navy paid $346 million for 473 missiles, a price per unit of $731,501, but that ignores the far higher prices paid in the past to develop and update the system, as well as production facilities. For the FY2006 order, see: http://www.defenseindustrvdailv.com/fv06-order-346m-for-473-tactical-tomahawk-block-iv-cruise- missiles-02027/. all accessed January 3, 2009. For an extended treatment of the Tomahawk system and its place in doctrine, see: (Brigety 2007). 70 In President Obama's recent proposals for reforming the Pentagon budget, it seems that Defense Secretary Gates and the administration are planning on cutting the massively expensive "future combat systems" packages, including both new vehicles as well as digital networking packages. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17gates.html. accessed April 19, 2009. 71 The quote is from a sales representative discussing current efforts, see: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=25636. Also worth noting, Peter Singer, the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution has written about parallels between the Future Force Warrior program and weaponized body armor seen in science fiction films like Iron Man and Aliens. The original depiction of such a suit was in the novel Starship Troopers (1959), Singer notes that: "DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] even footnoted it [Starship Troopers] in a research proposal on turning Heinlein's vision into reality," see: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2008/0502 iron man singer.aspx, both accessed December 14, 2008. 169 electronic communications and satellite location data. In the words of the Army's website devoted to its Stryker brigades, which are pioneering new tactics and technology, these technologies allow commanders to maintain: "Common Relevant Operating Picture (CROP) for all friendly forces within their respective areas of operation. This enhanced situational awareness and understanding will enable commanders to synchronize and employ widely dispersed and highly mobile forces at the decisive point(s) of the operation."72 While army planners and commanders anticipate that a more networked and technologically sophisticated military will suffer fewer friendly fire casualties, most soldiers deployed in Iraq have not had access to such equipment. Stryker brigades based in Washington, Hawai'i and Alaska have all utilized their systems in combat; however the vast majority of soldiers, and all marines, have done without them. Short of instantaneous communication and shared map coordinates, the more old-fashioned process of communicating via local landmarks and shared experience is ubiquitous in the recordings and transcripts analyzed. In the transcript below, however, one can witness the use of language to establish relative positions and to coordinate the movements of the platoon. Prior to this exchange, a U.S. patrol came under fire from automatic rifle and RPG fire, and a foot patrol, led by Lt. Bacik, is nearby. The patrol led by Bacik hears the weapons fire and all lay down flat, but none are harmed. Seeking to respond and engage those who fired on the patrol, Bacik calls on the radio to coordinate: 72 See: http://www.sbct.armv.mil/product_cv.htm. accessed December 14, 2008. 170 Lt. Bacik [talking into the radio attached to another soldier's back]: "Hey six, two-six, if you could just tell me, in reference to the mosque, what alleyway it was, I can go straight to that alleyway from here." Voice from Radio: "We're gonna head over there" Bacik [turning to his team]: "We're gonna fuckin' pick up, Sgt. Forbes, you take lead. We're gonna go west, you remember where we turned around on?" Set. Forbes: "Yeah" Bacik: "Alright, that's prob'ly gonna be the alleyway, red-six will ID. So pick up, get us across the street-" Forbes: "-We're gonna take a left at the hotel?" Bacik: "Roger.. .got it? Let's go, let's go!" [Soldiers, all heavily burdened with body armor, weapons, and large packs, run slowly, awkwardly, across the street] Bacik: "Go, go!" [murmurs from other soldiers] "go, go! Get across!" [Soldiers cross a 4-6 lane road slowly, traffic stops to let them cross] Bacik [on radio attached to the back of a man who rushes to keep up]: "What I need to know, brother, is it's two alleyways west of the mosque? Correct? ... Come on, man, talk to me." [Soldiers maintain two lines, head up the street, on the opposite side from where they started. Iraqi civilians walk down the street, past the patrol, not particularly hurrying, cars stop and passengers watch the soldiers] Bacik: "It should be west of the mosque.. .[soldiers, starting to hurry again] right where that orange truck just pulled out of!" [pointing, voice louder as he sees truck] Sgt. Corcione: "Hey, two six, right here?" [gesturing to the small road intersecting the road they are walking along, where the truck just pulled out] (Scott and Olds 2006: 29:41-30:34). Despite his pragmatic efforts to establish exactly where the hostile fire originated in terms of a major landmark, the mosque, Bacik's radio conversations frustrate his efforts to respond quickly. Instructing Sgt. Forbes to lead the platoon across a busy and major road, Bacik is able to direct the movements of the platoon with reference to prior, shared activity "we're gonna go west, you remember where we turned around on?" Forbes, also drawing on shared understandings, asks "left at the hotel?" Both Bacik and Forbes are able to communicate their intentions quickly, because they share a history of interacting and naming the surrounding environment. 171 These statements are indexical to the location of their enunciation, and do not depend on proper names or grid locations. Instead, they use immediate local landmarks as relational reference points. Bacik attempts to use the same logic when asking the unit that was attacked for directions that can guide him to the location of the attackers: "what I need to know, brother, is it's two alleyways west of the mosque? Correct?" The silence on the other end of the radio frustrates Bacik, as his tone of voice indicates as he pleads "come on, man, talk to me." As soon as his platoon hears gunfire, Bacik's verbal expressions order their response, and he tries to move them as quickly as possible towards the source of the attack. Yet without reference points, either fixed grid coordinates or landmarks, the platoon moves slower and more cautiously to the point of attack than Bacik would like. For the combat platoon on patrol, the multiple squads composed of multiple individuals are components of the team as an actor, a single tactical unit. Each individual body is a piece of a moving and temporarily stable quasi-actor, and they are hierarchically arranged to transmit instructions from Bacik, the platoon leader, through the Sergeants who command the several squads. While communication within the unit proves effective by using shared landmarks and recalled histories, radio communication with another unit proves problematic. Ideally, both units should be functioning as a third level quasi-actor, the company, which is composed of three or four platoons and led by a Captain. This functional unit ought to be able to maneuver together, laying traps, backing one another up, and encircling hostile positions, according to tactical doctrine. But for such a complex accomplishment, the degree of communication required seems to be extremely high. 172 In the extract above, the ability of soldiers to coordinate their embodied movements into a tactical whole requires indexical expressions. By orienting to their surroundings in terms of shared references, the unit is able to maneuver. Yet the contextual requests that Bacik makes on the radio are not answered. For whatever reason, the unit on the other side of the radio fails to communicate, and Batik's platoon has to function as a single unit instead of part of a larger whole, and is left guessing where they need to go. As it turns out, Bacik was right, and the alley they turn down had several cars full of bullet holes from the earlier exchange of gunfire. They arrived far too late, however, and those who fired on the other unit had fled. Even if they had maneuvered immediately to the location of the attack, few insurgents engage in direct combat following an ambush or attack. When facing the heavier firepower of U.S. combatants, those who fight them typically fire a short salvo and then flee on foot, as in the attack that initiated the events above. Sometimes, however, gun fights are far more protracted. During some ambushes of U.S. convoys, or in responding to attacking U.S. forces, armed resistors carefully set up defensive positions, coordinating their attacks with cell phones, and often utilize remote control explosives to slow or disable vehicles. In such situations, armed resistors have set up fighting positions with ammunition and fall-back points, permitting them to maintain their attack against U.S. forces and to use heavier weapons like machine guns and rockets. Even in such situations of relatively fixed positions and extended exchanges of fire, the coordination of combatants requires the accomplishment of a shared depiction of their environment. 173 The transcribed interaction below, according to the captions that precede it, was part of "Operation Tomahawk Strike 11." This operation consisted of "a series of targeted raids to disrupt illegal militia activity and help restore Iraqi security force control in the area" and was "not designed to solely target Sunni insurgents, but rather is aimed at rapidly isolating insurgents and gaining control of this key central Baghdad location" according to a DoD press release issued on January 24, 2007.73 Haifa street was long considered a 'red zone' by U.S. forces, meaning that every unit that went there expected to be attacked. The 'surge' strategy of General Petraeus called for storming such areas in large numbers and then turning control over to Iraqi army and police forces. Leading the attacks were two of the Army's Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), one from the 1st Armored Cavalry, and one from the Stryker Combat Team (SCT) from the 2nd Infantry Division. Both are 'transition' units which have 'new' tactics, upgraded equipment, and the vehicular version of the electronic packages discussed above. Along with Iraqi Soldiers from the Iraqi Army's 6th Division, U.S. forces spread out into high rise buildings overlooking Haifa street, from which they fired on Iraqi militia members in other buildings and on the streets below: Sniper: "-One more" Female soldier's voice, off camera: "Did you see him? Did you make it?" Sniper: "Yeah, there's a guy right here [pointing out the window] if you poke your head up, see." [camera points out the window, buildings, palm trees, smoke rising, rumble of a helicopter over head] Soldier, off camera: "Yeah, we got eyes on it!" Sniper [pointing, while cradling rifle]: "There's a white building right here? Right off to the left? And then you see how that wall right there, it goes brown next to the white? See what I'm talkin' about?" 73 Available at http://www,defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle,aspx?id=2798. accessed December 10, 2008. 174 [Crack! as a bullet hits a wall near their position, sniper's facial expression changes, intense look as he starts to position his rifle, eyebrows raised high] Young Soldier, off camera: "Hey, he's just missin' me bro." Sniper [eyebrows still high]: "No, no, he's shootin' into the right window [pointing to his right], he can see in there." ['thunk' sound as young soldier fires rifle-mounted M203 grenade at building below, 'crack!' as noise echoes back up, after firing, he puts camouflage mesh netting back against inside window] (7th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment 2007: 1:02-1:28). As in the patrol's movements discussed above, the use of highly indexical descriptions to coordinate gun fire accomplishes the immediate task. One soldier, the sniper, has been firing on particular individuals before this interaction. But he tries to explain where he has been firing to the others around him, in order to add their weapons to his effort to kill the militiamen below. By describing a particular color combination, "brown next to the white," he makes particular features of the surrounding city pertinent, and another soldier fires a grenade based on his descriptions. In the second part of the interaction, an Iraqi militia member on the street below fires at the U.S. soldiers, but fires into the wrong room. Hidden behind camouflage netting, the soldiers engaging in the interaction quoted above are able to see out without being clearly seen. This advantage permits them to walk around inside the room, take time to coordinate, and to switch firing positions and weapons whenever they need to. One soldier is worried that they are being fired upon, and expresses his concern: "he's just missin' me bro," and the sniper reassures him, although in an interesting way. He does not say 'we're fine' or 'he's way off,' but rather "No, no, he's shootin' into the right window [pointing to his right], he can see in there." The cold comfort is that the militia member is firing accurately, just at the wrong room. 175 2: A few portraits of embodied combatant relations with others Before examining certain themes in greater depth in the second, third, and fourth sections of this chapter, the next few pages present a series of vignettes to describe particular activities engaged in by U.S. forces in the course of their deployment in Iraq. All of these activities involve 'others,' in that they take place 'outside of the wire,' where civilians, armed groups, passersby, and animals are all potentially present alongside U.S. combatants. 2.1: "Owning" the roads As a recent article describing the steep learning curve of Iraq veterans deployed in Afghanistan noted, "Iraq is a country of highways and paved roads" (Youssef 2009). The contrast is most notable with Afghanistan, where ambush resistant vehicles and armored Humvees struggle to pursue armed resistors across rocky terrain. Similarly, the body armor that protects U.S. troops in Iraq from snipers makes climbing steep mountain trails incredibly difficult. The marines profiled in the article describe the constant, low-level, and urban nature of fighting in Iraq. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is far more rural, and armed resistors far better organized. In recent years, Afghani combatants have assembled in company-size units, and mounted sustained hour's long assaults on NATO positions. In Iraq, indirect mortar fire, pop-shots taken from occupied apartment buildings and IEDs on highways are frequent occurrences, while the type of organized attacks typical of Afghanistan are rare. 176 Because Iraq is a large country with highways, paved roads, and flat deserts, U.S. forces are heavily reliant on their vehicles to move from place to place. While early in the occupation the vehicle's combatants deployed with were woefully inadequate, armored vehicles have been customized and upgraded to resist roadside bombs, particularly since this became a political issue in 2004. At that time, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was confronted by Spc. Thomas Wilson, of the Tennessee National Guard, who asked: "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" According to press reports, shouts and applause from the other 2,000+ soldiers in the hangar followed his question. Rumsfeld, not understanding, asked him to repeat his question, and Wilson stated that: "We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north." Rumsfeld responded that the army was requesting more armor kits, but that "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have" (Associated Press Staff 2004). Indeed, this was particularly true for Army National Guard units. In the 10- episode Off to War series chronicling the experiences of several men from Clarksville, Arkansas, Sgt. Ronald Jackson commented on this fact. As National Guard soldiers were loading their vehicles onto rail cars, Jackson noted: We're taking our vehicles, all of 'em, to Little Rock to load up on the railhead. To take to Fort Hood. And then from Fort Hood, we're gonna' take 'em to Iraq. These five-ton dump trucks, the youngest one we have, is 1956. The newest one we have, is 1964 (Renaud and Renaud 2005: episode 1: 24:38). Upon arrival in Kuwait, the unarmored, pre-Vietnam era diesel trucks required substantial tinkering to keep running, never mind readying them for battle. National Guard soldiers welded scrap metal to the doors and did whatever else they could to 177 improve their chances of survival, if attacked on the road. Shortly before leaving their base in Kuwait for the long drive into Iraq, Jackson summed up their situation once more: Out of our forty-two vehicles, four of 'em will be up-armored, and the rest of 'em that are not up-armored will have sandbags placed in the bottom and sides of 'em. The sandbags will act to deflect the blast from a roadside bomb. Or deflect bullets if we're shot at (Renaud and Renaud 2005: episode 2: 30:30). As the second episode in the series vividly depicts, the sandbags added a huge amount of weight, straining the engines of both their large 1960s GMC trucks, as well as their Humvees. Several of the trucks broke down on the way to their base north of Baghdad, but this particular unit was not attacked on its way. The same could not be said for a unit of the Oregon Army National Guard, which is featured in the documentary This is War. Like the Arkansas guards, they also scrounged around their base in Kuwait for scrap metal to weld onto their trucks. As one described it in a video he made of their search for scrap metal, "Welcome to Camp Udari Kuwait, where all you can see is an industrial-military junk-yard" (Mortenson 2007: 8:27). The Oregon guards described their Humvees as "cardboard coffins," and one noted, in a home video shot at the time, that "the outside of our Humvees look like that, [showing plywood backs on open Humvees] little wood box in the back, gear. We were smart, and we put our duffle bags on the back of the truck, gave us a lot of room" (Mortenson 2007: 8:51-9:08 ). On their way north, their unit was diverted through Baghdad to avoid a traffic jam, and was promptly ambushed. Though they were too busy firing their weapons to make any recordings of the incident, the documentary contains interviews with several of the guards about the attack. Apparently, their lead vehicle was blown up with an IED, trapping the others on an overpass. From surrounding buildings, 178 armed resistors fired rifles, machine guns, and rocket propelled grenades at the stationary vehicles. Staff Sergeant Luke Wilson, who was wounded in the attack and later had his leg amputated, described seeing the gunner of his vehicle fire a heavy machine gun: "Baldwin started opening up with the two-forty,74 and it was the most beautiful sound in the world, at the time." Though his leg was torn apart by an RPG explosion and shrapnel, Wilson continued firing his rifle, and only informed the others in his Humvee that he was hit after the firing had ended. Another Oregon guard, Staff Sergeant Rebekah-Mae Bruns, described the battle "We had so much firepower going at those buildings, that literally, we watched an entire wall come down, uh, off the side of this building. And it felt like it was, special effects" (Mortenson 2007: 15:00-19:00). Both found a certain aesthetic quality in the exchange of fire, although it is important to remember that the interviews in which they made these descriptions took place months after their unit returned to Oregon. Nonetheless, on their second day in Iraq and before even arriving at their assigned base, their rolling caravan of vehicles both attracted and unleashed an enormous volume of weapons fire. U.S. forces in their vehicles are easier targets than they are on their bases, though indirect rocket and mortar fire on bases is also common. In order to safeguard against the possibility of VBEDs, soldiers and marines drive in ways that mitigate proximity to other vehicles. This means firing warning shots at vehicles that come too close (see: Wheeler 2008: 18:40), meaning that even official Iraqi human rights investigators looking for 74 See Appendix Two on acronyms and weapons systems for more information about the weapons referenced. 179 evidence of Saddam Hussein's guilt in ordering the mass killing of Kurds had to be very cautious near U.S. convoys, for fear of 'friendly' fire (Roberts 2006). The new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed at the end of 2008 has changed the Rules of Engagement (ROEs) and significantly transformed the authority of U.S. combatants vis-a-vis Iraqi police and military. Between January 2009 and July 2009, the agreement stipulated that only Iraqi forces could conduct searches and home raids, and had to accompany all U.S. patrols, and Iraqi leaders were quick to complain about failure to adhere to the terms (Rubin 2009). Following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraqi cities on July 1st, 2009, there has been an even more dramatic shift, as one U.S. officer said, off-the-record, "The Iraqis have been hell-bent on taking control of all security operations in the city and completely excluding the Americans [...] to the point of completely refusing to permit U.S. patrols of any kind into the city except logistics convoys" (Tharp and Issa 2009). These changes are especially noticeable, since for the first five years of the war, U.S. forces drove as fast and aggressively as possible. The general sentiment was expressed by one Arkansas National Guard soldier, as he tried to get through traffic: "Get the fuck out of the road! Move over!" (Renaud and Renaud 2005: disc 2, episode 5: 2:48). In one clip of driving through Baghdad that was uploaded on youtube.com, in just the first minute and half, the driver bumps four cars and a bus with the Humvee, forcing them to pull off to the side and let the U.S. soldiers pass. In avoiding stopped traffic, the driver pulls the Humvee across the median on to the wrong side of the road, through a traffic circle, against the flow of cars (Unknown 2007b). As they are driving clockwise on the roundabout, traffic pulls off to let the U.S. soldiers pass. A man hurries to cross the 180 street as the Humvee heads towards him, and one soldier says to the other, "this guy just pickin' his nose, not a fuckin' care in the world" (Unknown 2007b: 2:32). In their sense of entitlement to break any and every traffic rule, in slamming into vehicles, including packed buses, these U.S. combatants treat the cities and roadways of Iraq as their own. This sense of being willing and able to damage property and harm others in order to move through crowded roads faster is echoed by an armored cavalry soldier, who told Frontline: I just like driving. I like being in control of the road. People have to get out your way. You just own the roads here." (Roberts 2005: ch. 1, 7:07). Of course, those same roads that are a potential battleground, or perhaps a stunt obstacle course, are also the roads which local people depend on to conduct their lives. One of the New Hampshire National Guards, Sgt. Frank Bazzi, was born in Lebanon, and was one of the very few Arabic speaking soldiers profiled in any of these films. Upon his return to the U.S., he described what happened while his platoon was ordered to hold a road, and he was expected to explain the operation to nearby civilians: I remember one time, my platoon became attached to a different military police battalion. The orders was, nobody was allowed on this road, there's like a hospital on one side, and a lot of people live on the other. Obviously it became very apparent that I was the one that spoke their language. This guy comes up, and is, he's, he's 'I got a sick baby, can I just cross the road to go to the hospital?' And we're disciplined Armyists, so I had to say no, but, it didn't make any tactical sense. It got to the point where I stopped translating (Scranton 2006: ch. 33, 0:37- 1:15). Taking up space on the roads is intended to make U.S. forces safer, by controlling access to an area where operations are ongoing, or by preventing vehicles that may contain car bombs from coming close. But without clearly marked signs explaining what Iraqi 181 civilians should do when approaching U.S. forces, it is often confusing for nearby drivers. Sometimes signs are present, and sometimes they cannot be seen in the footage.75 In the same Frontline report quoted above, the platoon set up a position near a highway off-ramp. A car approaches from a long ways off: Sgt. Shane Carpenter: "Warning shot! Warning shot!" [Soldier fires a shot in the air] Carpenter: "Engage!" [Multiple gunshots by soldier who fires several rounds standing, kneels to fire more, shouts from off-camera from both soldiers and nearby civilians] Pfc. Benjamin Morgan: "He passed the trigger line. He passed the trigger line. Sir? The Humvee's right here, sir. He could see us!" [white car, still far off, reverses away, back up the off-ramp] (Roberts 2005: ch. 1, 10:00-10:28). In this incident, the car did not contain a bomb, and was able to drive away, so presumably the driver was unhurt. The same cannot be said of every time U.S. combatants fired at vehicles approaching a checkpoint. There are several recordings in which U.S. forces kill unarmed Iraqis at checkpoints or on roads, because they drove too fast or came too close. In one video, an embedded reporter was with one unit who searched an elderly woman's home, terrifying her. The next day, a different unit used the same woman's front porch area to try to resuscitate a taxi driver they had just shot after his car circled the block slowly and did not head their shouts (Smith and Smith 2006: 5:07-6:05). Another film shows footage of U.S. soldiers firing warning shots at a car that came too close to a convoy (ABC Australia 2008: 18:40). In one well publicized incident, U.S. forces at a checkpoint fired on a car carrying three Italian secret service agents and 75 One film shows Iraqi soldiers, one with an orange cone, one holding a sign in English and Arabic. The English reads: "Attention, you are approaching a security checkpoint. Slow down and prepare to stop. Follow all commands from Coalition Forces, deadly force is authorized beyond this point" (Mortenson 2007: 40:50). One must wonder how effective these signs are, given that they can only be seen when moving slowly and quite close. 182 an Italian journalist who had just been released by insurgents. The journalist and two agents were injured, and the lead negotiator who worked to free her was killed when he threw himself on top of her during the shooting (Carroll, Hooper, and Jones 2005). 2.2: Entering dwellings While many of the operations conducted by U.S. forces require long trips in vehicles, 'mounted patrols,' and controlling roadways, the day-to-day work of attacking the various militia and other armed groups who engage them often takes place in highly populated areas. When a patrol is fired upon, the building or buildings where combatants believe the fire originated are often searched. One can see such an incident from start to finish on the recorded video of an embedded reporter, from 2007 (Unknown 2007d). Soldiers on patrol take fire, and then ask men on the street, in English, which house the shots were fired from. They then move in, searching nearby homes, and trying to find the person who fired at them. As part of early counter-insurgency efforts, random house searches have also been widely used in Iraq. Sometimes, a given neighborhood will be searched, house to house. These searches are extremely unpopular with the home's occupants, as the following interaction makes clear. One thing to note, this is the same woman whose front porch would be used the following day by another patrol to try and resuscitate the taxi driver they shot for circling the block slowly and failing to leave when told to: [Woman screaming in Arabic, dogs barking.] [Cut.] [Woman, standing up with a walker, two dogs seem confused, as soldiers wander through her home] 183 Woman, in Arabic: "Go away, leave me alone."76 [In the background] Soldier: "Back door..." Woman: "You upstairs! Get out of my home!" Soldier: "Nah, don't open the door!' [apparently related to letting the dogs out.] [Cut.] [Woman now standing near her front door, crying, holding onto her walker] Woman: "God have mercy on Iraq, give us love and peace in Iraq" [Translator is standing in the front door, trying to talk to her, but she is screaming and crying ] [Soldiers leave the room, cameraman still there, she sits on her kitchen chair, crying. Her dogs lean up against her]. Woman, in Arabic: "I'm so paralyzed with fear, I can't even stand up " (Smith and Smith 2006: 3:39-4:14) The home's terrified occupant, her dogs barking, watches as armed and armored U.S. soldiers search her home room by room. Though she is upset at the time, she would be even more so when a different group of U.S. forces bring a dying man onto her property the next day. In any search of a home, the conduct of combatants depends on what they expect to find inside the house. If they are anticipate armed gunmen, they might smash open the gate or door with an armored vehicle, or blow it open with explosives (vividly shown in: Epstein 2006: 42:10). How soldiers and marines negotiate their conduct depends on the descriptions they use to form their expectations. In the following interaction, taken from a search of a suspected insurgent's home, two soldiers can be seen doing this negotiation: Soldier 1: "What do [we] got back there in the alley?" Soldier 2: "Not a damn thing, sir" I: "Ok, here's, here's the deal guys, I mean, now obviously that these guys live here, ok, they just might not be here right now, they might have gotten out the back door, so let's just keep searchin,' let's look for shit." 2: "Now, are we gonna be hostile with this, fuckin,' uh, search?" 1: "Nah, not hostile. Don't fuck it up" 2: "OK" (Scott and Olds 2006: 14:29-14:47) 76 Transcripts in italics are spoken in Arabic, and taken from on-screen subtitles. Independent translation has not occurred; subtitles are presented as they appear in the video. 184 This exchange implies two interesting things about house searches. One, is that they can be "hostile," that is, conducted in a way that is, itself, a punishment of the occupants. The other, is that the search need not be so hostile. By agreeing not to mess the place up, the soldiers indicate a shared understanding of how "hostile" searches can be. In a more recent video, produced by a British reporter embedded with marines who were part of the 'surge' of troops in 2007, the aftermath of one such "hostile" search is captured on video. A local village, largely abandoned, is the base from which marines patrol. A man from the village comes to make a complaint, and an Iraqi soldier translates what he says to the marine in charge of their checkpoint: Iraqi soldier/translator: "There's not many people on this village because a few days ago the American forces, eh, came, and they killed his two brothers in their bedroom [civilian is nodding in confirmation] as he said, and, eh, so that's why, eh, they, there is not many people." Marine: "Why?" Iraqi soldier/translator: "And he said, why do you break the doors, because there is not any reason to break them, the people here are poor, and I agree with you, there are, here, some insurgents, but we cannot control them, or we cannot tell them to go away." Marine: "And that's why we have to go inside every building, unfortunately, we have to break the door to get in. So we can do our job so they can be a little bit safer" (Smith and Smith 2007: 10:25-11:01). It is hard not to notice the conflicting definitions of 'safer' that are at work in the two men's expressions. The Iraqi soldier is trying to explain that the villager is complaining that his brothers were shot by Americans. The marine, on the other hand, tries to describe the damage and violence caused by U.S. forces as a by-product of efforts to make the area safe for residents. In this interaction, no shared definition is established, and the speakers are both left confused. 185 The man who approached the checkpoint then asks the Iraqi soldier to help him file a complaint against the Americans. This takes a remarkable amount of faith in due process on his part, but his efforts are not successful. Instead of filling out some type of form, or giving the man an address or phone number where his complaint can be heard, the marine and the Iraqi soldier struggle with the language barrier, as the Iraqi soldier translates "complaint" as "a trouble." When the American understands that the man is angry, the conversation continues: Marine: "We heard, that the military came here, we heard about it, but we don't know about it, it wasn't marines. But if, if it's something that they did, they had to do it for a reason." Iraqi Civilian, in Arabic: "Yes, he's saying it's not them; he's saying it's someone else" (Smith and Smith 2007: 11:24-l 1:40) The man is able to persuade the Iraqi soldiers to follow him to his home to examine the bloody beds where he says that his brothers were shot. The reporter making the film follows, showing grisly images of blood, bone, and brain soaked into a mattress and blankets. The film is short, and the viewer does not see what happens next. An investigation may, or may not, have been undertaken. Whether it was U.S. soldiers or marines who killed the men is also left hanging, but the marines stationed in the town bear the impact, as everywhere they go they confront angry notes on abandoned homes and residents who insist that Americans were killing innocent people. In many raids, rather than killing anyone, the goal is to detain suspected insurgents, either for questioning or for 'legal charges,' which under both occupation and 186 Iraqi authorities, has not met conventional due process or human rights standards.77 One recording of such a raid on a home starts with soldiers milling around, quietly, on the street, waiting for a 'breach team' to break down the gate that opens the property's outer wall onto the street. Believing that they had taken fire from the roof, the soldiers move in once the gate is smashed open: Soldier: "Go to the front, go to the front." Soldier, Off camera: "Hey, there's one guy with an RPG up there." [soldiers, about to pass through the gate, stop] Soldier: "Where at, on top?" [he and others rush in, saying] "Go go go!" Soldier, Off camera: "Fuckin' move, motherfucker! Stop fuckin' movin,' put your hands up." Lt„ Off camera: "Don't let em fire the heavy weapons in here." Soldier, Off camera: "Get the fuck down!" [shrieking] [Camera shows a back yard, laundry hanging, soldiers with rifles everywhere, man kneeling, his forehead touching a wall] Soldier, Off camera: "Don't give me no." Soldier, Off camera: "Hey, put this guy on the ground out there." [Iraqi man walks out, kneels down next to other man] Soldier: [near him] "Down!" [Another soldier, standing watch by first man] Soldier: "Down, look down!" [gestures to the Iraqi man who just came out] Lt. "Hey, Sgt. Anderson, in the house, there's a bolt that needs to get cut." Soldier, Off camera: "You, yes you, let's go." Soldier, in Arabic: "How many people are in the house right now?" First man, in Arabic: "the three of us, and there's a child" Lt.: "There's no one on the roof?" Soldier, in Arabic: "There's nobody on the roof?" Man, in Arabic: "No, no, no!" Lt. [shaking Iraqi man by his clothes]: "If there's anyone on the roof we're going to shoot them." Soldier, in Arabic: "If there is anybody on the roof, we're going to kill him." Man, in Arabic: "Kill him! Anybody on the roof, kill him! I'm telling you, it's OK" 77As Amnesty International describes the situation in the summary of their 2008 report: "Iraqi security forces also committed gross human rights violations, including unlawful killings, rape and other torture, and arbitrary arrests and detentions. The MNF [Multi National Forces] killed civilians and held more than 25,000 detainees without charge or trial, including some who had been held for several years. Civilians were also killed by guards employed by private military and security companies who had immunity against prosecution in Iraq until October. The death penalty was used extensively and 33 people were executed, some after grossly unfair trials" (Amnesty International 2008). 187 (Scott and Olds 2006: 8:30-9:29). In this case, they never find the RPG launcher or the man on the roof, but they do detain the two men they pulled out of the home. In a sequence now easily imagined due to news coverage as well as Vfor Vendetta, Rendition, and other Hollywood films, the men are handcuffed, have a sandbag placed over the heads, and are led away by Americans with guns. Luckily for the men, they are treated relatively well by the soldiers, unlike other detainees who are kicked and left in the sun (Smith and Smith 2008: 10:50-11:08). 2.3: Detaining Iraqi nationals Though the treatment of detainees in the 'hard site' at Abu Ghraib78 has received a great deal of attention from both documentary filmmakers and scholars (Borger 2004; Giroux 2004; Hersh 2004a; Kennedy 2007; Zimbardo 2007), the everyday exercise of judicial authority by U.S. combat forces has not gotten the same treatment. Empowering U.S. combatants to remove people from their cars, homes, or from the street has led tens of thousands of Iraqis into the hands U.S. military prisons, secret 'black' intelligence facilities (Grey 2007), and the (often sectarian) Iraqi police, interior ministry, and military systems. What becomes of these people once in custody has been described by human rights campaigners, and is not a pretty picture (Amnesty International 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008). Many are detained based on anonymous tips, without ever being formally charged. Sometimes tips have come from sectarian organizations, which have used U.S. and Iraqi forces to advance their own interests. Other times, former detainees are 78 See Chapter Five for a more detailed discussion of Abu Ghraib. 188 released, and used as 'anonymous' informants to locate individuals and locations involved in armed resistance. In one raid depicted on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, the soldiers have a man with them who is described as a 'local informant' by the narrator; he is wearing an Iraqi military uniform and a complete facemask to protect his identity. Questioned by the embedded reporter, a soldier with a night vision lens over one eye explains: "Took him as prisoner, kept him for about three or four days, lot of times what we'll do is use those guys to show us different houses where members of that terrorist cell, or whatever cell they're operating with, where they live. So, um, just use it as leverage against them, with the, uh, hope that they'll be let of jail earlier, whatever the case may be. Similar to what the police do back in the states, so. It works out pretty well" (Adler 2004: 1:10). Describing what they do and how they think about it at once, the soldier indicates that detainees are used as guides to point out individuals and locations associated with armed resistance groups and militias. The reliance on informants, like the man in this clip, is similar to the qualitative research interview strategy of 'snowballing,' in which one informant leads to the next, with the hope of moving closer and closer to a given group or activity. In the case of the raid depicted, the man they were looking for is not home, but his two male cousins, who are home, are bound, hooded, and taken away. Acting as judicial authorities, the soldiers searching homes are able to detain whoever they deem worthy of further questioning. Describing their strategy, the soldier compares his unit to police "back in the states." The comparison between the activities of U.S. forces in Iraq and domestic law enforcement practices is a theme that recurs in these films, and is taken up in greater detail in Chapter Five. 189 Without informants of some sort, U.S. combatants often use their instincts, grabbing the nearest military age males (MAM) to the scene of an attack. This can be clearly seen in the interaction below, where soldiers have decided to detain a man for loitering near a presumed mortar firing point. Two U.S. soldiers each have one of his arms, one is behind him. The man bends forward trying to get out of their grip as the three shove him forwards: African American Soldier: "Down, get down!" First Sergeant Michael in Arabic: "Sit down! Put your hands on your back!" African American Soldier: "No, down, git down!" [man starts to stand up, this soldier climbs partway onto the man's back to force him down, then jumps on top of him, pressing man into the street] Iraqi Man, in Arabic: "I swear I had nothing to with it!" [whimpering, in pain] African American Soldier: "Down!" [anger level rising in voice] [he is surrounded by the three soldiers, who are trying to do something with his hands, they pull him to his feet, pushing and pulling him around] White Soldier: [on man's right] "Pull security, fucking security!" [to African American soldier who was pinning and yelling at man] Iraqi Man, in Arabic: "/ had nothing to with if [the man is continuously trying to get away, letting them pull at one arm or his clothing, as he tries to bend and twist out of their grip] African American Soldier: "Get down!" [climbs on his back again, forcing man onto his hands and knees] Michael, in Arabic: "Give them your hands or we'll shoot you now!" [man is surrounded by 6-7 soldiers, three trying to wrestle his hands into cuffs, the others aiming weapons at him] Michael, in Arabic: "Gz've them your handsV Iraqi Man, in Arabic: "I swear I had nothing to with it!" Michael, in Arabic: "Give them your hands! If you don't I swear I will shoot you!...I'll take you over there and shoot you in the head!...do you understand me?" (Adler 2004: 4:40-5:53) Following this last command, the man allows himself to be plasti-cuffed, he is bound and hooded, and, according to the narrator, is left sitting alone "for hours." The man may have been involved in firing or spotting for mortars, but also might not have been. Either way, he is wrestled to the ground repeatedly by three U.S. soldiers in full armor, while 190 one keeps a rifle pointed at him at all times. Until he is directly threatened with immediate, summary execution, the man insists on his innocence and attempts to escape the painful grip the soldiers keep on him. Aside from the seeming futility of commanding the man to "get down" in English, this clip recalls a point once made by Todorov. In his analysis of Spanish conquistadors, Todorov cautioned against treating understanding of other cultures as somehow automatically leading to compassion. In the clip above, it is enormously helpful that First Sergeant Michael speaks Arabic. Yet his ability to communicate does not mean that he is prepared to extend any empathy. The man they are apprehending for being in a place they believe was used to fire on them does not have any options, and is not invited to share his perspective. Rather, Michael gains the man's submission by aiming an automatic weapon at the man's head and promising, in his native language, to execute him. In wrestling the man, a tension is exposed between the soldiers. One of them, a large African American man with a deep voice, repeatedly climbs onto the Iraqi man's back, forcing him to fall to the ground. Another soldier tells him to "pull security," meaning to keep his attention and weapon trained on possible threats in the area. This is a way of protecting the unit from possible snipers or vehicles, but it also might have been a way of de-escalating the physical confrontation between the large soldier and the Iraqi man. It is unclear what ranks the two soldiers hold, and therefore whether the instruction is an 'order' or not, but the African American soldier does not back off, instead, he again knocks the Iraqi man to the ground. Such minute to minute negotiations may involve one soldier's loss of patience, racialized interpersonal tensions, or a perceived 'weak' 191 commander, but for the detainee, it is the content of these interactions that dictates the level of violence that he will experience. While the much discussed shift in tactics and ROE of the 'surge' period did lead to a number of changes in how soldiers and marines operate in Iraq, the fact of their authority to detain suspects for questioning by Military Intelligence (MI) or Iraqi Police (IP) remained a relational fact vis-a-vis Iraqis. After the return of sovereignty to Iraq, IPs accompanied U.S. combatants, in a process intended to 'hand over' authority to Iraqi security forces in the long term. This measure was intended to grant U.S. forces increased legitimacy and to facilitate translation and the questioning of suspects. In a number of clips from the post-surge, post-Petraeus period, however, the basic dynamic remains unchanged, except for the addition of masked IPs with rifles. U.S. combatants were still able to detain anyone they suspected of involvement in insurgent attacks, although they were required to have IPs along with them for house raids or arrests. In the following interaction, U.S. soldiers believe a man on the side of the street may have activated a roadside bomb that just went off up the road, injuring members of their unit. One soldier yells "Stop him, stop him! Ok, we got an IED off of creek road." They approach him, weapons trained, making him get down on his knees. IPs join them, and question the man: Iraqi man, in Arabic: "I have done nothing. I swear by God I have done nothing!" Iraqi man, in Arabic: "That's our house. I have done nothing.. .1 was heading to my shop." Iraqi man, in Arabic: "I live in A1 Rahmaniah, near the A1 Walid building. I have done nothing. Look, here is my ID" [he is surrounded by U.S. soldiers with weapons trained on him, and pulling area security] Iraqi policeman, in Arabic: "Didyou see the explosion!" 192 Iraqi man, in Arabic: "No, I didn't see it. I was on my way back to work. I'd just had my lunch and I was going back to work." Iraqi policeman, in Arabic: "Get upl" U.S. soldier: "Get him in the fucking truck" Iraqi man, in Arabic: "Please, I have done nothing! I have done nothing!" Iraqi policeman, in Arabic: "Get into the car." Iraqi man, in Arabic: "Please let me call my family. I have done nothing"( Smith and Smith 2008: 9:15-10:30). Though he pleads for the ability to contact his family, and insists that he is a small businessman returning to work, he is held with a soldier's boot in his back, weapons aimed at him, while IPs and U.S. soldiers search him and discuss his fate. The soldiers and IPs believe that his cell phone may have been used to trigger the explosive, and give him no benefit of the doubt. The man is pushed and pulled, made to kneel, lay down flat, and stand back up, all the while, he swears he had nothing to do with the explosion. The man is roughed up a bit, cuffed, hooded, and made to sit in the hot sun, in an interaction quoted in Chapter Two. Because of the discretionary authority that U.S. combatants exercise in detaining those they suspect of attacks, there is very little due process for Iraqis who find themselves as detainees. In the interaction above, the man was walking down a road which had recently seen a car bomb go off. No witnesses accuse him, and the only physical evidence against him is his mobile phone, which are often used to activate explosives. But they are also often used to call family members or conduct business, especially in a country whose wired infrastructure has been as badly damaged as Iraq's has. Soldiers and marines are empowered, in their relations with Iraqis, to handcuff, hood, push around, and place them in detention facilities, all based on a hunch, proximity 193 to an attack, or anonymous tips. They are, in one colleague's79 words, "little walking pieces of sovereignty," able to use violence and detain individuals based on their own authority. In some instances, U.S. forces carry chemical analysis kits that they use to swab the hands of suspects, detecting explosives residue, and permitting a less arbitrary strategy when arresting individuals. In one such operation, a village where soldiers think rockets have been fired from is surrounded, and soldiers search for possible insurgents. The video, recorded by one of the Oregon National Guard soldiers shows Iraqi men, hands zipped and sitting in plastic chairs in front of their homes, as soldiers wipe small pads on their hands, collecting chemical samples. Soldier 1: "OK, he can sit back down" [He sprays a chemical on it, it changes color] Soldier 2: "Oh, look at that, I got a hit!" Soldier 1: "Got a hit?" Soldier 2: "Yeah, looks like it." Soldier 1: "Excellent" (Mortenson 2007: 41:45-42:00). By providing a systematic way for soldiers to distinguish between those involved in attacking U.S. positions and those who simply live near a launch site, the testing kits provide both an epistemic and a practical tool for soldiers. Using evidence, instead of detaining all the males of a certain age, provides soldiers confidence and legitimacy in their own eyes, and reduces the arbitrary use of their authority. Such aids may not necessarily translate into operational 'success,' however. Just because they found traces of explosive on some of the men's hands, and some weapons, 79 This term is from a conversation with my colleague, Jacob Stump. The quote comes from his description of his experience as a U.S. soldier in the Dominican Republic, where showing a U.S. military I.D. card was equivalent to being a police officer. He described soldiers going into any bar they wanted, drinking heavily, being the loudest, toughest guys around, as well as driving military vehicles around the island as people pull out of the way, as "being a little walking pieces of sovereignty." 194 did not mean they could detain the men. As two soldiers explain to a camera operated by a third soldier: Kris Peterson: "And uh, we just walked in to the village, found four guys that tested positive for, uh, explosives on their hands." Spike Olsen: "Bomb making material, and grenades.. .and, AK Mags" Peterson: "Yeah. This, so, uh, we call it up to higher, and, uh, we're gonna take them in, made all the little girls cry and everything, it was glorious, we thought we had the perfect snag. But, uh, no. " Olsen: "Higher tells us that uh, we need to release them, because uh, they don't want to come in here because we didn't find rockets." Peterson: "What is this? It's fuckin' bullshit!" Olsen: "We risk our necks for this?" Turner, [operating the camera, reaches out, offering a cheesey yellow cracker with peanut butter]: "Would a cracker make you feel any better?" Peterson: "Yes!" Olsen: "You offer, I take" (Mortenson 2007: 42:02-42:39). In the negotiations between field units and their "higher" authorities, the evidence soldiers produce is not deemed sufficient to warrant sending in a helicopter to detain the men they found with explosive residue and weapons parts. The frustration of soldiers with situations in which they are not permitted to follow through with an opportunity to arrest or kill legitimate targets is a frequent source of complaints. Conducting operations that are potentially dangerous, only to be pulled away, or to release those found with weapons, makes soldiers angry. As Peterson said, they moved in, "made all the little girls cry," but were ordered to leave without the detainees. Emotionally exhausted, potentially in danger, the soldiers await their helicopter ride home. In the clip above, luckily, a cracker with some peanut butter seems to help. Yet the dilemma of when to make an arrest, or to use deadly force, is one that recurs throughout these films, and is the subject of the next section. 195 3: Friend or foe? Identifying enemies In idealized, fictional depictions of gun battles, heroes often dispatch their many foes with relative ease, as in the anime-style lobby shoot-out in The Matrix (1999) or caricatured gun fights in James Bond films or True Lies (1994). The media consuming public are used to seeing stylized battles in which civilians, allies and enemies are clearly marked as such, either through dress and comportment or, in video games, by blinking red indicators over their health-status display. Yet if one thing is clear about these films' portrayal of combat in Iraq, identifying where hostile fire is coming from is nearly impossible. It is very hard to tell exactly where shots are coming from, never mind clearly seeing and killing the person firing those shots. Much of the time U.S. forces lay down 'suppressing fire,' which means that they fire their rifles and machine guns in the general direction from which they took hostile fire, in an effort to keep their enemies 'pinned down.' The use of intense firepower in situations of uncertainty can carry its own risks, the most obvious of which include accidental casualties, friendly fire, and the destruction and pollution of property and land. Despite such hazards, U.S. forces are trained to use mass suppressing fire to create a pause in enemy fire, allowing them to take defensive positions, get in their vehicles, or encircle their attackers. As tactics go, this is pretty basic, and allows U.S. combatants to trade their (usually) superior firepower and ammunition reserves for time to escape an ambush or to attack from another direction. What it means in practice, is that when soldiers or marines take incoming fire, they return it in overwhelming quantities. Whoever is first to fire on a particular position is often the guide for others, who add their 196 own weapons whether or not they have a clear target. Once such firing begins, it can be hard to stop, since the noise is deafening. Yet even frequently rehearsed and basic tactics require the coordination of combatants as a practical accomplishment in particular situations. In the extract below, a convoy of vehicles from the New Hampshire National Guard has taken incoming small arms fire. The gunners who sit on top of the humvees, partially protected by an armor plate attached to their machine guns, are the first to respond, firing repeated volleys. As the soldiers crouch behind and inside their vehicles, Specialist Michael Moriarty is looking for a target to fire at: Mori arty: "Come on mother fucker, keep goin' brother, you wanna play?" Off screen male voice: "I think those are IP's, Mike" Moriarty: "They're shootin' at me, I don't give a fuck if they're the pope." (Scranton 2006: ch 17, 0:39-1:35) While suppressing fire is the standard response to hostile fire, Moriarty is searching for a specific target to engage. He invites the convoy's attackers to continue firing so that they can be located and killed. Yet his squad mate cautions him, warning that those they are firing on may be Iraqi Police. Moriarty replies with the response that is basic common sense to a soldier, the fact that "they're shootin' at me" makes them an enemy. Questions of identity are of little worth, since anyone firing on U.S. forces can be considered hostile. One almost never hears soldiers asking about or discussing the loyalty or identity of those they fight. Instead of: what militia or party are they part of? Is their clan allied with local government or not? Are they Shi'a or Sunni? What soldiers usually want to know is: where are they? How many? What weapons do they have? The pragmatic 197 questions based on material descriptions appeal to those whose job is war-fighting, in sharp contrasts to those of us who analyze the politics of conflict. One man whose job would presumably straddle these perspectives appears in a 2004 PBS "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" broadcast. Karl Fittsi was the Captain of Charlie Company of the Fourth Infantry Division, and was both the military and political commander of U.S. occupation forces in his corner of the 'Sunni Triangle' in central Iraq. In the following interaction, Fittsi is sitting in a chair next to an air conditioner, smoking a cigar. He is visiting the local Iraqi police chief, who stands in front of him. They have just been discussing one of the policemen who has not been coming to work because he is scared for his safety. Another U.S. soldier, armed, reclines against a window alcove: Captain Karl Fittsi [sitting]: "Well the Iraqi police were firing weapons in the air, we love it, we love it, yeah [sarcasm dripping]. We're pretty sure that it's probly gonna end up with about a dozen dead Iraqis before we get out of here. Because um, you know what? I see an Iraqi with a weapon outside and I just shoot him. Alright? We're not playing this 'oh, I think he's playing celebratory fire,' [mocking eggheads tone] there's no such thing as celebratory fire, there's enemy fire and there's return fire, that's what it is. So, anyway they don't, they don't get it. So, I think we've already killed, what, like two or three of em?-" Iraqi police chief [standing nearby]: "-three!-" Fittsi: "-They just, they, they don't, they don't get it. They're just gonna keep doin' it, you know. You'd think that when they heard my Bradley comin' they'd be smart enough, for like the next half hour, to not shoot in the air, but no. [sarcasm thick]" (Adler 2004: 3:48-4:20)80 What is most remarkable in this interaction is the police chiefs interjection. He had just been trying to emphasize how dangerous it was for his men to come to work, and why one man in particular has not been coming. In addition to reprisals by a variety of resistance groups against police, his officers face killing at the hands of Americans. His counterpart, the American captain in charge of the area, proclaims his perspective clearly 80 This particular exchange will also be discussed in more depth in Chapter Five. 198 "I see an Iraqi with a weapon outside and I just shoot him." While speaking to the camera as he says this, he is also in the presence of one of his soldiers and the Iraqi police chief who has lost three men to U.S. fire. Fittsi dismisses the idea of an Iraqi custom of firing weapons into the air to celebrate weddings, visits from loved ones, and other special occasions (see an Iraqi exiles return to his home: Marshall 2006: 55:41). Instead, he reduces the possibility of multiple locally shared meanings of gunfire to "enemy fire and .. .return fire." In doing so, he makes his rules of engagement (ROEs) plain. Any weapons fire anywhere near a U.S. convoy or position will be met with lethal attacks. As in Moriarty's exchange with his squad mate above, Fittsi seems content with the view that anyone who is firing is an enemy. Where Moriarty could say "they're shootin' at me," Fittsi's definition of who should be treated as an enemy is more broad, encompassing, unapologetically, Iraqi police or anyone else firing into the air, target shooting, etc. Indeed, he shifts responsibility, repeating that "they don't get it" and insinuates that if they were "smart enough," they would still be alive. As the commanding officer of several hundred soldiers in the area, he would be as good a candidate as anyone to take responsibility for these incidents. But at least in this excerpt, he assigns blame to the victims. In building a locally authoritative voice, Fittsi uses sarcasm when addressing anticipated responses to his attitude towards his men's killing of Iraqi police (who are at least nominally his allies and report to him). He mocks the idea of "celebratory fire" and then states that there's no such thing. His declaration is uncontested in this particular interaction, and was likely to encounter little resistance from subordinates. ROEs are supposed to make clear when the use of lethal force is authorized, and when it is 199 forbidden, and it is the commander's job to ensure that these rules are appropriate and clear (Duncan 1999). Soldiers and marines are expected to draw on the ROEs of their mission to interpret their immediate environments, thereby establishing what actions they should take. For Fittsi, the sight of an Iraqi with a weapon is grounds for that person to be fired upon, at least as he declares in front of a journalist's camera and the Iraqi police chief. His expressed lack of concern about police casualties is a result of his interpretation of the situation around him. If his men believe that they are in danger, they are to fire first, and worry about questions of allegiance later. For Fittsi, as for Moriarty above, when making decisions based on ROEs, the priority remains the safety of their own units. In interviews in Combat Diary, marines from Lima Company said that they were told their ROEs had changed, and that "anybody that's in the city is bad," another added that due to an intelligence tip about car bombs, "we were authorized to blow any cars on the road" (Epstein 2006: 41:58-42:30). Such prioritization may be practical for those in combat, but it does conflict with international agreements and U.S. regulations on the rules of war. Understandably so, a military culture that did not prioritize the survival of 'our' combatants over the lives of those they interact with would likely be an ineffective one. Yet the decision is rarely so clear cut. ROEs may specify that non-lethal violence is allowed when Iraqis come too close to a patrol, may allow warning shots at vehicles, or insist that only certain militias are to be targeted. Regardless of the specificity of the ROEs, they are supposed to provide a framework for decision making, and are the legal basis for determining when excessive force is used, or, in extreme cases, when war crimes charges are warrented. For this reason ROEs, as discursive objects, are handed down the hierarchy of officers. Fittsi, as 200 commander of hundreds of soldiers, was ostensibly the one in charge of issuing and enforcing compliance with the ROEs amongst the soldiers under his command, a company of three or four platoons and 100-200 soldiers. Fittsi's construction of his own soldiers as extremely dangerous killers, who all Iraqis should avoid provoking, is honest, if not in keeping with 'hearts and minds' approaches.81 In Fittsi's description of the killing of Iraqi police, they, rather than their killers, bear immediate responsibility. U.S. combatants kill people who threaten them, so it is incumbent upon Iraqis to stay out of their way in order to avoid danger, at least in Fittsi's description. Unlike Moriarty, who had a hard time seeing those he was firing upon, and Fittsi's soldiers, who killed Iraqi police by mistake, some combatants have a greater ability to see those they attack. In the early months of the war, a great deal of 'gun camera' footage from helicopters and fixed wing aircraft was shown on American television and released by press officers for the military. Using electronic imaging equipment, these airborne weapons systems allow for a technologically mediated, but amplified, view of their targets. Such electronic aids include night vision, which amplifies light electronically, thermal displays, which show heat, rather than light, and telescopic lenses that magnify images from far away. 81 A renewed emphasis on community relations was handed down after the army's new counterinsurgency manual and its author, Gen. David Petraeus, shifted the role of U.S. forces in Iraq in 2007. The 2006 departure of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the promotion of Petraeus, along with the restoration of a quasi-sovereign Iraqi state, did change some aspects of occupation duty for U.S. forces. 201 In one much discussed82 clip that was originally aired on ABC television news in January, 2004, the pilot and gunner of an Apache helicopter gunship are watching a vehicle drive into a field, believing that the driver has just fired on U.S. forces. Watching the driver from far off through a thermal imaging camera, the conversations between the two crewmembers and those they radio for clearance to fire are recorded on the tape, along with the feed from the camera. The footage shows the driver of the suspicious vehicle talking with another man near a larger truck, and then running and throwing a warm cylindrical object (it glows on the thermal imaging) into a field, leaving it with a third man on a tractor. They describe what they've seen to whoever they report to, who asks: "are you certain it was a weapon?" To which the pilot responds "Positive " (ABC Television and Department of Defense 2003: 1:00-l :06). After some more discussion, the person they radio with tells them to "Wait one, I'll pass it up" (ABC Television and Department of Defense 2003: 1:38). In achieving a description of what they are witnessing, and by sharing their camera feed with officers at their base, the gunship crew is able to deliberate about the appropriateness of deadly force in a way that an infantry patrol cannot. Whereas a humvee gunner under fire is expected to 'open up' immediately, a helicopter with laser guided missiles and 30mm anti-tank cannons has the luxury of seeing targets from far off, and seeking explicit approval before firing. The advantage for the crew is that the decision to kill is externalized. They report their interpretations of what they have seen, 82 This clip appears in every major source of online video, with a number of different names. It also appeared in three of the DVDs surveyed in this study (Foulkrod 2006: 38:00; Moore 2004: 1:15:13; Shami and Shami 2007b: 18:00). It is the subject of a lengthy discussion on the UK Indymedia site, which has over 270 comments, http://www.indvmedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/284086.html. accessed January 8, 2009. 202 transmitting live video feeds for added epistemic validity, and await the order to fire. The voice on the radio gets back to them, saying: "Yup, engage, smoke em." Upon that order, the gunner attempts to fire, but has set the range incorrectly on the 30mm cannon. He re- sets the range, and, quoting at length, the following interaction takes place: Pilot: "Roger, hit em!" [Shells fly from the bottom of the screen, bright white on display, hit Iraqi man in the field, who explodes in white clouds on black/white thermal display. Other men run away] Gunner: "Got him." Pilot: "Good, hit the second one, hit him." [Shells fly into the field where a man is crouching by a tractor, near where they threw the suspicious object earlier. He and the tractor are both blown up in white clouds of heat] Pilot: "Hit the truck. Go to the right, see if anyone is moving by the truck." Gunner: "Take the trucks out?" Pilot: "Is there anybody in the truck? Wait for movement." Gunner: "Not seeing any." Pilot: "Go ahead and store that, auto range store." Gunner: "Wait, there's a guy movin' right there." [On the thermal display, one can see the heat of the large truck's engine, and part of a man's torso as he is trying to get under the truck] Radio: "Do it, go ahead." Pilot: "Fire, hit him." [Shells fly out, blowing out the tires and exploding the front of the truck] Gunner: "Target four, go ahead and take the other truck out?" Radio: "Wait for movement by the truck." Gunner: "Movement right there." [Faint image of man crawling away from the bigger truck] Pilot: "Roger, he's wounded." Radio: "Hit him." Gunner: "Alright, hittin' the truck." Pilot: "Hit the truck and hit him, go forward of the truck, and hit him." [Shells fly out, man and pickup truck both explode in white clouds of heat] Gunner: "Roger." (ABC Television and Department of Defense 2003: 2:35-3:12) In this interaction, the command to fire is repeated, translated, passed along until the one individual in charge of the weapon actually fires. The radio commands are echoed by the pilot, who instructs the gunner explicitly on what to do. In the conversational dynamic 203 established, the gunner who fires the weapon seems to have the least say in whether or not he fires, and at what. This is quite an accomplishment, both organizationally and technologically, in that the final decision making can take place thousands of miles from the 'shooter.' For the shooter himself, what is awaited is permission to fire. In an infantry platoon or as part of a vehicle convoy, shouted orders and watching the physical actions of those nearby can provide guidance on what to do. For the gunner aboard a helicopter, the process is entirely verbal. After the initial three volleys of fire, one of the "targets" is crawling away. The gunner asks permission to "take the other truck out," and is told to "wait for movement." The gunner sees the man crawling, and says "movement right there." The pilot, not using the same description as the gunner, personalizes the source of the "movement," noting "he's wounded." Whereas the gunner had talked about hitting the vehicle, and movement, the pilot says out loud that the person they see is wounded. Given the Geneva conventions as well as the regulations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), any further attack against a wounded but disabled enemy is illegal. The pilot's description of the man as wounded, if accepted, would, presumably, imply a cessation of hostile action. But the voice on the radio removes whatever doubts may have threatened to emerge by ordering them to "hit him." The gunner does not use the pilot's language, instead returning to his own description of events, and says "alright, hittin' the truck." This description by the gunner is not allowed to stand, however, as the pilot again explicitly describes what to do: "hit the truck and hit him, go forward of the truck, and hit him." 204 Whether for purposes of emotional distancing or legal compliance, the gunner seems hesitant to explicitly describe what he is doing. Framing his attack in reference to the truck, he avoids personalizing the wounded man who is trying to crawl away from the bursts of explosive shells he has fired. The pilot does not seem comfortable with this distancing, however, and repeatedly re-narrates the situation, changing key descriptions that the gunner avoids. The interaction is 'successful' despite the differing descriptions that the gunner and pilot provide. Watching the same footage from the optical targeting package allows them to provide divergent but mutually compatible descriptions of what they are seeing. Having been given permission to fire through the radio, the two crewmembers of the gunship translate those radioed instructions into volleys from the Apache's anti-tank Gatling gun. Compared to the 'spray and pray' suppression fire that units like Moriarty's or Fittsi's unleash when they think they are being attacked, a lot of explicit verbal coordination takes place before the gunner actually fires the weapon. There may be some logic in this, given that this weapon can fire depleted uranium (DU) anti-tank shells as well as high explosives, but it is certainly worth noting. In the construction of 'responsibility' for when to fire, the more technologically sophisticated the weapon, the seemingly greater the amount of discussion. One fact worth noting is that at no time did any of the three people killed by the helicopter crew use or even load the 'weapon' they were said to have tried to hide in the field. The second man to be killed, next to the tractor, seemed to be trying to retrieve the object after the firing began, so it is reasonable to think that it was a machine gun or RPG, but even he did not pose a threat to the helicopter crew. As potentially callous as Moriarty's "They're shootin' at me, I don't give a fuck if they're the pope" or Fittsi's "I 205 see an Iraqi with a weapon outside and I just shoot him" might be, they were both talking about shooting at armed individuals. The Apache crew, on the other hand, believes that they have pursued an armed resistor from a previous incident. Once the weapon is hidden in the field, they wait until their commander's commander gives the go ahead, and then kill the driver of the vehicle they followed and two others nearby, one as he tries to crawl away, wounded. In the process they destroy a tractor, a pickup truck, a larger truck, and fire hundreds of shrapnel producing explosive shells83 into a farmer's field. 4: Interactions between combatants and animals While Iraq is a highly populated and urbanized country, U.S. forces have also been forced to confront a number of "companion species" of the Iraqi population (Haraway 2003). Dogs, in particular, are common companions of Iraqi families, and often have a protective attitude towards their owners when U.S. forces come calling. In one film, a group of soldiers are moving into a village late at night, attempting to create a surrounding cordon so that they can search houses. In the process of approaching the village, a dog attacks a group of marines who are trying to sneak into the village. A marine shoots the dog, after which the town wakes up, and a number of residents open fire on the marines (Epstein 2006: 33:13). Such incidents are common, indeed, this is why many farmers and households have dogs, who provide extra eyes, ears, and a keen sense of smell to warn their humans of danger. Yet to U.S. forces, dogs are a potential 83 In addition to potentially unexploded shells and ubiquitous metal fragments, these cannons often fire rounds made from depleted uranium, an incredibly heavy substance made as a byproduct of nuclear enrichment. A discussion of the use of these weapons in Iraq follows in the next section. 206 source of danger, either in alerting humans to their location, or as attackers in their own rights. In a Frontline special report, the embedded reporter witnesses an interaction between a unit on patrol and a local family's dog. In the recording, one can hear a gunshot, followed by another, although the camera is inside at the time of the shots. Rushing outside, the camera captured the following interaction: Lieutenant Colonel John Allen: "Get away from it!" U.S. Doctor: "It came to me, sir." Allen: "I know." Soldier: "He tried, sir." [Narrator: "We had seen the entire incident, and to us it did not seem the doctor was in any danger. Several of the Misfits are clearly disgusted by what happened."] Soldier: "Most of the dogs around here have rabies." [Narrator: "I heard one of them say, 'What's the doctor doing out here with a gun?'"] (Roberts 2005: ch. 6, 10:25-11:33) Platoon members, using the subtle means of grumbling, express their disapproval of the doctor's actions. They do so in a way that questions the doctor's authority, despite the likelihood that he held a higher rank and came from a different social class than the soldiers. By questioning why the doctor was armed, they question his competence as a combatant, and thereby his masculinity. Drawing on the discourse of fierce, unintellectual warrior-masculinity, they can critique his actions without showing deference to him. The doctor, presumably, felt threatened by the dog, and entitled to kill it. He was not, however, a very good shot. As the dog lays on the ground whimpering, an Iraqi man with a cigarette, goes to comfort the dying dog. Waving his head from side to side, raising his hands in a 'why' gesture, the man watches his companion whimpering while she bleeds to death, as the patrol moves on. 207 Using violence against animals is sometimes necessary, but it is not an area in which most U.S. forces are given clear instructions. In The War Tapes, Sgt. Steven Pink shows some segments of a video he recorded of the dead bodies of armed Iraqi resistors killed in a firefight with another unit of the New Hampshire National Guard. The film he 84 recorded shows bodies cut into pieces by the .50 caliber machine guns, as well as blood puddles and other such gory remains that a gunfight produces. Sharing the video with officers, as per his instructions, he was disciplined. Those viewing the material did not approve of Pink's language in celebrating the deaths of insurgents who had been attacking his friends. They were also upset, because in the video Pink recorded, a dog came up and ate some human flesh. The tapes were considered inappropriate, and he wasn't allowed to keep them. In an interview, explaining the incident, he said: "I didn't have a problem with it and neither did the other guys who were with." He goes on, "command wanted me to shoot the dog" but "I never got briefed on shootin' a dog." Instead of sympathizing with the families of the dead, for whom allowing a dog to eat the flesh of their loves ones would be horrifying, Pink's empathy remains with the dog, "good for him, I hope he fills his belly" (Scranton 2006: ch. 23, 0:44-2:24). The strange potential of sympathies for animals by U.S. combatants has yielded a series of online videos showing them both torturing and nurturing animals. One video shows a group of soldiers taunting a two-legged dog by throwing rocks at it and laughing, one insisting "that is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life" (Unknown 2007c). Numerous other such videos can be easily found through a basic online search, and come up in the course of looking for other film clips from Iraq. One video, in particular, 84 See Appendix Two, acronyms and weapons, for a scaled photograph of different caliber bullets. 208 attracted a great deal of debate. It seems to show a U.S. marine throwing a puppy off a cliff, as a friend videotapes the action, laughing (Malkin 2008). Generating a great deal of attention, especially from animal rights groups, the video led to the marine's dismissal (Komo 4 News Seattle 2008). Numerous 'human interest' stories from Iraq have focused on the friendships developed between U.S. forces and dogs. One story describes a marine unit befriending a wild dog, who followed them to a new base, crossing 70 miles of desert to find them (Shoetz 2008). Another story describes a family whose son was killed while part of a dog-sniffing team in Iraq. Petitioning the Marine Corps, they succeeded in adopting the dog before her normal retirement, and the occasion was even marked with a ceremony (Phelan 2007). Stories like these reinforce the perception of combatants as capable of experiencing loving relationships with animals, humanizing them, even while they are at war. But they do not take away from the fact that some U.S. service members harm animals for fun, as when a Humvee crew recorded themselves throwing a 'flash bang' stun grenade into a flock of sheep along the side of a road (Unknown 2007e), or soldiers firing a giant .50 caliber rifle at a duck in a pond (Unknown 2008b). 5: Interacting with land, water, and air As U.S. combatants go about their missions, interacting with one another, producing descriptions of their surroundings, and interpreting their orders and ROEs, they do so in a terrain which is not just human. Engaging with Iraqis, through weapons fire, conversation, or other means, also involves interacting with the broader ecological systems in which those people live. Firing explosive shells scatters razor sharp shrapnel 209 over a wide area, while many weapons systems also release toxic and mutagenic chemicals. Heavy weapons fire was used extensively in the 'shock and awe' spectacle that opened the invasion of Iraq.85 Attacking ministries, military facilities, and any Iraqi forces they could find, U.S. air assets, along with long range missiles, littered Iraq with unexploded ordinance and toxic debris. But the use of heavy firepower continued beyond the initial invasion. In a documentary filmed over two months in late 2003, the filmmaker rides along on a "Harass and intimidate" operation (Shiley 2004). As part of an effort to both lure and terrify would be attackers, armored units move to a dry river bed just at the outskirts of a town where they had been attacked. Heavy Ml tanks and M2 Bradley fighting vehicles park along the side of a road following the 9:00pm curfew. Once there, soldiers dismount, and together with their vehicle crews, fire machine guns, rifles, grenade launchers, and heavy cannons from the tanks and Bradleys into the river bed. The soldiers make a terrific amount of noise, and in the course of their firing, one of their smoke grenades catches a nearby house on fire. While firing into the field, they may have been using depleted uranium (DU) rounds, which are standard anti-tank rounds on both Ml and M2 cannons, and certainly filled the area with shell casings, bullets, shrapnel, chemical residue from explosives, not to mention sufficient heat to light a house on fire. After the firing stops, the filmmaker turns to the camera and says that the 85 See Klein's treatment of the concept of 'shock' as it is used similarly in the psychology of torture, neo-liberal economic reform, and the U.S. strategy in Iraq (2007). She describes a common thread in each of these three domains, in which there is a belief that people can be manipulated and societies altered while in shock. The 'shock therapy' which Poland and Russia experienced after the collapse of socialist regimes, the deregulation and privatization pushed through by Pinochet and other military dictators shortly after the declaration of martial law, and the U.S. and U.K. 'Coalition Provisional Authorities' removal of all tariffs and customs duties while the bombing still continued all provide examples for her exploration of how 'shock' operates as a political strategy. 210 experience was "an amazing testosterone rush" (Shiley 2004: 73:00). As an expensive and ecologically destructive display which did not actually target or harm any armed resistors, the "rush" of unleashing a torrent of noise and explosions does explain a certain joy the soldiers may have felt in freely firing their weapons. But the fact that it was perceived, even by an observer, as a "testosterone rush" may explain how the display made sense according to a logic of competitive masculinity. The mission was described as a "harass and intimidate" operation, one which would have the dual effects of drawing out attackers to be promptly dispatched, and of scaring local people by demonstrating the overwhelming firepower of U.S. combatants. This was the same logic that was applied in the 'shock and awe' bombings, in that they sought to completely destroy the military capacities of Iraq while also demonstrating the futility of resistance. While the facts of the U.S. and U.K.'s superior logistical and weapons systems are difficult to dispute, the local interpretation of operations intended to demonstrate this dominance may or may not be what is intended. Purposefully seeking to construct themselves as fiercely dangerous and destructive through their displays of firepower might have scared away potential adversaries, as was claimed. But it also looks a lot like the destructive posturing of bullies, and both cultures share the story of David and Goliath. Demonstrating the fierce and brazen use of destructive power, and in the process lighting nearby homes on fire, is a form of communication. In terms of a hierarchy of masculinity, it signals that 'we are the biggest and most dangerous ones out here.' This might frighten enemies, or it might just as easily confirm their view of the occupation as crass crusaders. Whatever effects the operation may have had on the 211 interpretation of American power, it certainly put a lot of bullets and chemicals into the local soil. The best known weapon-related environmental toxin is depleted uranium (DU), which is used as a casing for anti-tank rounds because it is able to burn through steel armor at high speed. Fired from helicopters, as above, or from tank cannons, these shells leave radioactive fragments and powder when they hit their targets or the ground. One newspaper article on the subject noted that a "DU tank round recovered in Saudi Arabia in 1991 ... was found by a U.S. Army radiological team to be emitting 260 to 270 millirads of radiation per hour [... while] current (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) limit for non-radiation workers is 100 millirads per year" (Peterson 2003). The article goes on to note that 300 meters from the Republican Palace, which was then home to the U.S. and U.K. coalition authorities, the author found 30mm bullets which registered at 1900 times the background radiation level on a Geiger counter. In a 2006 documentary from the left wing Guerilla News Network (Marshall 2006), an Iraqi blogger and head of an NGO, along with the filmmaker, visits a 'grave yard' for Iraqi tanks destroyed in both the 1991 war and the 2003 invasion. There is, they show the viewer, work for welders in carving off pieces of old Iraqi tanks for sale as scrap metal. The workers there say that they have never heard of a radiation sickness from the tanks, yet the Geiger counter the NGO brings along chirps at each tank or truck they scan. The properties of DU are appealing as a weapon, because nothing else is so effective at destroying tanks and other armored vehicles. DU is twice as heavy as lead, and burns on contact if it reaches 600 degrees Celsius, meaning that a DU round "pierces 212 a tank like a hot knife through butter, exploding on impact into a charring inferno" (Associated Press Staff 2006). Yet DU weapons have also been used to strafe government buildings, attack people on foot, and to target unarmored vehicles. Though the DoD and Department of Energy (DoE) insist the residue is not radioactive enough to cause health problems, few independent studies have been completed. According to the Christian Science Monitor investigation in 2003, U.S. forces used over 320 tons of DU ammunition in the first Gulf War, and no one knows how much more recently (Peterson 2003). The deputy surgeon for the U.S. Army's V Corps is on record as saying that: "There is not really any danger, at least that we know about, for the people of Iraq." Yet in the same article, U.S. soldiers, when asked, said that: "After we shoot something with DU, we're not supposed to go around it, due to the fact that it could cause cancer," and that "If one of our vehicles burnt with a DU round inside, or an ammo truck, we wouldn't go near it, even if it had important documents inside. We play it safe" (Peterson 2003). The apparent mismatch between official pronouncements and day-to- day operational guidelines has meant that many sites contaminated by DU have not been cleaned up, had warnings posted nearby, or been the subject of public education in Iraq. The dangers of DU have become focal points in several arenas in recent years. German and Italian peacekeepers deployed in Kosovo came down with a "rash of q/: leukemia" while stationed there. Hundreds of tons of DU were used in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Serbia (Caldicott 2002: 151-161), and DU is believed to have a number of mutation causing effects. These claims are quite disputed, and a 86 See: www.democracvnow.org/200 l/l/10/depleted_uranium becomes a radioactive issue. accessed October 12, 2008. 213 2001 World Health Organization study issued that DU is not as harmful as many activists claim. Dr. Doug Rokke, the former head of the depleted uranium cleanup program (from the 1991 war) for the U.S. Army in Iraq claims to have been fired from his job and suffered home invasions, in relation to his outspoken position on DU's toxicity.88 Military operations necessarily involve doing damage to the areas in which they operate, which is one reason that regardless of the intended target, whether an individual or a regime, there are always consequences that exceed the specific mission objective. In damaging property, polluting ground water with explosive arid DU particles, and spreading metal shards, any specific military action can have effects for months, or years, into the future. Though official studies are still not available, anecdotal evidence points to increased rates of cancer and birth defects. In one short documentary about birth defects in Fallujah following the U.S. offensive there, a mother, describing her massively deformed daughter, said, in Arabic: "when I saw her suffering, she made me so depressed. I hated the world. She stopped sleeping recently, and cries in anger" (Unknown 2008d: 1:55-2:15). In a less direct, but nonetheless frequently noted way, the U.S. military forces in Iraq have also had a powerful effect on both the air quality and political economy of the region. The logistical complications of the post-privatization military mean that defense contractors bring everything the soldiers need by truck from Kuwait (for an extended documentary treatment, see: Greenwald 2006). Doing so requires a massive fleet of 87 See: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2001AVHQ SDE PHE 01.1 intro.pdf. accessed October 12, 2008. 88 See an interview with Rokke at: www.democracvnow.org/2000/5/30/former u s army depleted uranium, accessed October 12, 2008. 214 vehicles, tens of thousands of employees (mostly third party nationals, TPN, meaning neither U.S. nor Iraqi), and consuming a huge amount of fuel. As a 2007 NPR report noted, the Defense Department consumes, on average, th 340,000 barrels of oil a day, making it the world's 38 largest importer, using just slightly less per day than the Philippines (Brady 2007). The majority of that is consumed by the U.S. Air Force, whose cargo planes move supplies for the other branches, and whose fighter planes consume massive quantities of jet fuel. A Forbes Magazine special report noted: In World War II, the armed forces used about one gallon of fuel per soldier every day. In Desert Storm, fuel usage was about four gallons. By 2007, with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, usage was up to 16 gallons, or $3 million worth of fuel a day (Hoy 2008). An Ml tank gets approximately 0.6 miles per gallon of jet fuel, while the Stryker fighting vehicle gets almost 6 miles per gallon of diesel. The Humvee, mocked by some environmentalists when driven by civilians, is the most efficient vehicle in the army's fleet, going 10-14 miles on paved roads, per gallon of diesel. An entire armored division can use up to 300,000 gallons of fuel per day (Hoy 2008). Iraq was, prior to the 2003 invasion, an oil exporting nation. Yet DoD contractors bring each and every gallon of diesel, gas or jet fuel from Kuwait, Jordan, or Turkey. Some 2,000 fuel trucks depart Kuwait every day (Bryce 2005). These convoys have been frequently targeted by armed resistors, showing the weakest link in the supply chain that provides U.S. forces with bullets, water bottles, and fast food. As Bryce noted, the number of attacks leads to more heavily armored vehicles, which then need more fuel, leading to more convoys, and more attacks. As of April, 2008, "1,292 contractors have 215 been killed and 9,610 wounded"(Singer 2008). One Kellogg, Brown, and Root (NYSE: KBR) truck driver, Preston Wheeler, recorded the entire sequence of driving, and then falling into an ambush in which he was shot in the shoulder while his damaged truck was left behind by the Army and KBR convoy (CNN 2006; Wheeler 2008). The massive scale of these supply operations is visible in almost any of the documentaries highlighting the lives of U.S. combatants. Whether it is in the form of huge highway convoys which soldiers must protect, in the burnt out shells of supply trucks destroyed by IEDs that they drive past (as can be seen clearly in: Scranton 2006: ch. 8 2:00-2:56), or in the seemingly constant, low-level complaining about contractors that pervades interviews and videotaped discussions with U.S. forces. Moriarty, the New Hampshire National Guard soldier quoted earlier, while guarding a KBR convoy in his unarmored Humvee, asked: "why the fuck am I out here guarding a truck full of cheesecake? I feel like the priority of KBR making money, outweighs the priority of safety" (Scranton 2006: ch. 7 2:40). Indeed, intellectuals in the army are now growing concerned about the dependence of combat forces on those who have the right to prioritize profits above military expediency (see: Gaviria and Smith 2005), as one former Marine Corps base commander put it, "The problem is you get this crossover of priorities 216 where what the contractor's doing in filling his contract may be having an adverse effect on your war effort."89 In The War Tapes, Sgt. Stephen Pink, also of the New Hampshire National Guard, brings his camera along early one morning: It's not even six o'clock, it's fuckin' hot already, [zooms in on soldiers and civilians in helmets and flack jackets talking in front of large Mercedes and Volvo trucks] In order for them to continue running missions in Iraq, KBR insisted that the army provide shooters, for every other one of their trucks. Which means they take rear echelon motherfuckers, and, they put 'em inside the KBR truck with an Ml6, ha, ha [zooms in on man leaning against concrete wall to avoid the sun, eating] This guy right here, thought he'd be fuckin' changing pillowcases the whole time in Iraq, and now is sittin' in a truck in the most vulnerable position. More vulnerable than the MPs, because the KBR trucks are more of a target than we are (Scranton 2006: ch. 9 1:44-2:22). KBR is now an independent corporation, and has been since 2007. For 44 years, it was the construction and contracting subsidiary of Halliburton (NYSE: HAL), whose former CEO, Vice President Dick Cheney, was well placed to steer contracts towards KBR. Before becoming the most high-profile defense contractor in Iraq, KBR specialized in building and operating oil and gas facilities, offshore oil platforms, military bases, and other large scale construction projects (Greenwald 2006). KBR and Halliburton received a large number of contracts to assist the U.S. military in invading and occupying Iraq. KBR employees were actually in Kuwait six months before the war began, doing base 89 Col. Thomas X. Hammes (USMC, Ret'd), interviewed for PBS's Frontline program (Gaviria and Smith 2005). He also stated: "I frankly was stunned at the level of care at the Green Zone: the big- screen TVs, the exceptional food ~ and it truly was exceptional food. Like I said, three main courses, three or four vegetables. Dessert was three kinds of ice cream with multiple-flavored toppings, and there was also several kinds of pastry [...] Somebody's risking their life to deliver that luxury. Maybe you could tone down the luxury, put fewer vehicles on the road. Again, fewer vehicles on the road creates less tension with the locals, because they get tired of these high-speed convoys running them off the road" interview text available from: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/interviews/hammes.html. accessed October 12, 2008. 217 construction, logistical services, and preparing the infrastructure that would allow supplies to be trucked into Iraq (Gaviria and Smith 2005: ch. 3, "Embedded with KBR"). KBR has long cultivated ties to political leaders and profited handsomely from federal contracts. During the New Deal, Brown and Root won the support of Congressman Lyndon Johnson in convincing President Roosevelt and the Work Projects Administration to pay them to construct a dam on private land, against normal policy. This ability to leverage friendships in Washington has seen KBR awarded a number of contracts for base construction and other services during the Second World War, and the occupations of Vietnam and Iraq. Unlike previous contracts to build naval yards, or provide engineering consultations, KBR and Halliburton received contracts to provide virtually every service imaginable on the U.S. bases in Iraq (Gaviria and Smith 2005: ch. 3, "Embedded with KBR"). As Sgt. Pink describes it from his perspective: KBR annoys me. I don't wanna talk politics, but they got it good. Take every store in your town, every gas station, police department, fire department, and let it all be run by one company, and that's basically what they do. They have their hands in anything you can think of. KBR runs all our chow halls [...] to charge the military food, they gonna put out four thousand plates, times twenty eight dollars a plate, so when people take two, sometimes we take one and put it on top to keep it warm, that's fifty-six bucks KBR just charged the government (Scranton 2006: ch. 9 2:50-Ch 10 0:40). Despite combatant's grumbling about the provision of services and the massively higher salaries collected by KBR and other contractors, the Pentagon has consistently favored outsourcing of non-combat operations. The Vice President of Worldwide Military Affairs for Halliburton/KBR, Paul Cerjan, put the argument thusly: "when you're talking about the number of people that are on LOGCAP [Logistics Civil Augmentation Program] - 218 about 48,000 people - only about 13,000 of them are Americans [...] when you start adding up those costs, it's obviously cheaper."90 There is some dispute about whether or not privatization has actually saved money in the long term, but it has certainly complicated logistical and legal interaction chains for combatants in Iraq. Unlike U.S. military members, KBR, Blackwater, and other contractors have been immune to prosecution, either in Iraqi or U.S. courts, although the SOFA signed by the outgoing Bush administration in late 2008 ended immunity under Iraqi law.91 This has not, however, relieved the "legal limbo" of several former KBR employees who have tried to sue for damages over sexual assaults perpetrated by fellow employees (Risen 2008). When riding along as protection for a KBR convoy, risking attack, and making less than a quarter of what the driver is making, U.S. combatants have a lot to say about those whom they depend on for services. Frank Bazzi, New Hampshire National Guardsman, recorded a video of himself on a fairly bizarre form of guard duty. His platoon was tasked with escorting a group of septic waste tankers, "poop trucks" in his words, and setting up a combat posture while watching the two trucks unleash streams of waste water onto the ground on the side of a road. Observing what was happening, he remarks to the camera: "we are bringing democracy, and good vegetation to Iraq.. .hey, you can even see a small little rainbow!" (Scranton 2006: ch. 15 2:00-2:56). 90 See the text of the interview he gave to Frontline (Gaviria and Smith 2005) at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/interviews/cerian.html. accessed October 12, 2008. 91 In another high-profile end to immunity, five Blackwater security contractors pleaded not-guilty to manslaughter charges related to a shooting incident in Iraq in 2007. Despite numerous calls by Iraqi officials for their prosecution, the legal status of the charges against the men remains unclear, given the legal immunity to both Iraqi and U.S. law that the firm operated under (Holland 2009). 219 The common practice of dumping waste water quickly on the sides of the road recurs in other portrayals of daily life in Iraq, and is one of the consequences of the extensive infrastructural destruction that two U.S. air wars and a decade of sanctions and low scale bombing has wrought. While Iraq once had one of the best public health systems in the Middle East, the repeated bombing of electrical plants and water treatment centers in 1991 and throughout the 1990s left the country with minimally functional sewage systems (Gregory 2004: 168-9). As a 1995 Federal Accountability Office report stated: The water and sanitation system remain critical throughout the country [...] The basic reason throughout the system is the lack of spare parts for a variety of equipment. These parts cannot be purchased without foreign exchange and UN sanctions committee approval may also be required for most of the items.92 The scale of 'shock and awe' bombing in 2003 did not make this already dire humanitarian situation any better. Despite more than $2.4 billion spent on contracts to repair and modernize the water-treatment capacities of Iraq, millions of people continue to go without access to clean drinking water, and an estimated two thirds of Baghdad's sewage still flows untreated into the rivers (Reilly 2008b). Contractors bring bottled water to U.S. combatants by truck, dumping their waste in nearby fields, while an estimated 40% of Iraqi households still don't have access to clean running water. On one patrol, a platoon and its Humvees had to cross a thick, deep puddle of raw sewage. Videotaping the event, Sgt. Jacques focuses on the last Humvee as it races to get through the deep mud. A man standing on the machine gun perch is sprayed with sewage 92 Quoted by the Veterans for Peace Iraq Water Project website, see: http://www.iraqwaterproiect.org/. accessed January 11, 2009. Also see the Council on Foreign Relations report on recent Cholera outbreaks due to non-functional sewage systems: http://www.cfr.org/publication/14457/iraqs other dirty water.html. accessed January 11, 2009. 220 as it splashes through. Soldiers laugh as the vehicle, dripping in mud, approaches, its windshield wipers clearing the window. The soldier's head is dripping brown muck: Sgt. Jacques: "How do you like that, Ring? [Soldier stands up in his machine gun seat, dripping] He yells: "whew!" Jacques: "Crazy fucker!" Jacques: "Ring just went through shit water!...ready for the ladies!" Spc. Tuttle: "I'll see you later when you're sick!" Jacques: "Hey, give us a smile, you fag!" [Soldier smiles, holds up his thumbs] (Mortenson 2007: 35:46). Recalling the discussion in Chapter Three of how masculinity can be 'done' in relation to risk taking, this exchange also illustrates one of the challenges that failure to maintain basic services has meant for transportation in Iraq. Sewage is not the only waste generated by combatants. In the documentary, Inside Iraq: the Untold Stories , filmmaker Mike Shiley rode along with a logistics officer to a dump on the edge of Camp Anaconda, one of the largest military bases in Iraq, whose "Mayor" was a Halliburton employee (Gaviria and Smith 2005: ch. 3, "Embedded with KBR"). At the dump on the edge of the base, amidst used motor oil and antifreeze oozing in pools, contaminating the ground, there were also large piles of perfectly good construction material and food. Local children, two different groups of them, actually got in a fist fight while the camera was rolling, apparently fighting over scavenging rights. Soldiers frequently had to chase them away, trying to discourage them from crossing onto the base. One soldier observes: "they'll mush down the razor wire and then they just drop cardboard over the top of it, and, uh, pry up the fence." Another responds: "our trash is their gold." In order to make sense of what, exactly, was attracting so much attention 221 from local kids, Sgt. Layson, the logistics officer, conducted the following experiment, which he described as they were driving away: We're gonna dump dive, for sixty seconds, and find out what we can get here, and see what the big draw is. So, he timed me for sixty seconds, here's what I found in the dump, the Americans throw their trash into, alright? One pair of boots, one electric fan, 25 lbs of prime beef - that was not rotten- two packages of Oreo cookies, 12 packages of Chitos, uh, 6 boxes of raisins, one 12 ounce can of peanuts- all this stuffs unopened-, four candy bars, a bunch of hard candy, one case of toilet paper, two cases of Orville Reddenbocker popcorn, and five packs of, uh, Oreo minis, and uh, a few packs of crackers. The Americans just, throw away so much stuff, that should be put in a box, and shipped out to the, the villages, so that the locals can use it, ya know? I mean [exasperated look], we shouldn't waste anything (Shiley 2004: 55:11-58:00). Layson, confronting the variety and quantity of perfectly good food that was thrown away, is astounded. Having earlier noted the motor oil and other hazardous liquids that are leaking into the soil, there is a worry that locals might not only be injured trying to cross the barbed wire fence, or by guards trying to enforce perimeter security, but that whatever supplies they find may well be contaminated. The dumping of edible food and usable equipment by U.S. forces and contractors is in marked contrast to the massive poverty faced by Iraqis. Unemployment is estimated to be in the 30-60% range, given that official records are not available (Reilly 2008a). The juxtaposition of Iraqi hunger and wasted products imported all the way from the U.S., via expensive flights and dangerous highway convoys, is astounding to both the logistics officer and filmmaker. When they first arrive at the dump, Layson confronts a group of U.S. soldiers throwing away unused construction materials. He orders them to return the metal rods they were unloading to their supply officer, the soldiers grumble about filling out forms. It is, they imply, easier to throw away perfectly good equipment than it is to return it to the quartermaster. In treating both official supplies and the contents of care packages as 222 disposable, the basic habits involved in U.S. consumerism are imported with combatants, like their taste for fast food. Rather than calling on U.S. forces to dramatically re-imagine their daily habits, particularly in terms of consumption and disposal, contractors have sought to position themselves in terms of delivering a 'taste of home' to servicemembers in combat. In the course of living on bases, pursuing insurgents, conducting patrols, and engaging in other types of activities, U.S. forces are dependent on massive supply lines to keep their bottled water, gasoline, and ammunition supplies stocked. Reliant on vehicles and long distance convoys, soldiers and marines have brought the typical American car- centered way of life with them to war. Doing so may or may not have affected their ability to befriend and aid communities in a way that would have reduced the intensity of anti-U.S. military resistance. It certainly has involved moving and burning a huge amount of fuel, and creating a political economy of contractors and supply convoys which has proven expensive in both lives and dollars. 6: World making practices at war: some closing observations This chapter has presented a wide variety of embodied interactions. Some are coordinated extensively, as in the Apache gunship's permission to fire, or the movements of platoons on patrol. Others are largely unremarked, like eating ice cream made in the U.S. while on a firebase in the Iraqi desert. All of these practices are what de Certeau (1984) called 'everyday life' for the soldiers and marines in Iraq. In driving to avoid car bombs, in showing their dominance via displays of firepower, in detaining and pushing 223 around civilians, and in countless other ways, U.S. forces in Iraq contribute to the production of their relationships with others, including the air and water around them. The goal of the chapter was to present portraits of the many and contradictory activities of service members in Iraq, in an effort to complicate the reductionist 'instrumental' approach to the military that is so common in International Relations debates. The participants in these interactions are co-authors of a future world. Their interactions produce friendships with particular militias, produce dead relatives and companion animals whose memories will henceforth mix with bitterness towards 'the Americans,' and shape the ecology of the land around them. Future political and diplomatic efforts in the region will need to come to terms with the reality that the hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq have helped to create. While much of the previous chapter showed combatants at ease, having fun, and playing games with one another, this chapter looks at the other side of their deployments, where their missions bring them into contact with people whose language they (usually) don't speak, whose culture they don't understand, and whose country they feel entitled to transform. This general attitude was heavily criticized by British military commanders in 2006 (MacAskill 2006), a phenomenon which has also happened in Afghanistan where British (Gall 2007) and Afghani (Reuters Staff 2008) officials have criticized the widespread use of airstrikes by U.S. forces. British recommendations helped inform the 'surge strategy,' especially after their relatively successful efforts to cooperate with Shia Iraqis in their areas of jurisdiction. Insisting that their past experience with U.N. and other multinational missions made them better soldiers, British troops have often complained about the trigger happy tactics of Americans who spread anti-coalition 224 sentiment. Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a Brigadier in the British Army, was second in command of training Iraqi forces, but following his retirement, went on record as saying that "the U.S. army has developed over time a singular focus on conventional warfare, of a particularly swift and violent kind" and that cultural ignorance led the American military to be "institutionally racist" (Norton-Taylor and Wilson 2006). A change in strategy did take place with the rise to command of the much celebrated General Petraeus and the 'surge.' And yet that strategy involved relatively simple emphases, like dispersing U.S. forces more, engaging in negotiation with local leaders, and increasing the responsibility of Iraqi security forces within their country. In place of arbitrary dominance and non-communication, the military started to expect soldiers to do more than simply fight. With time, this strategy does seem to have helped de-escalate sectarian violence, particularly in the capital. But it has also empowered those connected to the central government, and necessitated cash payments to armed militia members to sustain. It is still too soon after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraqi cities to know how Iraqi security forces will do things differently. But no serious public discussion has yet come to terms with the long supply lines and untenable consumption that the privatization of logistics functions has entailed. In focusing on how embodied interactions transform the lives of those in contact with U.S. combatants, this chapter has adopted the STS assumption that human beings are not detached from the world around them. In terms of meaning-making, and in terms of the chemistry of the atmosphere, the things people do in interaction have serious consequences. 225 The next chapter examines the practices which hold individuals accountable to permissible behavior in the military. By focusing on those high profile cases in which combatants and service members have been investigated or prosecuted, and how they argued in their own defense, we now turn to the discursive resources available for interpreting questions of accountability for deployed combatants. CHAPTER FIVE: BREECHES OF THE ACCEPTABLE: INVESTIGATORY AND JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY PRACTICES Previous chapters focused on specific interactions and situations recorded on video. Analyzing video recordings, although mediated twice - once each through the camera-person's actions and the editing process - nonetheless allowed for a close reading of how individuals and teams maintain themselves as such while in the course of occupation duties. In this chapter, the focus remains on face-to-face interactions, but shifts to how such interactions are transformed into meaningful and ethically loaded narratives by the processes of judicial investigation, record keeping, and public debate. The discussion will build from media reports, leaks, and official documents, examining how investigatory procedures 'hail' combatants into particular positions through accountability to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), their orders, the Rules of Engagement (ROE), and U.S. treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. Unlike scenes from past chapters which have gone without significant public discussion, certain specific embodied interactions have prominently contributed to the perception and outcomes of the war. This chapter analyses those actions of U.S. combatants which have led to widespread public debate and formal investigations, looking at how particular 226 227 people's behavior is described and rendered in these arguments. Doing so allows for an exploration of the ethical implications of these ways of describing combatant activity. The chapter begins with an examination of the highest profile case of violence by combatants which was deemed to have crossed legal and ethical lines: the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other military prisons. Examining news reports, official documents, and court proceedings, this section asks how these documented violations of U.S. law in a war zone were investigated, and what consequences they had. The second section offers a reading of news reports of particular incidents and trials that did not gain the same type of notoriety as Abu Ghraib, and then turns to how U.S. military spokespersons responded to persistent questions about the number of Iraqis killed. Noting the ways that they frame their answers, the politics of counting bodies in a time of war can be seen in these exchanges. Military spokespersons' efforts to shape the terms of discussion can be read as local, interactive assertions of privilege that draw on nationalist and bureaucratic discourses of state power. In the process, they articulate a particular vision of war and the battlefield. The chapter concludes with a close reading of how two retired Colonels (one U.S. Marine Corps, and one U.S. Army) publicly interpreted one of the films discussed in earlier chapters, as guests on a News Hour with Jim Lehrer segment in 2004. Having just shown the documentary produced by an embedded journalist (Adler 2004), the two discuss the tactics seen in the film, including the statements by Capt. Karl Fittsi analyzed in the previous chapter. Looking at how they make sense of, explain, and respond to what they have seen allows for an exploration of contrasting and somewhat contradictory discursive frameworks that are applied to combatants at war. One posits U.S. occupation 228 forces as potentially dangerous practitioners of violence, comparing them to other "men with guns,"93 whose equipment and readiness to use it endanger those around them. In this discursive framework, combatants can be compared to other practitioners of violence, and an accounting of what they do is possible. The other discourse frames combatants as specially authorized inhabitants of a warzone, a place where violence is assumed, and where it is expected that they will do what they must to survive. Between these two contradictory discursive frameworks, the Cols, interpretations of the documentary illustrate possible rhetorical and ethical constructions of combatant accountability, revealing two distinct discourses concerning war. The goal of this chapter is to 'walk the perimeter,' exploring what lies over the edges of acceptable behavior by combatants, and how that is defined through investigatory practices and public discussions. Looking at those areas in which combatants are officially defined as criminals or 'bad apples' allows for two key insights. The first is how important the embodied interactions of particular combatants can be in a normatively contested media-scrutinized conflict. The second is a revealing picture of what is acceptable, given the edges thus delineated. 93 Peter Sayles' 1997 fictional film by the same name (http://www.imdb.com/title/ttO 119657/. accessed February 6, 2009) highlights the experience of those living inside a warzone. Whether they are seen as the army, as rebels, or as bandits, 'men with guns' can use their possession of weapons for social, political, economic, or sexual dominance over those they encounter. In the words of a 20 year war correspondent for the Observer, "In war all life is negotiated around weapons. Societies are reordered into sharply defined new hierarchies: into those who have weapons and those who have not. A man with a gun can walk to the front of the bread or petrol queue. With his militia friends he can take over a petrol station if he likes and reorganize the distribution while skimming money off the top. With a rifle you can order a woman to have sex. Weapons redistribute wealth through "taxes", protection rackets and straight theft" (Beaumont 2009). From the perspective of human security, of those whose neighborhoods or fields are battlegrounds, the 'men with guns' may not appear as distinct 'sides.' Whether or not a militia member, soldier, or police officer is a threat may have more to do with their willingness to use weapons than their ideology. 229 In reflecting on how combatant behavior in wartime is accountable to multiple discursive constructions of war, an institutional emphasis on universally applicable rules contrasts sharply with a view of warzones as chaotic, violent, and anarchic places. Noting how military oversight processes wrestle with the ambiguities of charging professionally trained killers with excessive or unauthorized violence, the contradictory discursive frameworks of 'law' and 'war zone' are negotiated and renegotiated in both legal practice and in public statements. 1: Excessive cruelty: torture,94 rape, and murder in U.S. military and CIA prisons The incident which launched a number of internal investigations -as well as Senate hearings and a host of books and investigative reports- is the focus of the discussion to follow. Briefly tracing how the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib entered the public imagination, the ways that the abuse and torture of prisoners was discursively 94 The state of the world, and U.S. politics, being what they are, the word 'torture' seems to require a footnote. The current legal definitions inform my usage. According to U.S. code: (1) "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control; (2) "severe mental pain or suffering" means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from— (A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (C) the threat of imminent death; or (D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality (2007: § 2340). In a similar vein, the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) states: "the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions (United Nations Convention Against Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment 1984: article 1.1). 230 constituted as an object of policy making, legal action, and public debate allows for a case study of the practices that monitor combatant activity in diverse locations. The sexual abuse, torture, beating, and rape of Iraqi detainees by U.S. Military Police (MPs) and Military Intelligence (MI) soldiers (as well as private contractors and intelligence agents) is also emblematic of how the actions of particular combatants in particular interactions can have long term and global political impact. In addition to investigative reports and leaked documents, the analysis that follows interweaves the words of MPs who were stationed at Abu Ghraib, many of whom faced charges. Their statements were made after their courts martial, and were not made while deployed. They are nonetheless an important contribution to understanding what happened and why. Persistent off-the-record reporting of detainee abuse and torture (Priest and Gellman 2002; Van Natta 2003) was publicly substantiated on April 28, 2004, when photographs of prisoner abuse and torture aired on CBS's 60 Minutes II (Borger 2004). CBS went forward with the story when they learned that Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist at the New Yorker and a prominent voice in national security reporting, was moving forward with his own story on the prisoner abuse one week later (Hersh 2004c). The photographs depicted Iraqi detainees kept naked and hooded, forced to form human pyramids, and to simulate sexual acts. Amidst public outrage and political maneuvering by elected officials, the photos opened a wave of investigatory reporting on Iraqi prisons, U.S. detention policies, and, most damning, the official authorization of torture practices (or, as the authorizers would have it, 'enhanced interrogation' methods) by CIA and Pentagon personnel, permitting the violation of the United States Code of 231 Military Justice (USCMJ) and treaty commitments under the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT). The techniques utilized in these interrogations derived from a program called "SERE" (survival, evasion, resistance, escape) designed to prepare U.S. pilots and cover operatives for the types of torture they could expect to face in North Korean, Vietnamese, or Chinese prisons. In a memo dated July 16, 2002, concerning these techniques, Joseph Witsch, an instructor wrote that: "some of the class participants had 'little to no [ ] experience' in interrogation and other had 'recently returned from conducting actual interrogations in Afghanistan.'" He continues: I believe our niche lies in the fact that we can provide the ability to exploit personnel based on how our enemies have done this type of thing over the last five decades. Our enemies have had limited success with this methodology due to the extreme dedication of [American] personnel and their harsh and mismanaged application of technique. The potential exists that we could refine the process to achieve effective manipulation/exploitation. We must have a process that goes beyond the old paradigm of military interrogation for tactical information or criminal investigation for legal proceedings. These methods are far too limited in scope to deal with the new war on global terrorism (United States Senate Committee on Armed Services 2008: 23). In a circular way, the torture techniques of America's cold war enemies were integrated into U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. Having designed a school that would simulate a POW camp, the water-boarding, forced nudity, sleep deprivation, and other practices of that camp were then appropriated for use against high-value detainees. In documents that surfaced over a five year period through news reports, leaks, and the swirl of public attention that followed the April, 2009 declassification of DoJ memos by the Obama administration, a fairly clear chain of interactions can be traced from senior Bush administration officials to the military and CIA prisons where torture 232 and prisoner abuse occurred. This sequence was laid out in detail in Seymour Hersh's New Yorker reporting (2004b, 2004c), and in his book, Chain of Command (2004a), and has been substantiated by the release of once classified Justice Department memos (ACLU Staff 2009), as well as journalistic investigations (Danner 2004a, 2009a; Hunt 2005; Mayer 2005, 2008), U.S. Senate reports (United States Senate Committee on Armed Services 2008), and a Council of Europe Parliamentary inquiry into rendition and European complicity (Marty 2007). According to the story Hersh and so many others have told (cf. Mayer 2008; Suskind 2006; Woodward 2008), the Bush administration was frustrated with the standard procedures that were required before lethal force could be used on enemies who were not in uniform. Apparently there were several instances in which aircraft or snipers had a chance to fire on suspected Taliban or al Qaeda personnel, but did not receive clearance from the embassy in time. To address this problem, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld initiated Special Access Projects (SAPs), which gave pre-approval to CIA and Special Forces teams to capture, kill, and interrogate suspects. These teams used remote controlled aircraft to assassinate individuals in Yemen, Pakistan, and Sudan, and were responsible for conducting commando 'snatch and grab' operations in Somalia, Syria, and elsewhere that placed suspected al Qaida, Taliban, or extremists into U.S. custody. With a worldwide mandate, SAP teams kidnapped a Cleric off the Italian streets (Hooper and Norton-Taylor 2006; Staff and agencies 2007), and delivered individuals to CIA 'black site' prisons (Danner 2009a, 2009b; Grey 2007; Marty 2007; Priest 2005), as well as Guantanamo Bay Naval Station and Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan (Cobain 2007; Pannell 2009; Priest and Gellman 2002; Rose 2006). Throughout their operations, SAP 233 teams were composed of military Special Forces, defense contractors, and CIA paramilitary units. As a New York Times story describing Special Operations in Somalia put it: "American officials said Special Operations troops were operating under a classified directive authorizing the military to kill or capture Qaeda operatives if failure to act quickly would mean the United States had lost a 'fleeting opportunity' to neutralize the enemy" (Schmitt and Mazzetti 2008). A similar program authorizing the assassination of al Qaida leaders by the CIA came to light in the summer of 2009 when CIA director Panetta learned of, cancelled, and reported it to congressional committees. Despite the fact that no specific operations were ever said to have been authorized, a number of senior congressional leaders expressed outrage (Mazzetti and Shane 2009). According to investigations into the CIA assassination program, Vice President Cheney and CIA personnel worked to conceal the program's existence from Congress and the CIA director himself (Shane 2009). Months earlier, at an event at the University of Minnesota that was covered by a non-profit news website, Seymour Hersh stated that "Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving" (Black 2009 ). Hersh's description of these programs, if not their actual operations, has since been corroborated. With pre-authorization to kill or capture suspected leaders of 'terrorist organizations,' SAP personnel were also tasked with interrogating 'high value' detainees within the network of 'black sites' they established around the world (Mayer 2008). Stress positions, sleep deprivation, liquid diets, and other techniques designed to "disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality" (2007: § 2340) were used to increase the 234 cooperation of detainees, "for such purposes as obtaining from him [sic] or a third person information or a confession" (United Nations Convention Against Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment 1984: article 1.1). Documented in International Red Cross interviews with detainees who were transferred from the 'black sites' to Guantanamo, the use of torture against 'high value' detainees seems to have been consistently undertaken (Danner 2009a, 2009b). Elements of this story emerged at different points, and though the Abu Ghraib scandal unleashed a torrent of reporting and investigation, the public imagination had already absorbed facts about 'enhanced interrogation techniques' and 'enemy combatants.' In fictionalized form, the popular Fox television show 24 (8 seasons, airing 2001-2010), dramatizes the war on terror from the perspective of an elite anti-terrorism operative, and frequently depicts extra-judicial killings and torture. As many have noted, both the substance and the format of the show imply the 'ticking bomb' scenario invoked by apologists for torture (Zizek 2006). While Zizek and other social critics have decried the ideologies embedded in 24's premise (Green 2005), the U.S. military itself was reported to have expressed concerns directly to Fox executives about soldiers and marines imitating the types of torture and interrogation they saw on the show (Buncombe 2007). Regardless of the causal impact of the television show itself, it is clear that well before the Abu Ghraib photos emerged, a general awareness of unusual new practices was circulating in popular culture. A few days after the release of the photos, President Bush made a statement on the subject, stating that: 235 I share a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated [...] Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That's not the way we do things in America. I didn't like it one bit (Tempest 2004). Despite having authorized the use of torture techniques against certain detainees, if his words are taken at face value, he didn't like the look of torture when it is actually practiced. That weekend, protestors gathered around Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, with news reports quoting signs printed in English, reading: "You have given a bad impression of America and Christians" and "US army go home" (Harding 2004a). One image in particular was seen worldwide and became iconic.95 It showed a prisoner, known to the guards who took the photos as "Gilligan" (Gourevitch and Morris 2008), hooded and standing on a box with electrical wires attached to his hands. There has even been some controversy about who exactly that prisoner was, as several Iraqi men have come forward, but DoD sources confirm none of them is the actual prisoner (Scherer 2006; Zernike 2006). The intense global familiarity of the image proved to be a boon to those who wanted to portray American occupation as akin to colonial and other historical injustices. As one student of radical Islamic thought noted, "Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have already provided enough propaganda material to last a generation" and that "the damage caused [...] is irreparable and the end of U.S. torture will not in itself make the United States safer from this generation of jihadists" (Hegghammer 2009). The image 95 The image has been prominent in demonstrations against U.S. occupation in the U.S., Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as appearing on t-shirts, across the internet, and in graffiti. In the perceptive words of a Washington Post staff writer a few days after the photos were aired: "On the streets of Cairo, men pore over a newspaper. An icon appears on the front page: a hooded man, in a rug-like poncho, standing with his arms out like Christ, wires attached to the hands. He is faceless. This is now the image of the war. In this country, perhaps it will have some competition from the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled. Everywhere else, everywhere America is hated (and that's a very large part of this globe), the hooded, wired, faceless man of Abu Ghraib is this war's new mascot" (Kennicott 2004). See the disturbing recreations of the torture at Abu Ghraib using legos at: http://legofesto.blogspot.com/20Q6/08/abu-ghraib- prison-iraq-torture-1 .html, accessed May 3, 2009. 236 that started as a quick digital snap by a Military Police reservist, has had, and will likely continue to have, quite a career. The photo of the hooded detainee on the box, like many of the others that have been released or leaked, was taken by Specialist Sabrina Harman,96 who says that she did so "just [to] show what was going on, what was allowed to be done" (Gourevitch and Morris 2008). In a letter to her father, she wrote that "On June 23 I saw my first dead body I took pictures!" (Gourevitch and Morris 2008). It was Harman's fascination with the grisly and macabre details of violence that led her to take so many photographs. Having been trained to direct traffic around U.S. military convoys, and to work on securing 'law and order' after combat forces took control of population centers, the MPs were not sure what they were supposed to do as prison guards. Another MP from Harman's unit, Javal Davis, was interviewed for the documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and described arriving at the prison: We get there, and we're told, 'OK, put your weapons away, put your trucks away and park them, you're not going to need them any longer.' [...] These people that were there, you know, said, 'Ok, no, you're going to be prison guards, you're going to augment the, the guard force inside.' So our commander was like 'hey, what are we doing, we're not corrections,' it was like, 'our guys never been trained to do anything like that.' So, hence, we put our weapons away, our tons of ammunition away, and then we became prison guards, with no training, whatsoever (Kennedy 2007: 19:12). This sudden shift in mission was accompanied by a general lack of certainty about what they were supposed to be doing. As Ken Davis, another MP, put it: "If ever there was a 96As one article noted, Harman had long talked about being a police officer, and was fascinated by forensics. Her photos, besides touristy photos of herself in Babylon, with other soldiers, in front of Saddam murals, etc, included photos that emphasize forensic details: "mummified bodies, smoked by decay; extreme closeups of their faces, their lifeless hands, the torn flesh and bone of their wounds; a punctured chest, a severed foot. The photographs are ripe with forensic information" (Gourevitch and Morris 2008). Harman almost always appeared in the same pose in the photos, smiling, flashing a thumbs up. Whether taken in a kiddy pool on an army base or next to the body of a murdered detainee, Harman always struck the same pose for the camera. 237 turn in morale, it was right there" (Kennedy 2007: 19:48). Their base was frequently attacked, and they found themselves radically understaffed as the prison population increased dramatically two months after their arrival. Without the training or resources to administer a prison according to regulations, the facility itself consisted of two areas. Abu Ghraib prison was mostly outdoors, where, in the words of a former MI officer named Sam Provance, "the general population prisoners, which were basically a huge mass of humanity [were] thrown into a mudpit, surrounded by concertina wire" (Kennedy 2007: 22:50). The 'general population' was kept separate from prisoners housed in the 'hard site,' the concrete prison once used by Iraqi secret police. The indoor facilities housed women and children in Tier IB, who were, in Javal Davis' words, "the spouses or sisters or cousin of high value detainees that were being used as, uh, 'ok, we have your sister, we have your wife, you know, you need to turn yourself in' -same thing with the, with the little children" (Kennedy 2007: 23:25). Because the military was holding family members as pseudo-hostages, MPs were responsible for ensuring that women and children were kept away from the general population. Sabrina Harman describes being assigned to the hard site "because I'm a female and they needed females working IB, and that's mainly where they stuck me when, uh, Megan Ambuhl wasn't working" (Kennedy 2007: 23:48). For the MPs at Abu Ghraib, their duty meant participating in or witnessing all manner of strange and unpleasant things. What they saw seemed to enjoy official sanction, but that didn't stop some of the soldiers from wrestling with it. Next to Tier IB, was Tier 1 A, the section of the prison reserved for prisoners believed to have high value 238 for intelligence gathering. Harman, like Ambuhl, was enlisted to assist MI handlers in 1A because they are both females, and their presence added to the humiliation of detainees. Finding naked prisoners inside the 'hard site' prison when they arrived. Javal Davis described his first reaction to seeing the inside of 1 A: What's, what's goin' on with the nakedness? Why are all these people naked? You know, I've never seen anything like that before in my life. You know, naked prisoners [laughing uncomfortably] with panties on their heads. In compromising positions, you know, locked up (Kennedy 2007: 35:44). Davis' report of his reaction communicates discomfort and confusion at what he was seeing. Struggling to make sense of what they were seeing, MPs seemed to flounder. They were shocked, exhausted, and told that they were playing an important part in the war. In letters home to her wife,97 Harman described prisoner abuse in detail, although her relationship to it is ambiguous throughout the letters, sometimes describing herself as a witness, and sometimes as a voyeur. One letter, written on October 19, the night she started taking pictures of detainees, reads: The prisoners we have range from theft to murder of a US soldier. Until Redcross [sic] came we had prisoners the MI put in womens panties trying to get them to talk. Pretty funny but they say it was "cruel." I don't think so. No physical harm was done (Gourevitch and Morris 2008). This initial acceptance of how Military Intelligence (MI) interacted with prisoners is accompanied by the rejection of an 'outside' source of criticism, in the form of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Noting that that the ICRC found that U.S. personnel were engaging in 'cruel' treatment of prisoners, Harman disagrees with this characterization, since the humiliation of prisoners did not cause "physical harm." 97 This is the term Harman used when speaking to the journalists who published these letters (Gourevitch and Morris 2008), which would have had dire consequences had she stayed in the military. Over 12,500 U.S. service members have been discharged for 'homosexual conduct' under the 'don't ask don't tell' policy (Lochhead 2009), despite the financial and tactical expense of losing trained combatants in a time of low recruitment (BBC Staff 2005c; Tyson 2007). 239 In another letter written the next night, between 03:00-12:29am on October 20, Harman goes into more detail: They've been stripping "the fucked up" prisoners and handcuffing them to the bars. Its pretty sad. I get to laugh at them and throw corn at them. I kind of feel bad for these guys even if they are accused of killing US soldiers. We degrade them but we don't hit and thats a plus even though Im sure they wish we'd kill them. They sleep one hour then we yell and wake them—make them stay up for one hour, then sleep one hour—then up etc. This goes on for 72 hours while we fuck with them. Most have been so scared they piss on themselves. Its sad. It's a little worst than Basic training ie: being naked and handcuffed.... But pictures were taken, you have to see them! A sandbag was put over their heads while it was soaked in hot sauce. Okay, that's bad but these guys have info, we are trying to get them to talk, that's all, we don't do this to all prisoners, just the few we have which is about 30-40 not many.. .Its time to wake them again!!! (Gourevitch and Morris 2008) Harman's description continues in its ethical ambiguity. Noting that she "kind of feel[s] bad" for the prisoners, "even if they are accused of killing U.S.soldiers," Harman characterizes their treatment as degradation while insisting that "a plus" is that "we don't hit." A discomfort with violence is followed by a description of psychological torture, including sleep deprivation, stress positions, and humiliating prisoners to the point where they lose control of their bladders. She empathizes with the prisoners in a revealing way, noting that "its [sic] sad" and "a little worst [sic] than basic training." The types of sexual and psychological humiliation the prisoners suffered reminded Harman of her own experience of basic training, though as a passing reference presumably shared with her wife, she does not explain this similarity explicitly. Noting that "pictures were taken," Harman anticipates her partner's interest in seeing what was happening. This lack of shame or fear of prosecution is indicative of a perception of legitimacy. Why would low-level soldiers, subject to inspections, urine tests, and commanders' evaluations bother to photograph and write about actions they 240 thought might get them in trouble? As Harman's first letter described, MI interrogators were practicing various forms of humiliation and torture prior to her assignment to the hard site at Abu Ghraib prison. Rather than worrying about being caught, or attempting to sugar-coat her descriptions, Harman's letters reveal her conflicted language for making sense of her duties. Describing a hot sauce soaked hood over a prisoner's face, she states, "ok, that's bad," qualified immediately by "but these guys have info." Insisting that the sort of torture she witnessed and supported only happened to some of the many prisoners, she ends this portion of the letter with an off-hand, "time to wake them up again!" In her descriptions of her duties, Harman implicates herself in what is going on, using 'we' as a pronoun to describe herself and those interrogators, contractors, MI, and others who participated in prisoner abuse. Rather than separating herself from this group with 'they,' she nonetheless uses the anticipated reactions of her wife to create distance, admitting that some practices make her uncomfortable. This ambiguity allows Harman to position herself between empathy for prisoners and the view of her commanders and fellow soldiers, who held that intelligence on armed resistance groups justified harsh treatment. Reading about the Abu Ghraib scandal while serving in Iraq, several members of the Arkansas National Guard compared the prisoners' treatment to the fate that befell U.S. combatants and contractors captured by armed Iraqi groups. Expressing the consensus among the soldiers, Spc. Matthew Hertlein argued that: We're 'expected' [air quotes with his fingers] to uh, be better than they are, you know, so whenever they cut somebody's head off, that's just, you know, an everyday thing, you know, to the people at home. But whenever we do shit like that, it's 'OH MY GOD! They're harassing the Iraqis' But when they cut our heads off, they're just, 'oh, that's what they do' (Renaud and Renaud 2005: d2, ep 4, 19:12). 241 By comparing Abu Ghraib to be-heading, the soldiers minimize the harm done. Hertlein questions the assumption that U.S. forces should treat their prisoners in dramatically different ways from terrorist groups, suggesting that "people at home" have unfair expectations of combatants. In doing so, he questions the essentialism involved in clear good/evil distinctions, as well as the moral superiority implied by it. His comment also points to the ways that a culturally relativist 'understanding' of be-headings minimizes the moral condemnation he and other soldiers would like to hear. Perceiving themselves to be at war with people who make videos showing the torture and de-capitation of U.S. combatants, the moral outrage around Abu Ghraib frustrates the soldiers. The sense of being at war with deadly enemies was echoed by Javal Davis, who described the 1A prisoners as "the lowest scum on the earth." Listing their affiliations to justify his claim, he characterized them as "The Al Qaedas, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Fedayeen, um, Wahabis, just, all terrorist bad guys," concluding "they were American killers" (Kennedy 2007: 24:32). The MPs were told that their prisoners were dangerous terrorists with vital information that could save American lives. Under the direction of MI officers and 'OGA' officials in civilian clothing (Other Government Agencies, usually CIA, but also FBI, NSA or private contractors), MPs saw themselves as part of a team whose mission was to produce intelligence. Ken Davis, another MP, described how when we got to Abu Ghraib [...] Military Intelligence was placed in charge of us. [jump in interview] MI, and OGA, who is CIA, and all these other corporations, these civilian contractors [tone of repugnance] that, that didn't answer to anyone like us, would come in and tell our MPs, 'this guy needs to have a bad night.' 'What kind of bad night?' 'Use your imagination, you can do this, this, this, this, stress positions, loud music, do whatever you wanna do to em, just make sure they don't sleep. We need that information (Kennedy 2007: 38:30). 242 The tasks the MPs were ordered to conduct involved close contact with dangerous terrorists, they believed, men who were active in killing U.S. forces. As it was explained to them by a confusing array of MI interrogators and OGAs, the soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison were as much on the front lines as an infantry battalion. Their mission was to make life miserable for their detainees, who likely held information on future attacks. The war on terror required useful intelligence to target al Qaeda, and the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were told that they were part of the team that could provide it. The techniques approved by the Bush administration were for exactly that purpose, and the legitimating narrative appears to have migrated along with the techniques from top-secret SAPs into wider circulation in the army. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld sent Maj. Gen. Miller to Iraq in order to replicate his 'success' at producing "actionable intelligence" at Guantanamo Bay (United States Senate Committee on Armed Services 2008: 73, 189- 200). Prior to the leaking of the photos that were part of Gen. Taguba's report (on the report and it's reception, see: Danner 2004b; Hersh 2007), Miller's techniques were in use by a variety of agencies and commands without public notice. When confronted with questions about the Abu Ghraib prison photos shortly after their release, Miller read from a mission statement given to him by the JCS, and then went on to describe what he was doing in Iraq: ... conduct assistance to discuss current feasibility to rapidly exploit intelligence and to develop actionable intelligence and to look into the integration of intelligence and the synchronization and future of intelligence and the interrogation operations and then the detention mission— all of those [Inaudible], And so from that, I've got a team of 30 people over here. And so, it is a joint and interagency team that had the military and we had a lot of the intelligence community from the military [...] We also brought three of the Tiger Teams from Guantanamo and are starting to teach strategic interrogation — just how that you move into the intelligence system. We taught that out of the standard army 243 procedures that are taught by [Inaudible] - earned at what's called "Tiger Team University." So they are standard interrogation methodologies. And we brought the detention team, the superintendent of Camp Delta, who was our command sergeant major reservist who was the superintendent of the prison of the largest prison in Indiana - about 3,200 people.. .And what we did is we brought the SOP that we have (italics added, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) 2004). In this statement, he makes a few key details plain. He was sent to integrate intelligence, interrogation, and detention operations, and brought personnel from Guantanamo to teach the techniques and standard operating procedures (SOPs) they had been using. He was then pressed on the Abu Ghraib story by a journalist, and he stated that in: [In] the system that we brought here, the MPs have no authorities other than to do humane detention and execute to the detention authorities that they have been given. You got to [Inaudible] that you understand [Inaudible]. These two missions must be separated [...] In my estimation it was a simple leadership failure. A failure to follow standards... (italics added, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) 2004). Directly contradicting the statement he had just read, which emphasized integrating interrogation and intelligence collection with detention responsibilities, he insisted these "missions must be separated." Ken Davis and other veterans from the MP unit stationed at Abu Ghraib reported being placed under the direct authority of MI and OGA staff, again, contradicting Maj. Gen. Miller's second statement. He characterized the entire scandal as a "failure to follow standards" and a "leadership failure." It probably was, but the question of whose, is disputed. Roman Krol, an MI soldier stationed at Abu Ghraib said that "There were so many changes in policies, what kind of stress positions you can use, for how long, and, um, stuff of that nature... it was kind of confusing" (Kennedy 2007: 34:38). Krol, as an MI soldier tasked with interrogating prisoners, was himself confused about what he was allowed to do. The fact that people like him were directing the reservist MPs is indicative 244 of a situation where 'standards' were minimal, and underemphasized (United States Senate Committee on Armed Services 2008). Former Gen. Karpinski, the commander of the MPs who was demoted for her role in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, stated that: "General Miller is sent to Iraq, to help them get more actionable intelligence from these thousands of security detainees. And General Miller, without hesitation, said, 'look, it's my opinion that you are treating the prisoners too well, they don't know who's in charge, and if you don't treat the prisoners like dogs, you have effectively lost control of the interrogation" (Kennedy 2007: 33:28). The U.S. Senate Armed Services committee investigation lends credence to her view of Miller's role, tracing his involvement in bringing cold-war era communist torture techniques from a survival school into interrogations, and noting that he pushed the teams searching Iraq for WMDs to be more aggressive with their detainees (United States Senate Committee on Armed Services 2008: 189-200). Karpinski and Krol both faced reprimands or charges for their roles in prisoner abuse, yet their observations confirm the reporting by Hersh, Danner, and others, who argued that Miller was sent to Iraq to bring the methods of SAPs and Guantanamo to counter-insurgency efforts. Karpinski has consistently pointed to Maj. Gen. Miller's new SOPs to explain the fact that MPs were transferred out of their normal command, and placed under MI authority. In all likelihood, all of the fact-finding and finger pointing of this scandal would never have taken place, if it hadn't been for Harman and other soldiers' photography. Members of the unit said as much, arguing that without the photos, they would have returned home without notice (Kennedy 2007: 1:12:08). At least one soldier claims to have brought the abuse of prisoners to the attention of his Lieutenant (Kennedy 2007: 245 53:23), but it was Harman's photos that provided the evidence that launched the investigation. On Harman's third night of taking pictures, she wrote a letter which expresses even more conflict than her first. On October 20, at 10:40pm, she wrote: At first I had to laugh so I went on and grabbed the camera and took a picture. One of the guys took my asp [tactical baton] and started "poking" at his dick. Again I thought, okay that's funny then it hit me, that's a form of molestation. You can't do that. I took more pictures now to "record" what is going on. Not many people know this shit goes on. The only reason I want to be there is to get the pictures and prove that the US is not what they think. But I don't know if I can take it mentally. What if that was me in their shoes (Gourevitch and Morris 2008). Harman's empathy for the prisoners extends farther in this letter than her earlier ones, and she explicitly considers the position that prisoners around her were in. This did not lead her to file any reports, or to turn over her photos, but she did continue taking them. One of the more controversial photos was of a dead body, wrapped in plastic and covered in ice. In the photos, Harman and Cpl. Graner, the head of the night watch at Tier 1 A, are standing next to the body. They were told that the man had suffered a heart attack, and went to go take pictures with his remains. After taking a few photos, they realized "he was bleeding in places that you wouldn't bleed from getting a heart attack," (Kennedy 2007: 59:58) and realized that he had been murdered. His body, as some of the photos indicate, showed signs of torture and beatings. According to subsequent investigations, the prisoner was never registered at Abu Ghraib, and he was apparently being kept on ice so that he could be quietly wheeled out with an IV attached, as if still alive (Kennedy 2007: 59:45). Though no CIA or MI interrogator was ever charged with his murder, Harman and Graner were both punished for appearing in photos with a dead body, a practice that is actually quite common among soldiers. 246 According to both prosecutors and members of the unit, Graner was in charge of the night shift, and orchestrated the human pyramid and other abuses that appeared in the photos (Reid 2005; Zernike 2005). Graner was a prison guard before deploying to Iraq, and his onetime commander, Karpinski said that: "Sgt. [sic] Graner, he was sent for, specifically, to work the night shift, because, as he was told, because of his civilian prisons experience, and they needed somebody with that kind of experience" (Kennedy 2007: 40:19). Despite the prosecutor's efforts to paint Graner as a particularly violent and unruly soldier, his fellow MP, Megan Ambuhl, read from a commendation he received for his work on the night shift. It stated: "Corporal Graner, you are doing a fine job in Tier 1 as the NCOIC98 of the MI hold area, you have received many accolades from the MI units here, and specifically from Lieutenant Colonel Jordan. Continue to perform at this level, and it will help us succeed in our overall mission" (Kennedy 2007: 51:15). Needless to say, such high praise from MI units was not sufficient to buttress Graner's claim to have been following orders he believed to be legal, and he was sentenced to 10 years in a military prison for his treatment, and photographing, of prisoners (Associated Press Staff 2005). The investigations all began when Joseph Darby, a member of the MP company, borrowed two CD-ROMs from Graner, hoping to see pictures of Babylon and other places the unit passed before reaching Abu Ghraib. Darby, upon looking at the second disc, found the now infamous photos of prisoners being tortured. He turned the disc into the Army's criminal investigation division (CID), and was called in for questioning. Promised that his identity would be protected, he recalls hearing the voices of the five 98 NCOIC stands for 'non-commissioned officer in charge.' 247 MPs most involved right outside the door. Upon realizing what they had done in calling the five while their witness was still in the room, the CID staff ordered the five to face the wall, and then: Put blankets, all over me, I mean, head to toe, covered in blankets, you couldn't see anything, I couldn't see anything, I, they were leading me. And they rushed me out past them, out the back door, and then pulled the blankets off and said, 'go, get out of here.' And that's the last time I talked to CID about anything (Kennedy 2007: 1:02:18-1:04:43). He and other members of the unit, including Karpinski, recall that immediately after the investigation began, 'amnesty boxes' were put out, and soldiers were asked to turn in any discs, CDs, or cameras they had that might contain illegal material, with no consequence (Kennedy 2007: 1:04:43-l :05:35). From the lack of follow up with Darby, through the effort to collect and control any additional photographs, the official response to these events left much to be desired. Though a number of soldiers faced courts martial, demotion, loss of benefits, and jail time, they were all MPs and low level MI. No CIA or MI officers were charged, and repeated investigations by the military criticized a lax and permissive environment, but did not directly name the SAPs and Maj. Gen. Miller's tactics as contributing factors (Danner 2004a, 2004b). What was accomplished in the Abu Ghraib scandal, was the isolation and personalization of the specific problem of the photographs. When CID and other authorities tried to collect all remaining photos, and when the Bush administration tried to suppress their release (Hann 2004), what they sought to control was the evidence of the crimes. In prosecuting the individuals who appeared in the photos, and none of their commanders or MI and OGA supervisors, the military judicial system worked to individuate the problem, blaming those visibly involved. 248 What was also accomplished was a disambiguation of the hierarchies that are supposed to tether the machinery of the state together. In resorting to the 'hillbilly defense' of blaming enlisted ranked soldiers from Appalachia (Mason 2005), senior officers were cast as incompetent in terms of training, command and oversight, as Miller argued. The basic argument was that incompetent leaders allowed sadistic, undertrained semi-professional soldiers from the middle of nowhere to play frat-boy hazing tricks on detainees. Against this narrative, it is possible to outline another layer of rhetoric that lay deeper in the interactive chains at the heart of the national security state: many of these tactics were authorized and conducted at the direction of senior officials with legalistic cover, care of the OLC memos that have subsequently been released (c.f. ACLU Staff 2009). The Bush administration may have imagined that the SAPs could kill, capture, and torture their way to the heart of al Qaida without anyone noticing, but as the tactics and the 'ticking bomb scenario' discourse of the SAPs spread, they were difficult to control. OLC memos were only meant to apply to CIA personnel interrogating 'high value' detainees, and were quite specific about what was allowed. Yet the program itself was fundamentally lawless, with Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld pre-authorizing the kidnapping and interrogation of al Qaida leaders well before the OLC memos (United States Senate Committee on Armed Services 2008). The rough practices of the front lines were not only permitted, but officially authorized and promulgated prior to any legal opinion legitimating them. As early as 2006, the New York Times reported that, according to interrogators and others familiar with his case, Abu Zubaydah: 249 still weak from his [multiple gunshot] wounds, was stripped and placed in a cell without a bunk or blankets. He stood or lay on the bare floor, sometimes with air- conditioning adjusted so that, one official said, Mr. Zubaydah seemed to turn blue. At other times, the interrogators piped in deafening blasts of music by groups like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sometimes, the interrogator would use simpler techniques, entering his cell to ask him to confess (Johnston 2006). Zubaydah's capture took place 16 weeks before the first OLC memo, and his treatment while held in a CIA prison in Thailand certainly constituted torture. Much has been made of the frequency with which he was subjected to water-boarding after that practice was allowed by John Yoo's later memos, written on behalf of the OLC. Yet it is clear from the timeline of events that abusive interrogations were used before these legal opinions were delivered, and were authorized by the White House (Shapiro 2009). The MPs stationed at Abu Ghraib found themselves living in a world of naked prisoners, confusing lines of authority, and constant reminders that their ability to generate intelligence would save the lives of other U.S. combatants. For their visible participation in what happened there, many have faced charges. The wider cultural politics of torture, the institutional blurring SAPs helped foster, Bush administration insistence that al Qaida and Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan were not covered by Geneva Conventions, and the mixing of all of these trends with a stubborn series of armed groups in Iraq can explain, if not excuse, the interactive context that the MPs found themselves expected to make sense of. Some used the opportunity to have fun at Iraqi prisoner's expense, some grew depressed and withdrawn, and some took photographs. It is that last group that explains how the whole question of U.S. torture practices came to light, even if none of the photographers actually turned in their photos. The pictures proved difficult to contain, and their existence forced both media and 250 political elites to respond in some way. As 'inscriptions,' the photos convert the interactions of U.S. forces and Iraqis into evidence, producing images which hail the viewer into the role of witness. The MPs from Abu Ghraib were the most discussed combatants to face prosecution for their conduct in Iraq, but they were not alone. A vast administrative bureaucracy enforces military rules, with elements at the company level, as well as at the Pentagon. The next section looks to records of a few of those investigations, noting the ways that evidence and competing notions of appropriate battlefield behavior are framed and operationalized. 2: Investigations of deployed combatants The sheer number of people who have been killed in Iraq due to airstrikes and shootings, accidents involving armored vehicles, mistaken identities, or simply being too close to the scene of an attack is staggering, in spite of official reticence to count them." Almost all of these incidents pass without significant public discussion, meriting a short item on the nightly news or a small dispatch from a foreign correspondent. But a few particular cases have grabbed a great deal of media attention. This section looks to cases that have not been widely discussed. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the DoD, and has assembled a database of over 10,000 pages of documents relating to civilian casualties (accessible via: ACLU Staff 2008). These documents include the results of preliminary investigations, petitions by 99 See the final section of this chapter, where that reticence is examined in more detail. 251 Iraqi nationals for compensation for property damaged or a loved one killed, and much more. Most of the forms relate to preliminary investigations, seeking to establish whether or not a full investigation and criminal charges are warranted. If initial investigators concluded that evidence of a crime was strong, interviews, crime-scene investigations (often weeks or months later), and other information gathering techniques are applied, and the case is referred to the military judicial system. One of the specific cases in the ACLU archive relates to the Navy's Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) review of the killing of the cousin of (then) Iraqi Ambassador to the UN100 in Al Shaikh Hadid, a village near Haditha, on June 25, 2005. The records released involve dozens of sworn statements, interviews, summaries of findings, test results, and reviews of conflicting reports (Navy Criminal Investigation Service 2006). At the time, Ambassador Sumaida'ie called the incident "a cold blooded murder" and stated in a letter to colleagues that "I believe this killing must be investigated in a credible and convincingly fair way to ensure that justice is done, and the sense of grievance is mitigated, and to deter similar actions in the future" (BBC Staff 2005b). In response, the acting U.S. ambassador to the UN sent her "heartfelt condolences" to Sumaaida'ie. At the time, the military insisted that a thorough investigation would be undertaken. Yet as the documents released to the ACLU indicate, that investigation confronted two very different accounts of what happened. What is not in dispute is that marines entered the Sumaida'ie family home during a Cordon and Knock (C&K) operation, which 100 Samir Sumaida'ie was an Iraqi exile and UK businessman, prior to his service as Iraq's UN ambassador from July 2004 - April 2006. He was named ambassador to the U.S. in 2006, a position he holds as of summer, 2009, see: http://www.iraqiembassy.us/Ambassador.htm. accessed April 27, 2009. 252 involves blocking nearby intersections, knocking on people's doors, and then searching the houses in a given area. A C&K is considered a less hostile version of the standard Cordon and Search (C&S), in which no knocking takes place, or a raid, in which surprise, speed, and overwhelming force are applied. Also undisputed, is that Mohammed Sumaida'ie was shot in close proximity to an unloaded rifle. His family, who were home during the incident, insisted that he greeted the marines at the door, led them to the weapon, and was then shot and killed without any reason, the same version of the story was given by his uncle, Ambassador Sumaida'ie. The marines on the search team, several of whom submitted to polygraph tests, stated that they had not seen him prior to searching the home. The marines described leading the family, who were all in the front room (except for Mohammed), out into their courtyard, and attempting to use a few words of Arabic and hand gestures to ask if anyone else, or any weapons, were in the home. Receiving a response in Arabic that was not understood, and a hand gesture they interpreted as meaning that the house was now empty, the marines then moved to search it room by room. One marine said that he entered a bedroom where he saw the young man holding the AK47, and immediately fired, killing him with one shot through Mohammed's neck. Forensic analysis of the scene conducted in December (more than five months later), was reported to have indicated that Sumaida'ie was facing the door when he was shot. However, one marine officer, not a part of the original search party but who was there for the after-action report, stated (inconsistently, across five months of interviews) that he heard a marine at the scene discuss how the dead MAM (military aged male) was leading them to a weapon when he was shot, for an unknown reason (Navy Criminal Investigation Service 2006: 253 19515). The discrepancies in his account were noted repeatedly in multiple investigatory summaries and preliminary findings, as was the variance in the family's story of the raid. The case file reveals that the practice of investigation was also hampered by security concerns at several points, as Haditha and the surrounding area was a scene of intense fighting between the U.S. Marine Corps and Sunni militias. In order to produce enough basic security to conduct their investigation, the NCIS team required over 100 combat personnel, including helicopters and armored vehicles, to move around the area (Navy Criminal Investigation Service 2006: 19565). In their final conclusion, the investigating officers found that the marines did not show biophysical signs of evasion while answering questions under the polygraph, and pointed out the inconsistencies in the victim's family's account. The polygraph test seemed to strengthen the believability of the marines, while the conflicting stories of the victim's family members led to a dismissal of their version of events. The officer who claimed to have overheard a marine give a similar account to the family's version of events was also characterized as inconsistent in his multiple statements. One of the marines on the search team noted, of the officer in question, "I think it was the first time he saw a dead body like that" and that "He [sic] eyes teared up and he left the room and sat down on the stairs" (Navy Criminal Investigation Service 2006: 19524). His status as a non-combat officer is reinforced in this description, an 'outsider' from the marines on the search team, and the final conclusions dismiss his recollections. The officer's emotionality at seeing Mohammed's body positions him as less reasonable than the seemingly rational marines who do not report any psychological issues related to the killing. 254 The investigators therefore found that the marines acted within the bounds of the ROEs, and that "All logical investigative leads have been completed. Criminal culpability cannot be established" (Navy Criminal Investigation Service 2006: 19517). In this authoritative voice, relying on the practices of truth verification portrayed frequently on U.S. crime scene television shows (i.e. 'lie detecting' polygraph tests, the analysis of bullet trajectories, and the repeated interviewing of witnesses), the investigators concluded that the marine shooting the Iraqi UN ambassador's cousin in the throat was not a criminal act. The uniform responses of the search team were found to be authoritative, and to outweigh the testimony of the bereaved family. The ability to give the same answer in repeated questioning is treated as a measure of accuracy, and while rational, may prejudice authorities against the testimony of traumatized victims. The report indicates several important features of any investigation of an incident in a war zone. It scrutinizes the events with the precise tools of military investigation, following a model derived from civilian legal practices, but not according to civilian standards of rights. The question is not about who shot Mohammed Sumaida'ie, or whether he was actually a threat. In a war zone, combatants are authorized to kill those who they believe threaten them. In a C&K operation, the intention is to find weapons. In such a situation, a soldier or marine is expected to kill anyone who has a weapon without hesitation. The military justice system uses civilian law enforcement techniques and discourses linking legitimacy to verifiable measurements and consistency, but the law being applied is not a prohibition against murder. Indeed, the investigators themselves were likely armed, and were surrounded by combat platoons and heavy weapons. Instead, the question asked, is whether the soldier or marine in question has violated the rules of 255 engagement issued to them through their chain of command. Dead bodies are not, in and of themselves, evidence of wrongdoing. Violence is only excessive when it is applied in ways that are inconsistent with the orders issued from above. In the end, this case is only one of many, and was only noted and investigated to such an extent because it involved the killing of a prominent pro-U.S. Iraqi politician and former exile. As quoted earlier, Ambassador Sumaida'ie told his colleagues "I believe this killing must be investigated in a credible and convincingly fair way to ensure that justice is done, and the sense of grievance is mitigated, and to deter similar actions in the future" (BBC Staff 2005b). While an investigation was certainly conducted, it does not seem that the "grievance" was mitigated, or that "similar actions in the future" were deterred. Rather, the investigation found that the marines in question behaved appropriately. In a situation where violence is normalized and routine, those searching houses are expected to kill anyone holding a weapon, especially if they do anything unusual or surprising. The ROEs stipulate that soldiers and marines are authorized to use deadly force to protect themselves or their team mates, so investigations need only establish whether killings took place according to a reasonable perception of danger. As of spring 2009, there has been some analysis of these thousands of pages of military investigations whose complete tabulation would offer a look at what regions, time periods, and situations led to thorough investigations, reprimands, or reparations. They refer to nearly 500 specific incidents which led to internal reviews according to military regulations, and while it seems that most of the investigations did not find evidence of criminal behavior by U.S. forces, many of them resulted in monetary 256 payments to Iraqi nationals and disciplinary procedures like loss of rank, financial penalties, and prison sentences. The official press release notes that there were 496 requests for financial compensation in the ACLU FOIA archive (479 in Iraq and 17 in Afghanistan), family members received payments for 164 of the incidents (ACLU Staff 2007). According to an analysis by a New York Times reporter, "204, or about 40 percent" of the requests were rejected because the human or financial damage was "directly or indirectly" associated with combat. Of those payments that were made, "at least 87 were not combat-related, and 77 were condolence payments for incidents the Army judged to be combat-related" (Zielbauer, Lehren, and Wong 2007). Furthermore, in roughly half of the cases, the military admitted responsibility and made "a compensation payment." For others, a "condolence" payment was issued, "limited to $US 2,500" and given without an admission of fault or wrongdoing (Human Rights Watch Staff 2007). In total, "more than $32 million" was paid out to "Iraqi and Afghan civilians for noncombat-related killings, injuries and property damage" (Zielbauer, Lehren, and Wong 2007). Of the documented killings described in the archive, "133 were allegedly killed for driving too close to a convoy, while 59 were allegedly killed at checkpoints" (Stockman 2007). Unlike these relatively unknown cases which were not publicized by the DoD or Bush administration and only came to light due to the ACLU's FOIA requests, there have been several very high profile investigations and legal proceedings which did result in substantial public debate. These include Abu Ghraib, the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis in Haditha after an IED went off (Harris, Beaumont, and al-Ubeidy 2006; Walker 2007), the 'baiting' of Iraqis with weapons and other equipment by U.S. sniper teams (Jelinek and 257 Burns 2007), the murder of detainees made to look like an escape (Associated Press Staff 2007a), and the rape of a 14 year old Iraqi woman followed by the murder of her and her family in Mahmoudiya (Associated Press Staff 2007b; Wolfson 2009a, 2009b, 2009c). The initial invasion of Iraq was politically contentious, leading a number of academics, NGOs, and IGOs to monitor the course of fighting carefully, although the Iraqi health ministry was reportedly ordered by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to cease hospital-based reporting of deaths and injuries (USA Today Staff 2003). While specific airstrikes were reported to have killed civilians, and a large number were killed in the initial bombing of the country's military and political infrastructure, the question of officially counting them was a matter of debate. 3: Body counting In this section, I turn to how the official U.S. policy of not counting Iraqi dead was explained and legitimated. Looking at how officials evaluate the usefulness of body counts, their discursive constructions of war and battle are analyzed, with an eye towards how 'Iraqi dead' were made meaningful. Focusing on the assumptions and ethical frameworks embedded in the discourse of military efficiency, the goal is to draw out the administration's construction of who is authorized to speak on behalf of national security, and whose categories will be used to evaluate the killing of Iraqis. When journalists ask questions of official spokespersons, they assert a relation between themselves and those to whom they are asking questions. Like any use of language, from an ethnomethodological standpoint, these questions are used to achieve a particular interpretation of social order. Reporters, in the very 'doing' of their jobs, are in 258 the position to ask public officials for information about their decisions. The relations between journalists and public official often involve distancing practices, by which reporters attempt to portray themselves as 'neutral,' even when confronting officials with a demand for legitimation (dayman 1992). One of the most common ways of doing so is to cite another source, and ask for a comment, inviting an engagement with some reputed fact. Politicians and other officials, when confronted by reporters, can be expected to offer a legitimate defense of their role in events, which can be framed on practical, moral, or other bases, but which cannot usually be sidestepped. Accountability to the expectation of competence means that those spokespersons or leaders who cannot offer defenses of their positions can be mocked, both with in-person 'guffaws,' and on cable news and entertainment programs. This form of accountability is not determining, just as gender accountability does not 'cause' people to 'do' gender in a particular way. It does mean, however, that departing from shared expectations can have interactive consequences. In a March 15, 2002 press conference, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was confronted with the contradiction between the official policy of not keeping a running body count of the number of people killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. This came despite reports from field commanders of numbers of enemies killed in particular battles, often made through embedded journalists or on media tours. His response to the policy versus practice of counting the dead reads as follows: Well, you know — who knows? Different people have different views as to how to handle things. I guess I'm so old I watched the Vietnam War, and the body counting and didn't — never found it impressive. It — it is — I know what I know, and I know what I don't know. And how can I stand up here when I know I don't know how many people were killed? I don't. And I don't think anyone does. But 259 there ~ there may be people who are in positions where we can be more comfortable estimating (United States Department of Defense 2002a). In a self-presentation that departs from the technocratic assumption of expertise, he indicates that he was not impressed by the body counts of the Vietnam era. The comparison between Iraq and Vietnam is both implied and undermined, since refusing to keep body counts is constructed as a 'lesson learned' from the earlier conflict, making the two dissimilar. In an unpredictable move, Rumsfeld then reflects on the epistemology of body counting, arguing that he simply does not know, and does not think "anyone does." Circling back around to the substance of the journalist's question, he then concedes that there might be others who can be "comfortable estimating" in a way that he is not. Rumsfeld goes on to describe why he didn't allow a body count at the Pentagon after 9/11/2001. Arguing that the death toll estimates from New York City proved wildly inaccurate, he insists that he was vindicated. He speaks at length on the subject, without offering any specific arguments, and then a journalist tries to ask him a follow-up question. The question gets as far as "Mr. Secretary," when General Pace (Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs) interrupts the journalist with the following comment: If I might add — if I might add to that: Having been a rifle platoon leader in Vietnam, asking questions from Washington about how many dead today is truly counterproductive and can seriously, negatively impact the safety of our forces on the ground. We want them to be focused on executing their mission, doing it safely, taking care of their fellow soldiers and Marines and getting the job done. And at the tactical level, it may be important to the tactical commander how many enemy killed there are. But at the strategic level, what we are about is to free Afghanistan from al Qaeda and Taliban and to ensure that that country does not become again a haven for terrorists. So at this level, asking questions about how many dead today is truly counterproductive (United States Department of Defense 2002a). The disciplining move is clear, as Pace tries to hold the journalist accountable to a national interest in "the safety of our forces on the ground." The journalist's question 260 about how many people have been killed by U.S. forces is constructed by General Pace as an active hindrance or danger to soldiers and marines. This draws on the 'national security' discourse which produces military and executive branch elites as uniquely patriotic, and empowered to speak on behalf of the national interest in a way that others may not. Whether aboard the flag draped aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego where President Bush declared "major combat operations in Iraq" to be over,101 or in the Pentagon press conference, this discourse serves to shore up the authority of the military and to undermine any who would question it. Above, we can see Pace drawing a sharp demarcation between those who truly have the safety and success of the troops in mind (himself and the military bureaucracy) and those who would meddle with "counter-productive" questions which "can seriously, negatively impact the safety of our forces on the ground." Thus the military alone is empowered to speak for the safety of the troops, to define what topics of discussion are to be permitted, and to cut off any dangerous line of questioning by recourse to nationalist discourse which locates patriotism in and around the national security bureaucracies of the state. This is an accountability move, and it is also productive. The military is constructed, through this discourse, as the vanguard of the state, as the leaders best able to speak to national interests. Similarly, loyalty to the country is interpreted as unconditional support for the troops, their mission, and the institutions deploying them. The journalist's patriotism is questioned by Pace's statements, while he uses his own service in Vietnam to position his own loyalties as beyond dispute. 101 See: http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPQLITICS/05/01/bush.carrier.landing. accessed July 2, 2009. 261 In a November 9, 2004 press conference, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan invoked this same discourse when asked to comment on a public health survey which estimated Iraqi deaths due to violence since the U.S. occupation began. As a peripheral figure in the national security bureaucracy, he can invoke a similar discourse to Pace, but cannot position himself in the same way. McClellan's job is to speak on behalf of the commander in chief, giving him less of an opportunity to assert a privileged position vis-a-vis national security: McClellan: "Go ahead. Russ, welcome back. It's been a while. How was the Nader campaign?" Q: "It was wild. (Laughter.) Johns Hopkins, in its public health ~ last month estimated that the war in Iraq resulted in 100,000 Iraqi deaths. The administration has said in the past that it doesn't do body counts, but do you consider 100,000 to be in the ballpark of the number of Iraqis killed as a result of the war?" McClellan: "I don't know of any specific estimates on the civilians. I know that the United States military goes out of its way to minimize the loss of civilian life. And what we are working to achieve in Iraq is an important cause that will make America more secure. And we're working side-by-side with the Iraqi-" Q: "-So you're killing Iraqis to make America more secure?" McClellan: "-with the Iraqi people to move forward on free elections, because a free Iraq will help transform a dangerous region of the world and make America more secure. And our men and women in the military are doing an outstanding job; they are serving and sacrificing in a very important cause." Q: "If I could follow up on that, did the President have an estimate before him on the number of Iraqis killed-" McClellan: "I'm not aware of any precise estimate or estimate of that nature" (White House Office of the Press Secretary 2004b). McClellan, after joking with the reporter, allows his question. After being confronted with the figure of 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the war, occupation, and resistance, McClellan asserts that "I know that the United States military goes out of its way to minimize the loss of civilian life" and in his second response, that "our men and women in the military are doing an outstanding job; they are serving and sacrificing in a very important cause." In both cases, McClellan makes the troops and their sacrifices the 262 primary topic of conversation, not those that they kill. A question about the number of Iraqis killed is answered with the carefulness of U.S. forces and the moral importance of their mission. In his answer to the first question, McClellan starts with the personal pronoun, stating that "I don't know of any specific estimates." He then makes a statement about the U.S. military referring to "it." His third sentence switches to a "we," referring to efforts in Iraq as an "important cause" that will make "America more secure." Whether seeking to hold everyone in the room accountable to a collective interest in national security, or only to associate the administration he speaks for with the armed forces, McClellan's use of "we" does not have the same rhetorical impact as Pace's. This shifting identification allows the journalist to hold McClellan accountable to the actions of that "we" in Iraq, asking: "So you're killing Iraqis to make us more secure?" Taking McClellan's association with the mission in Iraq at face value exposes him to the demand to explain and defend the actions of U.S. forces there, the accusative "you" carries the implication of responsibility. Nonplussed, McClellan continues with his statement, ignoring the interruption, and emphasizing the ways that success in Iraq will make the world a better place. He refers to "our" troops, again associating himself and his listeners with the national security interests he asserts, and states that "they are serving and sacrificing in a very important cause." Implying that the question of how many Iraqis have been killed somehow contradicts the idea that U.S. forces are suffering, McClellan is interrupted a second time by the journalist, who then asks specifically if President Bush has seen 263 estimates of Iraqi war dead. McClellan, answering only for himself, replies that he does not know of any "estimate of that nature." Sometimes the us-you distinction is clearly drawn, as in the question posed to Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem (Joint Staff), about Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan: "We've — Admiral, we've heard from here that you're not in the business of body counts. But can you at least give us a general sense — we've heard a lot about civilian casualties. We haven't heard a lot about the Taliban forces" (United States Department of Defense 2001a). This distancing can be at its most extreme when discussing mistakes or morally illegitimate actions, as in this question from a 2005 press conference on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan: "on the bombing in Afghanistan, is it your understanding that the civilian deaths occurred inside a building that you all meant to bomb, that they were the families of the fighters that you were going after, or was it a missed target?" (United States Department of Defense 2005b), Here, the reporter refers to the military as "you all," which allows the reporter to ask probing questions without being implicated in the answers. In other instances, reporters switch back and forth between 'us-you' and 'we' formulations. The following four questions were all posed during a PBS News interview with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, which was concerned with operations in Afghanistan in 2001. "How is this affecting our strategy? In other words, are we still bombing these sites even though we know there may be civilians in there?" The interviewer, Jim Lehrer uses "we" and "our" when talking about the military, including himself and his viewers in an interpretation of national identity implying that individual citizens should regard the activities of the armed forces as 'our' activities. But a few 264 questions later, Lehrer switches to a more confrontational tone: "Isn't it important to know how you're doing in terms of killing the enemy? No?" When the answer given is unspecific, he follows up, switching back to "we": "But are we into the thousands in terms of dead Taliban fighters?" After Secretary Rumsfeld responds, and after a few clarifications, Lehrer switches back and drops the 'we,' in asking "Why are you being so careful?" (United States Department of Defense 2001b). Lehrer was not the only one to use this tactic, as the following 2002 question about operations in Afghanistan shows, even in a single question, journalists can use pronouns tactically to include or distance themselves, to create more or less antagonism, and to accept, or reject, nationalist formulations of identity: "Secondly, I know you're not doing body count, but did you inflict heavy casualties on the attackers, or did we fade away into the night?" (United States Department of Defense 2002b). In a May 10, 2005 briefing with Pentagon Spokesman DiRita and Director of Operations (Joint Staff) Gen. Conway, a journalist, after asking about whether troop levels in Iraq were 'sufficient,' asked a question similar to the one posed to Rumsfeld three years earlier. Highlighting the contradiction between battlefield commanders giving estimates of enemies killed, and the institutional policy of not keeping count, the journalist asks: Q: "And the second question is, could you discuss this fairly new development of talking about enemy casualty counts? Tommy Franks said 'we don't do body counts,' and that was certainly the point in Afghanistan. But now we're hearing a hundred here, 50 there. Could you explain why?" Gen. Conway: "Well, you haven't heard me mention body counts because I don't think it's something we should do as a matter of course. In this case, that number has slipped out. It has happened before. It does add perspective, but I don't think it's something we'll do as a matter of course." 265 Q: "Why not? Why not do it as a matter of course? I mean, doesn't it show some sort of progress?" Conway: "It's not a metric that I think we want to use to gauge our relative levels of success." (United States Department of Defense 2005a) Despite admitting that battlefield commanders have adopted the habit of estimating the numbers they have killed in particular operations, Conway rejects the reporter's assumption that such reports must emerge from a shift in policy, personalizing the question and insisting that this was not something he had done. He then offers his negative opinion of counting, and then emphasizes that battlefield reports "slipped out," adding "perspective," but not as a matter of policy. His statement implies that body counts were emerging because of a breakdown in authority and control of information. As the occupation of Iraq seemed to be drawing out, the official policy of not speaking about enemies killed was increasingly ignored by local commanders, who were eager to demonstrate that they were, in fact, accomplishing something. Arguing with Conway's assertion that such counts will not be done "as a matter of course," the journalist presumes that counting enemy dead is a stand-in for "progress." Conway then disagrees in a most interesting way: "It's not a metric that I think we want to use to gauge our relative levels of success." Conway's argument presumes that there are better metrics, that such metrics are beings used, and that this particular way of thinking about war is somehow less effective or less instrumentally valid than what the experts at DoD are using. He turns a question regarding the contradiction between local commanders and official policy into a question of how to evaluate success in Iraq. 266 In all of these exchanges, efforts to assess the impact of U.S. combat forces in terms of how many people they have killed are resisted. Some speakers personalize the question, insisting that they do not know of any such number. Others imply that the question itself is un-patriotic. Both styles of response imply that yes, people do in fact die in wars, and no, it isn't important to know how many of them there are. This is a far cry from the emphasis on individual accountability that the CID and other military investigations used to hold individual MPs responsible for Abu Ghraib. Despite the fact that an American aid worker found a body count document shortly before she was killed (Buncombe 2005), and despite consistent efforts by NGOs and others to calculate the number of Iraqis who have been killed since the U.S. invasion of their country (c.f. BBC Staff 2005a; Cockburn 2005; Ford 2003; Iraqbodycount.org 2009; Steele and Goldenberg 2008), there is a mismatch between the record-keeping individualization practices of military justice, and a willingness to aggregate that data in order to assess the overall scale of the killing. For the families of victims, the counting practices may not be highest priority, but for historians and others interested in comparing conflicts, the unwillingness to provide (or allow, Associated Press Staff 2003) a count points to a lack of interest in assessing consequences. The Iraqi government, not necessarily sharing this lack of interest, recorded 87,215 of their citizens killed in violence since 2005 (Gamel 2009). In the next and final section of this chapter, I analyze a discussion of small unit tactics in Iraq between two retired Colonels as a window into how contradictory and overlapping discourses about war constitute the rhetorical space for evaluating U.S. combatants. I conclude with a theoretical and historical reflection on these two discourses, and their place in modern conceptualizations of warfare. 267 4: A public discussion of tactics: rhetorical frameworks and ethical evaluation One of the documentaries cited in the previous two chapters was produced by a filmmaker embedded with the Fourth Infantry Division and aired on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer in January 2004 (Adler 2004). Describing the film as a window on how U.S. forces were operating in a post-Saddam occupation environment, the presenters introduced and showed the film. Following the film, two retired officers, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (U.S. Army) and Col. Gary Anderson (U.S. Marine Corps) discussed the tactics visible in the film. These include Capt. Fittsi's callous discussion of Iraqi police casualties, the quasi-judicial use of detainees as informants in exchange for early release "like police back home" (Adler 2004: 1:10-1:29), detaining Iraqi men guilty of proximity to attacks, taking souvenir photos with hooded detainees, and threatening to shoot an uncooperative civilian. Terrance Smith, the show's moderator, asks the Cols, to reflect on how the witnessed actions will lead to bringing about "U.S. objectives in Iraq," inviting a public discussion of military theory and practice, through the connection of tactics and strategy. The two men do not explicitly do so, failing to make the sorts of observations and critiques of U.S. tactics that would be far more abundant as the war continued. British field officers complained about U.S. combatants being overly trigger happy and culturally unaware in both Afghanistan (Gall 2007), and Iraq (MacAskill 2006; Norton- Taylor and Wilson 2006). Similarly, the internal critiques that led to a renewed emphasis on counter-insurgency strategy and the 'surge' arose in often harsh 'lessons learned' 268 evaluations of strategy and tactics in Iraq by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Gen. Petraeus, the Iraq Study Group, and others (c.f. 12 former Army Captains 2007; Biddle 2006; DeYoung and Ricks 2007; Flaherty 2007; Kaplan 2006; Pilkington 2007; Tran 2007a). The endorsements that both men give to the tactics witnessed in the film are mixed with comments that could be interpreted as mild rebukes, but never stray far from legitimating what they have just seen. Col. Gary Anderson, in his opening comments, bluntly asserted that: An important point to make is that the end state that we, the imperial United States is attempting to achieve in that country is not to have Americans kicking down doors. Doors have to be kicked down in guerrilla wars and suspects have to be hunted down, and so forth. We eventually want Iraqis to be doing that. That's the end state (Online NewsHour Staff 2004). Setting the tone for the discussion, Anderson argues that what Iraq requires, and U.S. policy seeks to achieve, is a situation in which Iraqis once again kick "down doors" in their own country. Given the Bush administration's rhetoric at that time about rebuilding Iraq as a beacon of democracy in the heart of the Arab world, this seems a prescient lowering of expectations of the "end state" of U.S. occupation: producing an Iraqi security force to take its place. After both men had spoken, neither had addressed the initial question, and the moderator asked Lt. Col. Peters "what do you think about the tactics employed and whether or not they'll be effective?" who responded: .. .And this is a terribly tough job in the toughest part of Iraq. The tactics already are effective. These are the tactics that we introduced this autumn that got us Saddam Hussein and that got us literally hundreds of the hardest core terrorists and several thousand of the fellow travelers, mid-level, lower-level insurgents. 269 Now, again, you look at that tape and it's easy to take it out of context and see women crying and children weeping. Well, soldiers don't like to cause that. But what you don't see fascinates me. You don't see soldiers beating people with rifle butts. Nobody is shot. Now before Operation Iraqi Freedom, when doors were knocked down by Saddam's secret police, men were shot on the spot, tortured in front of spouses, children. When they were taken away, they never came home. Women were raped in front of husbands (Online NewsHour Staff 2004). Peters, beginning his utterance with a sympathetic description of the circumstances the soldiers found themselves in, then switches to declarative sentences, insisting the tactics conducted by U.S. Army combatants in the film were already "effective." His confidence that the soldiers are doing what they should be doing is supported by his claim that their operations have significantly disrupted insurgent organizations. Arguing that the arrest of a number of senior Baath Party members and military officials from the Hussein government were evidence of success in counter-insurgency, Peters' statements reinforce the official description of post-invasion Iraq combat as 'clean-up' operations and de- Baathification. At the time, Bush administration officials insisted that Baathists accounted for most of the resistance to the U.S. occupation and violence more generally. 102 This simplification missed the ways that urban Shia and Sunni communities were organizing themselves around local protection, by treating all resistance as essentially linked. The heavy-handed approach to all resistance led to the banning of newspapers and 102 The premise that anti-occupation resistance was based on loyalty to Hussein was mocked early in 2004 by hip hop poet Immortal Technique: They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam, But that's bullshit, I'll show you why it's totally wrong, Cuz if another country invaded the 'hood tonight, It'd be warfare through Harlem, and Washington Heights, I wouldn 't befightin 'for Bush or white America's dream, I'd be fightin 'for my people's survival and self-esteem, I wouldn't fight for racist churches from the south, my nigga, I'd be fightin' to keep the occupation out, my nigga (Immortal Technique, Mos Def, and DJ Green Lantern 2004). 270 harsh crackdowns on Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Militia (Harding 2004b; Hendawi 2004).103 Peters then switches topics mid statement, having begun with the "tough job" that soldiers encounter and insisting that their tactics are effective, he then seeks to legitimate the activities witnessed in the tape. Arguing that someone could "take it out of context" and emphasize "women crying and children weeping," he then explicitly compares U.S. combatants to agents of the Hussein era secret police. Shifting the topic of conversation from the tactics of the army and how they are supposed to lead to strategic objectives like democratization, Iraqi sovereignty, and the restoration of public services, he describes in detail the kinds of brutality that took place "before Operation Iraqi Freedom." Juxtaposing the behavior of U.S. combatants as they smash in doors and search homes with the Iraqi Special Security Organization, run by Qusay Hussein, offers a basis for criticizing the former regime's considerable cruelties. It does not necessarily enlighten the public about how U.S. combatant's tactics will lead to stability, democracy, or peace in Iraq. After three sentences describing how horrible the secret police used to be, Peters continues: So the people we are going after are the hardest of the hard core, the ones that will never be our friend. [In the film] The journalist asked the question of one of the soldiers, 'won't we be making enemies?' In most of Iraq, we've made a lot of friends or these people who just wanted Saddam gone, but among the hardest of the hardest core, of the same minority, we will never be friends; we've got to break their power so the rest of Iraq can live free. 103 Despite being branded a terrorist by U.S. officials, Sadr called for (and the Mahdi Militia observed), a number of cease-fires (Freeman and Londono 2008; Tran 2007b), despite U.S. military raids on some of its leaders (Raghavan 2008). Sadr's spokeman, al-Araji, warned in a 2006 interview against seeing Iraqis as "Americans in training." and insisted that one could be an enemy of both the U.S. and Saddam Hussein (al-Araji and Foreign Policy Staff 2006). It took several years before U.S. commanders and diplomats were able to restart negotiations with militia groups after years of hard-line tactics. 271 Finally, these tactics are happening in less than 10 percent of Iraq. Most of Iraq is relatively or completely at peace, and just as in the United States, you use different tactics in a small town in Kansas than you would in the worst urban districts of our nation. So in Iraq we use many different kinds of tactics. But these tactics, however regrettably, are necessary for now to give Iraq a chance (Online NewsHour Staff 2004). Transitioning from Hussein's secret police to insurgents, Peters associates the two through a lack of transition, implying continuity between the torturers and rapists he described as having kicked down doors under Hussein's rule and those resisting U.S. occupation. He characterizes them as "the hardest of the hard core" of opponents, "that will never be our friends." Casting a small minority of ex-Baathist agents as essentially constituting the Sunni Arab insurgency, Peters describes the kind of enemies against whom aggressive military operations might be justifiably aimed. Instead of explicating how the tactics seen in the film might lead to political or strategic objectives, he argues that they are simply enemies whose power "we've got to break so the rest of Iraq can live free." His argument relies on a construction of a "hard core" of insurgents who must be defeated through the use of deadly force and military detention, while ignoring what social or political effects the operations may have had on non-hard-core-Baathists whose homes are smashed up in raids or whose loved ones might be detained on the side of a road. Peters concludes his response to how the tactics portrayed in the film will 'work' by arguing that they take place in only a small area of Iraq, echoing the official insistence that "Most of Iraq is relatively stable" (White House Office of the Press Secretary 2004a) which was also the basic talking point from the "half a dozen CPA officials in the press office [who] worked on Bush's 2000 presidential campaign or are related to Bush 272 campaign workers" according to Federal Elections Commission (FEC) filings (Krane 2004). Insisting that a politically hostile media was focusing on the bad news from Iraq, this was an interpretive framework adopted and reiterated by administration and military spokespersons at that time. The problems in Iraq, they argued, were due to biased media coverage, not policy or implementation. Thus far, Peters' statements are in line with such a standard line of argument, but he then makes a revealing parallel between U.S. domestic law enforcement, arguing that "you use different tactics in a small town in Kansas than you would in the worst urban districts of our nation." In this articulation, the combat zone consists of "the worst urban districts" of the U.S. and the 'Sunni triangle' north of Baghdad. Presumably, these areas share characteristics which uniquely justify the use of more violence than in other areas, and the inhabitants are intractably hostile to their neighbors, requiring force to break their grip on power. As the discussion continues, Peters goes on to make a second statement, justifying what was shown in the film, adding that "if in that tape they sometimes look rough around the edges" the audience must remember that they have been fighting for some time, have lost friends, "And really, in the real world, they're behaving with amazing restraint." The real world to which he refers is apparently not caught on film, but is a place where soldiers were making friends, rebuilding infrastructure, and where the use of force was minimal. The film did not show the sort of wanton violence that Peters associates with the former government of Iraq, but nor did it show judicious restraint or respectful relations between soldiers and Iraqis. Warning against just the sort of relational and ethical analysis this dissertation offers, he goes on to say that it's "Easy for us to sit in a comfortable studio or a comfortable American home and criticize the soldiers. Their 273 job is indescribably tough." Peters is right that deployed combatants are under stresses and subject to traumas that most civilians do not experience, but his insistence that the tape was unrepresentative is an important point to reckon with.104 While it is probably true that much of the mundane work of occupation and military life went less documented than firefights and house raids, and that much of it was never uploaded or included in final edits, it is worth noting that the very presence of camera crews can alter the way combatants interact. One marine who testified to abuses he witnessed and participated in Iraq made this point cogently: Anytime we did have an embedded reporter with us, our actions changed drastically. We never acted the same. We were always on key with everything, did everything by the book (Iraq Veterans Against the War 2008: 26). Thus two contradictory factors are at work. On one hand, both combatants and embedded reporters were less likely to record, upload, or pass along clips which did not feature anything deemed significant, exciting, or controversial. On the other hand, those combatants who were being recorded by media or friends were less likely to swear, use force, or criticize their officers. Between the two opposing pulls, the video recordings that have been made and edited down for public witnessing provide an 'unrepresentative' but fascinating sample of face-to-face interactions. The final editing process seems to bias towards exciting incidents, while the camera operator's initial presence seems to deter some behaviors. Pressed yet again by the moderator to comment on what they had seen in the video recordings, the two panelists were asked what units preparing to deploy to Iraq might have learned from those who preceded them. Anderson, having visited marines in 104 For a discussion of representation, witnessing, and making things public, see the dissertation introduction. 274 training, summed up their new counter-insurgency strategy while referring to an interaction shown in the film:105 ".. .basically, what they're doing, is the approach is we can be your best friend or your worst enemy — you decide. You decide. But make that decision. And they had some Arabic experts training new military governors, and the only ... to take an example from the film that we saw, they're training them to say, to that police chief, how about bringing Mohammed in for a cup of tea tomorrow?" Terence Smith: "Instead of 'show up tomorrow morning'..." Col. Gary Anderson: "But the bottom line is Mohammed had better show up tomorrow morning. The captain got that right, you know? They respect power in that part of the world; sometimes maybe a little bit more velvet glove. But I think they're doing okay." Terence Smith: "Colonels, both, we have to go. Thank you. I appreciate it very much." (Online NewsHour Staff 2004). Referring to "Arabic experts" who provided cultural training for U.S. marines, Anderson provides the only substantive response to the film that either of the Colonels offered. Referring to Capt. Fittsi's commanding tone when ordering an Iraqi police chief to bring in an officer too scared to come to work (see footnote 4), Anderson uses the training he saw marines receive as a basis for a gentle critique.106 The moderator also notes Fittsi's commanding attitude, and then Anderson once again insists that Fittsi's fundamental point, rather than his tone, was legitimate, "the captain got that right." He concludes with 105 The sequence of interaction they are referring to takes place immediately before the selection analyzed in chapter four, and reads: Captain Fittsi [in full body armor, with a cigar, is sitting in a chair next to an air conditioner, his shoulders slumped. The Iraqi police chief is standing in front of him]: "He comes to work, or he's fired. I'll talk to em." Iraqi police chief: "Because, uh, uh-" [indecipherable, as the narrator talks over them, indicating that IPs are unhappy because so many of their colleagues have been killed]. Fittsi: "You're correct [Iraqi police chief says something indecipherable].. .tell Mohammed, I want to see him tomorrow morning. Tell Mohammed I want to see him tomorrow morning." Iraqi police chief: "If, if, if I-" Fittsi: [interupting] "-I want to see you, I want to see Mohammed, he, you, and me, we need to sit down, tomorrow morning, we need to iron this out." (Adler 2004: 2:57). 106 'Cultural sensitivity training' has recurred as a touted solution to the unpopularity of U.S. combat forces, especially in relation to the 'surge' and counter-insurgency strategy of Petraeus (BBC Staff 2007). 275 a cultural generalization about how "they respect power in that part of the world," another hasty but mild critique ("maybe a little bit more velvet glove"), and a vague affirmation that what is happening in Iraq is "okay." The discussion ends as the moderator thanks both of the Cols., but a great deal is left implied by their statements, and some of the comparisons and assertions they make merit further unpacking. Anderson began the discussion with an insistence that finding Iraqis to do exactly what U.S. forces do is the end goal, insisting that kicking down doors is the essential work of security and counter-insurgency. This is debatable, especially given a 'hearts and minds' strategy that depends on Iraqi cooperation, but is uncontested in course of their televised exchange. His vision of an Iraqi security force that can discipline and control the Iraqi population is as Utopian as either men get, and neither asserts the kind of liberal idealism advocated by neoconservatives (Muravchik 1992) or President Bush who argued that "A secure and free Iraq is an historic opportunity to change the world and make America more secure. A free Iraq in the midst of the Middle East will have incredible change" (White House Office of the Press Secretary 2004a). Instead he looks towards a future Iraq in which Iraqis kick down each others' doors. Peters, responding shortly thereafter, explicitly compares U.S. soldiers to Iraqi secret police, using the opportunity to highlight the horrible things that are not seen in the documentary. The comparison seems intended to show U.S. forces in a positive light, yet it is also a treacherous line of argument, given that the former Iraqi government's human rights record served as part of the narrative legitimating its overthrow. Peters implicitly acknowledges that under both Saddam Hussein's rule, and under occupation, a lot of people have their doors broken down in the middle of the night. The fact that U.S. forces 276 don't necessarily kill on sight is used as an ideological defense of the violence they do use. Rhetorically, the comparison introduces a scale of brutality, which relativizes the behaviors witnessed in the film. Recalling past horrors seemingly makes present insults less egregious. Yet in this line of reasoning, U.S. combatants, like Iraqi secret police, are seen as potentially dangerous to Iraqis, the U.S. forces being less so. Using a scale of brutality, and the moral comparisons it enables, does not allow for any stark us/them moral distinctions, however, or at least, not when assessing tactics. The comparison Peters draws between U.S. combatants and Baathist security agents would find a great deal of global resonance a few months later in 2004, when leaks from DoD investigations began to indicate some of what was happening inside Abu Ghraib prison (Hersh 2004c). Having converted a notorious site of torture and disappearance into a maximum security detention facility, U.S. forces reopened the prison that was used against opponents of the Hussein regime as a space for conducting 'enhanced interrogations' of detained Iraqis, including sexual assaults, culturally specific humiliations, beatings, perpetual nudity, sleep deprivation, and isolation (Amnesty International 2006; Borger 2004; Hersh 2004a). Though the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib will feature prominently in the discussion later in the chapter, it is important to note the way that torture in that specific prison enabled the equation between U.S. forces and Saddam Hussein's secret police that drove militia recruitment in the months to come. Peters' comparison, when treated schematically, yields the two by two below: 277 Figure 1 U.S. combatants Baathist secret police Potential victims Potential victims Opening the door to an examination of the violence experienced by a population at the hands of multiple political actors allows for an assertion of progress, and that is precisely what Peters seems to be seeking. In drawing out his description of the brutality of Iraqi agents, his argument implies that no such similar horrors could possibly issue from U.S. combatants, and that Iraqis should be thankful to be treated as they are, as opposed to how they used to be. The problem with this line of legitimation of U.S. combatant activities is that it invites scrutiny of exactly what they are doing, and how they are treating those they interact with. Allowing for comparison admits the possibility of U.S. combatants engaging in egregious behavior, a premise that enables systematic oversight. In an article in the New York Review of Books, Danner quoted the confidential "Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation," which featured prominently in discussions of who at DoD and in the administration knew about prisoner abuse, and when. Rather than assessing the institutional politics of abuse, the ICRC report is helpful in this discussion, because it provides a technocratic description of U.S. occupation forces and their interactions with Iraqis. As the international body in charge of 278 overseeing compliance with Geneva Convention protections, this is an organization accustomed to making exactly the sorts of comparisons implied by Peters: Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property. They arrested suspects, tying their hands in the back with flexi-cuffs, hooding them, and taking them away. Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people... pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles. In almost all instances..., arresting authorities provided no information about who they were, where their base was located, nor did they explain the cause of arrest. Similarly, they rarely informed the arrestee or his family where he was being taken and for how long, resulting in the de facto "disappearance" of the arrestee (Danner 2004b). Once one has made the dangerous equation of U.S. combatants with other human rights abusers, an accounting of exactly what they are doing is the next logical step, for the sake of proper comparison. This has been the discursive strategy of human rights activists, international organizations, and is ostensibly the policy of the legal and investigatory authorities of the U.S. armed forces. Peters' original statement comparing U.S. forces to Iraqi secret police was correct, in that the documentary does not show evidence of summary executions or sexual assaults, but it does show exactly the sorts of arbitrary arrests, interpersonal violence, sensory deprivation, and due-process-less authority described by the ICRC. Yet the legal and ethical oversight of combatants has been resisted by officials and public voices sympathetic to the military. Insisting that U.S. forces are dramatically less brutal than agents of the Hussein government is accompanied by a variety of strategies for avoiding too close a focus on coalition violence. Peters follows his erudition of past horrors by Baathist secret police with an abrupt switch to insurgents, describing 279 them as the "hardest of the hard core." In defining them as people who could "never be our friends," Peters groups insurgents and Baathist torturers together in an almost essential predilection towards antagonism. Justifying the aggressive interactions seen in the film, Peters argues that such interactions only happen in a small part of the country, and only to "hard core" insurgents. Justifying the harsh methods witnessed in the film, Peters turns to a policing discourse to explain why U.S. combatants have "made a lot of friends" except, of course, amongst the "hardest of the hard core." In Anderson's words, "They respect power in that part of the world." Peters states that "you use different tactics in a small town in Kansas than you would in the worst urban districts of our nation." This metaphorical comparison, represented below, yields a different comparison from earlier: Figure 2 U.S. combatants U.S. police Inhabitants of (Sunni Arab) insurgents "worst urban districts" In this framing, U.S. violence is not compared to other potential human rights abuses, but instead to the seemingly legitimate violence of police in the "worst urban districts." By linking U.S. state violence in both Iraqi and U.S. cities, Peters invokes some of the ideological trappings of the 'domestic.' Soldiers are not repressing or terrorizing people; they are protecting them, just as police do. Peters' comparison of military operations against Sunni insurgency to urban law enforcement echoes a comment by a soldier in the film (see p. 188), who explains how 280 his unit takes captured Iraqis, and induces them to serve as informants against others. The soldier explains that what they do is "Similar to what the police do back in the states, so. It works out pretty well" (Adler 2004: 1:10). Given what is portrayed in the film, the similarity between inner city police teams and raids by U.S. combatants would either imply that a complete lack of due process and probable-cause are commonly accepted crime fighting strategies in the U.S., or that these tactics are considered appropriate in certain places where 'normal' rules do not apply. For Peters, invoking the "worst urban districts" conjures such a space, a place akin to a war zone. The genealogy of this argument is circular: metaphors of combat zones were applied to U.S. cities as part of the 'war on drugs' (Elwood 1994: 22-24), and then the violence of police in those same cities, once constituted as war-like, is used as a metaphor to legitimate the conduct of deployed combatants. The popular imaginary of the United States has clear images of urban areas as outright warzones in films like Robocop (1987) and Demolition Man (1993). Even scholars interested in public health and globalization have used the phrase "war zone" to characterize inner city neighborhoods (Drucker 1990; Sasson 2002: 169). More complicated depictions of urban violence like Boys in the Hood (1991), Traffic (2000), and HBO's series The Wire (2002-2008), have contested this construction of inner cities as self-generating war zones, instead illustrating the ways that police brutality, foreign policy, systemic racism, and collapsing infrastructure are constitutive of underground economies based on drugs. The war declared on the communities (both U.S. cities and rural Latin America) most ravaged by heroin and cocaine (Elwood 1994; Lusane and Desmond 1991; Scott and Marshall 1991) looks very different when the 281 heroes are not elite paramilitary police, but people trying to survive. Neighborhoods where racialized poverty, the decline in social support, and the collapse of industrial manufacturing have all converged with a criminal justice system that disproportionally incarcerates poor and dark-skinned people, at massive social and economic expense (MacCoun and Reuter 2001: 24-32). The resulting devastation is called a war zone by those who wish to see more officials with guns 'laying down the law,' although it seems that the 'war on drugs' has proved to be about as effective as the long abandoned 'war on poverty,' and both have left very different marks on U.S. cities. One statistical study of public perception found that the frequency and intensity of network television news reports of crime correlated with four times more variance in self- reported fear of crime than the official rates as collated by the FBI (Lowry et al. 2003). Despite public perceptions of rising crime and murder rates, U.S. cities have been increasingly safe places to live since the early 1990s. The number of law enforcement officers killed with guns in the line of duty has also declined in recent years (Bureau of Justice Statistics). Nonetheless, inner cities have been demonized in the public imagination (Macek 2006), and the types of policing tactics that led a New York "street crimes unit" to fire 41 shots at an unarmed black man, have not been substantially challenged in public debate. Despite killing him as he reached for a wallet, the four white officers involved in that killing were acquitted of all charges (Fritsch 2000), something which only makes sense in a space in which police violence is already implicitly authorized. The lack of significant public debate allows the city to be imagined as space of brutal violence, regardless of statistical trends. 282 Both scholarly and think-tank analyses of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) police teams have shown a long term and rising militarization of policing that has accompanied DoJ-DoD cooperation in the 'drug war' (Kraska and Kappeler 1997; Lynch 2000; Weber 1999). Police departments have created these units to utilize military equipment made available by the DoD and funded by acts of Congress, using it for everything from hostage rescue situations to serving no-knock warrants (Kraska 2001). SWAT teams, like U.S. combatants in Iraq, use tactics originally developed for hostage rescue by military Special Forces like the U.S Navy SEALS, the Army's Green Berets and Delta Force, Israeli Special Forces, and the British and Australian Secret Air Services (Kraska 1998). Initiating a raid with 'flash-bang' grenades that stun the senses, SWAT teams break down doors, rush from room to room, and have their automatic weapons and pre-positioned snipers on a hair-trigger. In numerous incidents, U.S. SWAT teams have burst into the wrong homes, unannounced, and injured or killed occupants.107 A small town mayor was subjected to a marijuana related SWAT team raid on his home in Virginia, saying "My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs." The reporter summarizes what came next, "he -wearing only underwear and socks- and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated for hours. They were surrounded by the dogs' carcasses and pools of the dogs' blood" (Davis 2008). Raids of this type are conducted on the basis of no-knock warrants, meaning that police are allowed to initiate a search without warning, in order to prevent the destruction of evidence, or retrieval of weapons. If even the mayor of a small 107 For a U.S. map of SWAT related incidents, each of which links to a news story, see: http: //www, cato. org/raidmap 283 town can be subjected to the 'dynamic breech and search' operations of a SWAT team, why talk about them in terms of the "the worst urban districts"? SWAT teams were created as part of a militarization of policing that followed the declaration of war on certain drugs, and the assessment of drug cartels as national security threats (Kraska 2001). They were legitimated by demonizing urban areas, using metaphors of war and a long history of racist policing of black communities (Lusane and Desmond 1991: 25-53, 67-86) to justify equipping police with automatic weapons, armored personal carriers, and tactical body armor. In turn, as with Peters statement above, military operations, and soldiers' occupation duties in Iraq are explained and legitimated in relation to these policing practices. This circular movement of legitimation is part of a wider militarization of the U.S. in the post-Vietnam period, a revalorization of violence, independence, and willingness to act that defined masculinity against feminist and peace movements from the 1970s (Boose 1993; Gibson 1994). In the closing years of the cold war, Hollywood studios worked with the Pentagon to produce high budget films portraying the military in a heroic light (Jeffords 1994; Pollard 2002). By selectively granting tax-payer funded cooperation to studios, Pentagon officials have been able to exert a subtle influence on the content of war films. In the 'war zone' imagined by references to the "worst urban districts," the combatant is in a situation of constant danger, and is equipped with the weapons and training to survive. Imagining a place in this way assumes that violence will occur, and seeks to equip the agents of the state with the most effective means possible to survive and impose order. They are, in the expression made famous in James Bond films, 'licensed to kill,' while serving in war zones. 284 In theoretical terms, this is a territorialization of ethics, assigning a 'zone' in which the appropriate performance of courtesy and acknowledgement of human/civil rights end, and brutal tactics are permitted, ignored, or excused. The concept of a place beyond law or ethics has been described in both IR and political theory as the result of a delineation of Inside/Outside (Walker 1993). On the inside, the sovereign state rules according to limitations imposed by custom (including law and state capacity, both of which can be seen as customary), whereas 'outside,' a 'state of nature' is retained and states can engage in activities prohibited 'at home.' In this way poststructural IR theory comes to consider boundary practices which construct these spaces as autonomous and separate (c.f. Guillame 2002; Inayatullah and Blaney 2004; Jahn 2000), and studies of foreign policy note the ways that violence against 'others' is justified through these bordering practices (c.f. Campbell 1992; Doty 1996; Hansen 2006; Weldes 1999a). Even though international markets creates numerous linkages and relationships through which commodities, capital, labor, ideas, and other flows pass (c.f. Abu-Lughod 1989; Cox 1987; Gilpin and Gilpin 2000; Marx and Engels 1967; Wallerstein 1974), legal regimes and the academic study of states have long depended on a strong notion of sovereignty, despite its conceptual and practical contradictions (c.f. Ashley and Walker 1990; Biersteker and Weber 1996; Inayatullah 1996; Spruyt 1994). The political theorist, Giorgio Agamben, argues that the concept of sovereignty always implies an 'exception,' a condition imposed by the sovereign when suspending the law. His studies based on the Nazi legal theorist Karl Schmitt (1995, 2005) lead him to argue that the "camp" (concentration or refugee) is the quintessentially modern form of law, a space where the "biopower" (Foucault 2007, 2008) of the state is exercised over 285 individuals as organisms rather than as subjects or bearers of rights, a condition Agamben calls "bare life." This approach to state power has inspired a great deal of recent scholarship, particularly relating to programs of extraordinary rendition and indefinite detention (c.f. Agamben 2005; Alexander and Hawkesworth 2008; Butler 2004; Diken and Laustsen 2002; Enns 2004). Indeed, there is much in Agamben's work that lends itself to interpreting the condition of "bare life" that Guantanamo detainees have found themselves in with regard to forced feedings (c.f. Laurance 2007; Schmitt and Golden 2006; White 2006), a practice endorsed by U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler who ruled that the camp's staff had "a need to preserve the life of the petitioners rather than letting them die from their hunger strikes" (Rosenberg 2009). While reading the sovereign power to suspend the law in a state of exception as symptomatic of camps, Agamben's analysis also points in another direction. Where some see the achievement of fascism and genocide as a slide into a state of Orwellian 'permanent emergency' style legal exceptions, analysts have also noted that much of what took place in World War II had already happened in Europe's colonies, from institutionalized racism by ancestry to gassing civilians (c.f. Arendt 1968; Cesaire 1972; Lindqvist and Tate 1996; Stratton 2003). Rather than interpreting the extermination camp through the singular lens of legal exceptions, it can also be seen as the domestic application of techniques of bureaucratized violence developed for control of colonized peoples. Colonizing nations first used machine guns, bombers and poison gas in their colonies, but turned them on one another in both world wars (Lindqvist 2001). Even the white supremacist and eugenic ideology that Nazism was built upon had predecessors in 286 U.S. and South African thinking (c.f. Friedlander 1995; Kiihl 1994; Mosse 1985; Stratton 2003). What began on the 'outside,' entered the 'inside' in the guise of a camp, or zone, where rules no longer applied. Agamben makes this point when describing the basis of sovereignty according to Schmitt, who: shows how the link between localization and ordering constitutive of the nomos [Greek: law].. .always implies a zone that is excluded from law and that takes the shape of a "Free and juridically empty space" in which the sovereign power no longer knows the limits fixed by the nomos as the territorial order. In the classical epoch... this zone corresponded to the New World, which was identified with the state of nature in which everything is possible (Locke: "In the beginning, all the world was America") (1995: 36). For Europeans, America was a zone where European laws and self-conceptions were irrelevant, it was an empty space, both in terms of population, and morality. That it was not empty, that people lived there in organized communities with religious, ethical, and cultural systems (including rules of war), meant that the construction of this zone required an image of its inhabitants consistent with their subjugation or annihilation (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: ch. 3). What was not empty could be emptied, and was. Estimates of the number of people killed in the Americas vary, depending on how death from disease, starvation and slavery are counted, but some estimates are as high as 90% of the population, around 70 million, died from colonial violence and rule (Churchill 1997; Friedberg 2000; Todorov 1984a: 133). Todorov, describing the difference between the publicly performed and ritualistically meaningful human sacrifice of the Azteca and mass murder by Spaniards makes the point cogently: 287 Massacre, on the other hand, reveals the weakness of this same social fabric, the desuetude of the moral principles that once assured the group's coherence; hence it should be performed in some remote place where the law is only vaguely acknowledged: for the Spaniards, America or even Italy. Massacre is thus intimately linked to colonial wars waged far from the metropolitan country.. .The individual identity of the massacre victim is by definition irrelevant (otherwise his death would be a murder): one has neither time nor curiosity to know whom one is killing at that moment. Unlike sacrifices, massacres are generally not acknowledged or proclaimed, their very existence is kept secret and denied. This is because their social function is not recognized, and we have the impression that such action finds its justification in itself.. .Far from the central government, far from royal law, all prohibitions give way, the social link, already loosened, snaps, revealing not a primitive nature, the beast sleeping in each of us, but a modern being, one with a great future in fact, restrained by no morality and inflicting death because and when he pleases.. .What the Spaniards discover is the contrast between the metropolitan country and the colony, for radically different moral laws regulate conduct in each: massacre requires an appropriate context (Todorov 1984a: 144-5). The appropriate context for massacre was, prior to the 20th century, inevitably amongst those who Europeans described as less than fully human. In their early conquests in the New World, the Spanish created a precedent for what a merciless application of modern weapons against lightly or unarmed peoples could achieve. The European experience of military dominance in the colonies continued after settlers arrived, giving rise to the frontier zone of 'Indian country.'108 The U.S. Army continues to draw on symbols from that time, as in the tank and helicopter operating 'cavalries,' dress uniforms with saber, hat, and spurs, outposts and forts named after indigenous peoples, and the explicit depiction of service in the 'global war on terror' as taking place in "Injun country" (Kaplan 2005: 3-15). What took place in the departments of Texas, New Mexico, and other U.S. Army administered territories is glossed over in 108 It is interesting to note that east of Pittsburgh, there is a town called "Indiana," though is no currently recognized reservation or indigenous nation in Pennsylvania. The name, like the people to which it was applied, was driven further west by post-Revolutionary War military campaigns, and applied to the Indiana territory by an act of Congress, prior to statehood in 1816. Hence the shifting signifier "Indiana" once named an area of Pennsylvania, and now names a mid-western state. 288 Kaplan's work and in army materials more broadly. Yet for scholars of colonialism, fascism, and genocide, the European and Euro-American mass killings of indigenous people are paradigmatic of what results when modern, rational men imagine themselves as outside of the bounds of social conventions. Both the U.S. Army and Marines Corps emerge from long and brutal histories which are not part of their normal self-image (Boot 2002), or the dominant style of narration in U.S. history textbooks (c.f. Loewen 1995, 2000; Zinn 1995). All told, a list of military and armed-covert engagements from 1776-2003 stretches 36 pages long (Churchill 2003: 43-79). Until the post-World-War II reliance on intelligence agencies, the Navy and Marine Corps were tasked with militarily securing U.S. business interests during riots, revolutions, civil wars, and other periods of 'instability.' From the battles against the "Barbary pirates" in Tripoli from 1801-5 (Churchill 2003: 45), to landing in the Ivory Coast to punish locals for attacks on American slave traders in 1843 (Churchill 2003: 49), forcing Japan to open to western trade in 1854 (Churchill 2003: 50), and to dozens of Caribbean invasions over the decades (on the U.S. in this region, see: Chomsky 1985; Lindsay-Poland 2003; Scott and Marshall 1991), the Marine Corps was the long arm of U.S. power projection overseas. In the words of Major General Smedley Butler, testifying before congress in 1935: I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile force - the Marine Corps - .. .and during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers... I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents (Churchill 2003: 40). 289 For the Army on the great plains, and the Marines landing on island after island, each institution evolved in the context of frequent and bloody war fighting in zones where those they encountered were expected to be dangerous and violent, places where, as Anderson put it, "they respect power." While wars had always been fought between European powers, tactics like bombing communities from the air (with and without poison gas), machine gun retaliations against villages or tribes for resistance, and concentration camps were all first tried out in the colonies (Lindqvist 2001; Lindqvist and Tate 1996). The actions of all participants in World War II showed what these techniques can do to modern industrial and urban communities. While American and British planes purposefully bombed German and Japanese cities, the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe applied industrial logic to the systematic mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped, along with political enemies, Soviet POWs, Poles, and queer men and women. Often seen as the paradigmatic evil of the modern world, Agamben's 'camps' are places where people become bare life, stripped of all subjectivity. They are zones, in other words, set up within a state's jurisdiction, but beyond the reach of the moral and legal codes that restrict interpersonal and political violence. On the 'outside,' in "Injun country," there aren't any rules. It is this space of exception that has accompanied western thought and practice at least since the invasion of the Americas. It is a 'war zone,' and what is permitted and encouraged by one's commanders would land a civilian in jail or an electric chair. This cultural imaginary can conceive of urban areas, other nations, and entire civilizations as combat zones outside of the bounds of golden rule ethics; "They respect power in that part of the world." 290 Despite constructing zones of authorized violence, modern militaries exist as complex assemblages. There are military psychologists who design training scenarios that develop automatic reactions and purposefully reconstruct the identities of combatants (Grossman 1995: 5-39; Rose 1999: 15-52). There are legal investigatory and oversight bodies, contract auditors, lobbyists, public relations and advertising specialists, and a host of agencies and programs that collectively compose, reproduce, and shape the military as a culture and formal institution. Those on the front lines who pull triggers have an enormous bureaucracy, not to mention logistical political economy, behind them. Accordingly, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has not been constructed solely along the lines of Peters' second set of comparisons, in terms of "hard core" bad guys against whom merciless tactics are warranted. The U.S. military maintains legal oversight of the actions of its troops through the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is enforced through the officer corps and a number of investigatory commands. This is in line with the sort of ethically informed oversight that the idea of rules and laws of war would dictate. To return to Peters' first comparison between U.S. forces and Iraqi agents under the Hussein government, the recording and investigation of misdeeds follows from a view of our forces as relatively more ethical, rather than absolutely or essentially. Always contradictory, confusing, and highly political, the mix of legal oversight and culturally specific attitudes towards war zones leads, sometimes, to the prosecution of soldiers and marines for exceeding the permissible parameters of activity. But it also makes it possible for tens of thousands of Iraqis to die without being counted. The discourses shaping descriptions of war zones and legal responsibility cannot be reconciled simply, since they make very different demands on combatants. CONCLUSION "Critics, unable to access source material to make informed arguments, could offer only scattershot critiques of U.S. policy. When they did, they were criticized for giving comfort to the enemy. Even as the Iraq experiment began to turn sour in the summer of 2003, and look- even to untrained eyes -like a widening insurrection, questions of the most natural sort, like reality-based estimates drawn from long experience -such as how many troops were really need to secure the country, or had we thought about how an Arab democracy is actually constructed- drew attacks. Pictures from Iraq, vivid and often harrowing, replaced the comforts of secrecy. But there was, through much of 2003, the added "with us or against us" leverage of young men and women in harm's way. America, for the most part, stayed on message.'''' -Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine (2006: 295-296) Throughout this dissertation, the goal has been to focus on explicating how U.S. combatants in Iraq are made available as instruments of state power. In the IR literature, particularly in the post-structural and critical theoretic traditions, questions of 'how' and conditions of possibility have often been answered by referring to public debates and official statements, looking to processes of nationalist identification. This study has sought to anchor itself in empirical interactions, focusing on the modes of activity that allow groups of people to make sense of each other and their surroundings. The first two chapters argued that how we look at and describe war limits the types of 'things' (in Latour's sense) that can be brought to bear in our arguments. When traditional Realpolitik approaches assume military bureaucracies as instruments of state power, they brush over the processes that form the heart of this analysis. Instead of using standard IR methodologies, this study turned to EM, STS, and the Foucauldian tradition 291 292 in order to render the practices of combatants legible as processes of production, making and remaking the world. By consistently applying an interactionist or relational approach, this study departed from the methodological individualism of much social scientific research, arguing that characteristics often assumed to reside in the heads of people can be explained as accomplishments of social relations. The third chapter emphasized the ways that masculinity and military culture are linked, pointing to a variety of situations in which 'doing gender' coincides with 'being a soldier.' By pointing to the processes that make social identities recognizable and accountable to others, the close readings of interactions in Iraq highlighted the contingent and unpredictable nature of interaction. Soldiers and marines, along with their families, doctors, and other community members, are active in constructing the social identities they 'have.' The stereotype of the warrior as emotionally unengaged, unwilling to show weakness or pain, and highly competitive, often holds -not because 'that's what soldiers are,' - but because of the specific ways of 'doing' everyday life that are accountable to shared normative expectations. There is genuine labor involved in these productions, labor that utilizes the conceptual resources of popular culture, official policy, and other discourses as tools. Rather than seeing discourse as something that 'does' things, the analysis of combatant's interactions presented in this dissertation shows how intersubjectively shared discourses make certain roles, metaphors, or comparisons available to people. In their conversations, different discourses may be drawn upon, as when the soldiers debating politics described themselves in terms of two very different images of freedom. One argued that he was free to believe whatever he liked, so long as he performed his duties. The other argued that 293 thinking "the wrong things" might put him in danger. Even as they disagreed with one- another about the effectiveness of their mission, both described themselves in ways that made them available for the missions and duties assigned to them. Pointing to the collaborative production of hierarchy, Chapter Three also illustrated the conversational basis of authority, examining how 'pulling rank' works through assertiveness and the ability to invoke a chain of interactions that would lead to severe punishment. By yielding to authority in a reiterative pattern, combatants reproduce the basis for issuing orders and silencing debate. Chapter Four pointed to the ways that this authority operates in combat scenarios, again highlighting the role of interaction in establishing shared definitions and plans of action. In the movement of troops on patrol, in gaining permission to kill a wounded man from a helicopter, and in the search and arrest of Iraqis, the collaborative accomplishment of hierarchy and authority were visible. Chapter Four expanded the analysis of interaction beyond the verbal and non- verbal communication between people in the discussion of relations mediated through weapons, vehicles, fuel, and supply-chains. In firing weapons at animals and into the soil, in bumping cars and buses of roads, and in burning massive quantities of fuel, combatants interact with 'others' in ways that have both immediate and cumulative effects. Linking combatant's practices to the political economy of military contractors, Chapter Four also highlighted the basic inputs and outputs that contemporary U.S. consumption patterns require when they are organized for profit, rather than military or economic efficiency. The last chapter widened the scope of analysis, turning to the Abu Ghraib scandal and discussions of body counts in order to draw out the subject-positions that official discourses hail combatants into. The debate between two retired Colonels provided a 294 basis for discussing the logics and genealogies of these discourses, and a reflection on how they are linked to accountability practices. In conducting this research, Hilbert's (1990) argument on the position of EM in the micro/macro debate was a recurrent source of inspiration. Along with Latour, Hilbert is one of the few social scientists who have explicitly argued for the locality of interaction, denying an ontological leap between scales of analysis. Latour insists when 'measuring' objects like the GDP, what analysts are doing is not checking their facts against reality, but producing the very object they describe (1991, 2008). 'GDP' is a statistical generalization meant to decribe the economic interactions of 300,000,000+ people living in the territory claimed by the U.S. government over a one year period. It is a 'thing' to the extent that measurement practices and public debates call it into existence. I would argue something quite similar is at work in the 'thing' called war. There are countless clerks and statisticians who work at the Pentagon, and collectively, they generate the chains of data collection and synthesis that describe 'the Army' as a singular whole. Similar to GDP, a description of 'U.S. forces in Iraq' is a generalization about the interactions of thousands of people who all wear uniforms and were transported to Iraq. Such descriptions are shorthand, and useful, when making comparisons, but only if they are called into being through similar record keeping practices. The Mahdi Militia, like the U.S. Marine Corps, is a collection of men with guns which operates in Iraq. It is bound together through very different practices, however, and treating these two as objects may lead to more confusion than clarity. As I have sought to demonstrate, the distinction between micro and macro is problematic, because it misses the ways that everyday interactions can have historical 295 impacts, and the ways that major policy shifts begin with email exchanges and memos. Face-to-face interactions can have tremendous and wide ranging implications, as seen by the impact of photographing what happens at work late at night, in the accidental shooting of an ambassador's cousin, or in the hostile search of the wrong home. Drawing non-local attention due to publicly displayed photos, videos, or reports, the actions of a few soldiers at a checkpoint can become epistemic focal points for political mobilization. Similarly, "macro" processes are not really macro, since it was face-to-face meetings and the exchange of memos via email that built a program of kidnapping, torture, and assassination. Emerging from an official understanding of combat zones was part of a discourse of Realpolitik, the Bush administration's way of characterizing war lent itself to dire warnings and extreme 'ticking bomb' scenarios. The widely held assumption that the military is an instrument capable of destroying enemies was buttressed by extraordinary powers and the loosening of rules. In failing to consider that 'means' have effects on 'ends,' the extraordinary rendition, torture, and Guantanamo programs all contributed substantially to perception in Iraq (and elsewhere) that Americans were sadistic bullies intent on humiliating Islamic communities. This belief contributed to militia recruitment, non-cooperation with U.S. forces, and seven years of non-stop political violence in Iraq. Combining the cruelty and dishonesty of those high- profile departures from ethical standards with the everyday violence of house searches, check-point shootings, and aggressive driving meant that the U.S. military was widely seen as an unwelcome source of danger. In pursuing goals that IR theory traditionally described as 'idealist,' the Bush administration set in motion a series of bureaucratic moves that have transformed the 296 federal government, and altered the U.S. armed forces in startling ways. Seeking to defeat evil, they authorized torture and initiated a policy of assassination with remote controlled aircraft that the Obama administration has continued. All of these means were legitimated through appeals to lofty ends, and visions of democratic dominoes falling in the Middle East ultimately provided a narrative that justified the 'shock and awe' destruction of a country. As 'offensive liberals' (cf. Miller 2004), the Bush administration and its allies in Australia and Britain planned to ensure security through expanding the base of democracies in the parts of the world were terrorist organizations recruited and organized. This end goal has backfired spectacularly, and U.S. efforts to track terrorist organizations have been sidetracked by focusing on Iraqi insurgent groups, as well as the widespread perception that fighting the Taliban is "America's war" (Shah 2008). For the military itself, the use of 'stop-loss' and the tempo of deployments changed National Guard units accustomed to providing flood or ice-storm emergency relief into frontline combat units. What was once seen as an easy way to pay for college classes became a draft, and hundreds of thousands of service members came back from Iraq with physical, emotional, and economic losses that the society will bear for decades. These processes were all initiated through a chain of interactions that began with executive branch assumptions and ended in young people boarding flights for a place they knew little about. Once they arrived, U.S. forces were too few, undertrained, lacking the ability to communicate, and empowered to use deadly force whenever they perceived danger. Initially quartered in palaces and bases once used by the Hussein government, U.S. forces developed a chain of sprawling bases, connected via highways, and featuring such 297 comforts as video-game and electronic stores, fast food chains, and multiple flavors of made-in-America ice cream. The recurrent and reiterative effects of this way of living, consuming, and disposing had cumulative effects. Over time, the consumption practices of 100k+ combatants, stretched over a massive country and linked by high speed convoys of aggressive, heavily armed drivers, impacted the naturecultures around them, not to mention the basic security of Iraqis. In turning the analytical focus specifically to means, the means by which combatants make themselves available as instruments of national power, this dissertation is offered as a corrective to assumptions embedded in traditional discourses about war. Both IR and public debates share a bias against specificity, looking to long term shifts and large comparisons. But the devil is in the details, and the ways that everyday interactions take place have real effects on the identities, bodies, and relationships of those participating. The discourses of individual legal accountability and war zones as ethically empty spaces of pure strategic calculation both contribute, in their own ways, to making combatants available as instruments. In describing war zones as places where violence is seemingly inevitable, the order to stop counting Iraqi dead in morgues makes sense, as do programs designed to extract critical intelligence from enemies through brutal and humiliating tactics. In 'Indian country,' such things happen, our combatants merely need the tools and space to do what they do and destroy the enemy, this line of thinking suggests. Designing ever more effective weapons and training programs, the technicians and planners in the military-industrial bureaucracy are tasked with providing 'our' troops with what they need to survive and triumph in war zones. 298 Yet wars are not won through killing the maximum number of enemies; they are won through transforming the terms on which relations are carried out. Two views of war and its relation to politics were discussed in Chapter One, the classic statement on the subject is by Karl von Clausewitz: "War is a mere continuation of policy by other means [...] therefore [...] war is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means" (1873: book 1, ch. 1 §24). Such a view sees the unleashing of armies as a direct and purposeful attempt to impose policy on the world. Another perspective, articulated by Foucault, seems more useful: "Politics is the continuation of war by other means. Politics, in other words, sanctions and reproduces the disequilibrium of forces manifested in war" (2003). In Foucault's inversion, the goals and effects of war are easier to see. War is about creating a new politics, one in which the victor's worldview, terms of debate, and moral frameworks are established. Politics then continues the war, continues to reproduce power inequalities, on the basis of these new terms. Unlike the genocides in Australia, the U.S., Latin America, and Eastern Europe, the U.S. occupation of Iraq was not intended to produce Lebensraum for the master race, it was intended to spread democracy and increase the security of the U.S. population. Doing so would have meant that the new politics of Iraq was fundamentally reshaped by the victory of the U.S., in the ways that Japan and Germany were after occupying troops spread Coca Cola, square dancing, and jazz music along with parliamentary republics tied to capitalist economic systems (for an enthusiastic description of these successes, see: Muravchik 1992: 91-118). But failures to consider the importance of details like sewage 299 systems, securing ammo dumps and weapons depots, and loyalties to non-nationalist identities, all undermined the lofty goals of the war, accelerating the factional division of Iraq into ethnically and religiously based militias. The alternative to the Clausewitz-inspired view of war zones and the instruments that advance policy within them is institutionalized in investigatory and judicial bureaucracies of the military. Holding individual soldiers, marines, sailors, and air-force personnel legally liable for their actions while at war seems a tempting antidote. Yet how responsible each individual is for his or her actions depends greatly on where in time and space they are. What were the young MPs, constantly told they were a vital part of the war on terror, supposed to say to the OGA agents who directed them to make sure prisoners had 'rough' nights? That the things they did should elicit ethical and legal scrutiny is not necessarily the same thing as treating each of them as atomistic decision makers who were free to do, or not do, what they wanted. Combatants interpret themselves and each other in terms of the discourses they have available. In particular situations, different people react in unpredictable ways, but they must render their actions meaningful to others, must orient their behavior towards its likely interpretation. The forms of conversational 'accountability' that were described in Chapter Three do not work along the same lines as legal accountability, but both exert strong pulls on how people conduct themselves. Particular conceptualizations of masculinity pervade the military, shaping how people make sense of their bodies, pecking-order status, and emotional intimacy. Rank and hierarchical distinctions loom large as well, and the expectation of compliance to instructions is fiercely policed. Shared perceptions of danger built from official discourses of ticking bombs and merciless enemies who hate 300 freedom are also pervasive in the military, and accountability to those shared narratives provides a rationale for doing 'whatever it takes' to win. Through the operations of power in everyday interaction, individuals collaborate to produce and recognize social identities, the habits and attitudes which characterize them, and work together to build shared understandings of their environments. Without attending to these forms of power, individuals appear as stable, pre-given, and morally responsible actors. Considering them makes such assumptions trickier. Soldiers who torture, and believe that torture is a natural part of war, are still torturers. Yet those who articulate discourses that excuse or explain away the terrible violation that such acts represent are also implicated, since they contribute to making such behavior seem justified, important, and useful. It is far easier to hold one another ethically accountable when we share language, concepts, and categories for interpreting what our ethical responsibilities are. The assumption that war is hell, and those at war are devils, makes it easy to ignore, not count, or trivialize the suffering of those who war is made upon. The assumption that every individual is completely responsible for the things they do in combat makes it easy to ignore the widely shared descriptions and values that dehumanize enemies or make sexual violence seem natural, as well as the inordinate power of certain national security elites to reorganize practices. As this dissertation has illustrated, both of these assumptions are constitutive of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. In unpredictable ways, it is the negotiation of these two discourses about war that shapes public debate and institutional practice. 301 That there could be other assumptions, different practices, and alternative self- images, is the logical implication of a study of how these 'things' are produced. While many of the processes outlined in this study seem quite stable, because they consist of the activities of people interacting, they are subject to change. As Butler (1991) and others have argued, the process of repetition and reproduction is unstable. Even as people 'do gender' and 'do hierarchy,' there is room for maneuver in their doings. The association between masculinity, war, and stoic acceptance of pain and punishment is very old, but it is contested. Soldiers and marines, seeing their masculinity as tied to self-determination and creativity, may very well find ways of negotiating homophobic taunting and violence. Military intellectuals who have grown deeply concerned about for-profit operators in combat areas could find political allies in the Obama administration and congress and reinvigorate the logistical capacities of the armed services. By turning our ethical and analytical attention to the 'means of production' of shared depictions of the world, my sincere hope is that the 'witnessing' of the activities of combatants can serve as a corrective to the reductionist tendencies in Political Science and social science more broadly. When IR and other scholars interested in state violence pass over these processes, assuming that rational individuals or functionalist states are unproblematic units of analysis, one of the things they do is render the emotional, physical, and intellectual labor of combatants invisible. "Making war," it seems, requires an awful lot of work. Attending to how that work is done, who does it, and with what effects provides a glimpse into how combatants make themselves available as instruments of national power. APPENDIX ONE: FILMS AND VIDEO MATERIALS INCLUDED IN THIS STUDY Documentaries Year Length Filmmaker CNN Presents: War In Iraq, 1 2003 90 min CNN The Road To Baghdad 2 About Baghdad 2004 90 min Sinan Antoon Battleground: 21 Days on 3 2004 82 min Stephen Marshall The Empire's Edge 4 Control Room 2004 84 min Jehane Noujin Michael Tucker and 5 Gunner Palace 2004 87 min Petra Epperlein 6 Fahrenheit 9-11 2004 122 min Michael Moore Inside Iraq: The Untold 7 2004 84 min Mike Shiley Story 8 Mission Accomplished 2004 84 min Seab Langan 9 Voices of Iraq 2004 80 min People of Iraq War With Iraq: Stories 10 2004 352 min ABC News From The Front Disc 1 War With Iraq: Stories 11 2004 ti ABC News From The Front, Disc 2 Ian Olds and Garret 12 Occupation: Dreamland 2005 140 min Scott Off To War: From Rural Brent and Craig 13 2005 452 min Arkansas To Iraq, disc 1 Renaud Off To War: From Rural 14 2005 n ii Arkansas To Iraq, disc 2 Off To War: From Rural 15 2005 it ii Arkansas To Iraq, disc 3 Off To War: From Rural 16 2005 ti II Arkansas To Iraq, disc 4 The Dream of Sparrows: Hayder, Mousa, 17 2005 85 min Iraq Eye Group Vol 1 Daffer Jon Alpert and 18 Baghdad ER 2006 64 min Matthew O'Neill Combat Diary: The Marines 19 2006 91 min Michael Epstein of Lima Company Iraq for Sale: The War 20 2006 75 min Robert Greenwald Profiteers 302 303 21 Iraq in Fragments 2006 94 min James Longley 22 The War Tapes 2006 97 min Deborah Scranton Jon Alpert and Ellen 23 Alive Day 2007 60 min Goosenberg Kent 24 Inside Iraq: War Story 2007 86 min Ania and Bob Shami Through the Eyes of a 25 2007 81 min Ania and Bob Shami Soldier 26 Ghosts of Abu Ghraib 2007 100 min Rory Kennedy I Am an American Soldier: 27 One Year in Iraq with the 2007 100 min John Laurence 101st Airborne The Iraqi War: The Untold 28 2007 249 min Shami Productions Stories This Is War: Memories of 29 2007 82 min Gary Mortensen Iraq 30 Iraq Raw: The Tuttle Tapes 2008 87 min Ryan Tuttle 31 The Corporal's Diary 2008 83 min Patricia Boiko Web-based videos 3 min 33 32 Apache Killing Iraq 2003 ABC TV and DOD sec on patrol with charlie 10 min 41 33 2004 Martin Adler company sec Marcela Gaviria and 34 Frontline Private Warriors 2005 60 min Martin Smith Frontline, A Company of 35 2005 90 min Tom Roberts Soldiers 36 Booty call in Iraq 2006 48 sec unknown 4 min 16 37 Bored in Iraq 2006 unknown sec 9 min 56 Sean Smith and 38 Inside the Surge Part 1 2006 sec Teresa Smith Interview with Preston 8 min 28 39 2006 CNN Wheeler sec 2 min 10 40 Operation Porta Potty 2006 unknown sec 41 Saddam's Road to Hell 2006 31 min Roberts 42 Freestyle battle in Iraq 2007 51 sec unknown Humvee traffic driving in 2 min 38 43 2007 unknown Baghdad sec 304 12 min 48 Sean Smith and 44 Inside the Surge Part 2 2007 sec Teresa Smith Operation Tomahawk Strike 4 min 53 7th Mobile Public 45 2007 11 sec Affairs Detachment 8 min 1 46 Under Fire, on Patrol 2007 unknown sec US Soldiers throws grenade 47 2007 20 sec unknown at sheeps in Iraq 27 min 7 48 Back to Iraq 2008 Journeyman Pictures sec 49 Duck hunting with a .50 cal 2008 1 min unknown 16 min 43 Sean Smith and 50 Endgame 2008 sec Teresa Smith Hardcore Mountain bike 32 51 2008 unknown crash in Iraq seconds 8 min 53 52 Iraq Deformities 2008 Journeyman Pictures sec Marine David Motari: Komo 4 News 53 Expelled over Puppy 2008 2 min Seattle Video "IT WAS REAL!" Excluded due to lack of primary footage Uncovered: The War on 1 2004 83 min Robert Greenwald Iraq WMD: Weapons of Mass 2 2004 90 min Danny Schechter Deception Confronting Iraq: Conflict 3 2005 86 min Roger Aronoff and Hope No Substitute for Victory: 4 2006 80 min John Wayne From Vietnam to Iraq 5 Iran: The Next Iraq? 2007 50 min History Channel 6 No End In Sight 2007 102 min Charles Ferguson Operation Homecoming: 7 Writing the War Time 2007 60 min Richard E. Robbins Experience The Aftermath, National 8 2007 79 min Ania and Bob Shami Security Interviews with Combat Vets, after action, no/little primary video 1 Gitmo: The New Rules of 2005 79 min Erik Jandini and 305 War Tarik Saleh David O. Russell, 2 Soldier's Pay 2005 36 min Tricia Regan and Juan Carlos Zalvidar 3 The Ground Truth 2006 78 min Patricia Foulkrod Michael 4 The Road To Guantanamo 2006 95 min Winterbottom APPENDIX TWO: ACRONYMS AND WEAPONS, Acronyms: ABC American Broadcasting Corporation ACLU American Civil Liberties Union APC Armored Personnel Carrier BBC British Broadcasting Corporation BCT Brigade Combat Team C&K Cordon and Knock C&S Cordon and Search CBS Columbia Broadcasting System CIA U.S. Central Intelligence Agency DoD U.S. Department of Defense DoJ U.S. Department of Justice DoS U.S. Department of State DU Depleted Uranium EM Ethnomethodology FOIA Freedom of Information Act ICC International Criminal Court IED Improvised Explosive Device IP Iraqi Police 306 307 IR International Relations (the academic field) JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff KBR Kellogg, Brown, and Root (NYSE: KBR). Soldier slang: "kick back and relax." MAM Military Aged Male NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NBC National Broadcasting Corporation NCIS Navy Criminal Investigation Service NPR National Public Radio OIF Operation Iraqi Freedom OIF2 Operation Iraqi Freedom Two PBS Public Broadcasting Corporation REMF Rear Echelon Mother Fucker (non-combatant service member) ROE Rules of Engagement RPG Rocket Propelled Grenade, see blow SAW Squad Assault Weapon, see below SCT Stryker Combat Team, a BCT with Stryker Armored Vehicles SEALs Sea Air Land (Navy Special Forces commandos) STS Science and Technology Studies SWAT Special Weapons and Tactics (Paramilitary Police Teams) UCMJ Uniform Code of Military Justice 308 UN United Nations U.S. United States of America VBED Vehicle Born Explosive Device, "car bomb" U.S. Weapons: Ml6 5.54mm automatic rifle, standard issue U.S. automatic weapon since Vietnam M4 Shorter, lighter carbine version of the Ml 6, now the standard issue 5.54mm automatic rifle issued to U.S. warriors in urban and frontline units SAW M243 Drum fed light machine gun M240 7.62mm medium machine gun, often mounted on vehicles or at checkpoints M2 .50 caliber (12.7mm) heavy machine gun, in use since World War 2 Former Warsaw Pact Weapons: AK47 7.62mm Soviet designed automatic rifle, the most widely used on earth RPG Rocket Propelled Grenade, an guided, shoulder launched anti-armor explosive 309 ^'-rAW^m^ ofMp T> l « lili®t \ S V ^ N N \ x si# m StSilS 'SmM^^m -t • ^ii.'j?., •...... /I r. ; t ,l.< , ny tc ^ ««s r m; fl 1, vy^ t A " V x if-ti > i willii ft *w • 4 ' * < ^ 1 ,.v> in!!' ff „ < I \ w»nj .MO) y as nSO t^.i^ 109 .50 cal 300 Winchester .308 Win. 7.62mm 5.56mm NATO .22LR 109 http://en.wikipedia.Org/wiki/File:Rifle cartridgecomparison.jpg. photo by Richard C. 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