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The Kill Switch

Somehow it’s a dirty little secret that the entire purpose of war is to kill human beings. That vastly important fact is becoming more well-known thanks to the work of authors and journalists like Phil Zabriskie, a former foreign correspondent for Time who has also written for National Geographic, The Washington Post Magazine, and other notable outlets. He’s more than a war correspondent, though. He’s made a study of the subject of combat. He fine tuned that study with an in-depth exploration on killing in war in his latest book, a Kindle Single called The Kill Switch.

Zabriskie delves into the phenomenon of killing with considerable skill. He expands our understanding of the concept into the societal and institutional context and contracts it into the personal. It’s perhaps the latter that gives the book its stark, chilling nature. The author chronicles the lives of several participants of the Iraq and Afghan Wars to illustrate the powerful psychological forces at work in the act of killing and the impact of the moral injury that killing causes. His coverage of these men over roughly a decade paints a clear picture of the entire process of learning to kill, applying those lessons, and attempting to find peace with that act. For instance, we learn about a Marine, Ben Nelson, who struggles with the times he killed and the times he didn’t. We learn of a Marine officer who bears the emotional burden of ordering men to kill as well as taking lives himself, and how the strict enforcement of the rules of engagement protected civilian lives as well as the combatants’ humanity. We see them in war. Then we see them in their living rooms. We see their pain with a clarity that speaks highly of Zabriskie’s expertise in recording the grim truth of war.

To his credit, Zabriskie lets the subject and those who lived it speak for themselves. But he’s packaged those voices in a concise and fast-flowing narrative, one that is buttressed by interviews with psychologists and research into relevant scholarship. It’s an engaging, educating read.

Although the book is short, it is long on authenticity and insight. Zabriskie has created a work that offers real-world examples of some of the ideas first explored by Dave Grossman. He has made a clear argument for the fact that killing is one of the most traumatic experiences of combat, and it is the very essence of war. How we treat that haunting truth – that we collectively flip a kill switch when we go to war – is up to us as a society, but Phil Zabriskie has done a remarkable job of defining it for his readers.

(Review contributed by David P. Ervin)

The Price We Pay

by Travis Switalski, Sr.

The places where we fought are more than names on a paper map. They are more than colored areas between black lines on a globe. They are real places where we struggled and poured sweat in the blazing heat. They are places that we loved to hate but fought for anyway. Day in and day out we went out on foot in these places, surrounded by danger and far from the comforts of home. We were told that we were doing it for freedom, for the people, for America – to avenge her honor. Despite the rhetoric of our noble cause, people in these places on a map fought us to the death. We were doing the most important thing that we would ever do in our lives. But after a while, it went unnoticed by many, save for the ticker across the bottom of the screen and thirty second sound bites. The wars lasted longer than the American attention span.

September 11^th, 2001 was the day that America bought stock in the Global War on Terrorism. Flags were unfurled, speeches were delivered, and promises of justice were made. Hundreds of thousands of Americans lined up to join the military. We were all in. We were united as a country, out for blood and revenge. When the President said that we would go after terrorists and those who harbor them, everyone cheered him on. We were in this together, as a nation.

We invaded Afghanistan, then Iraq. The American public and media were still very much a part of the “we” who invaded those far-away lands. We watched the bombing of Tora Bora and the tunnel searches of “Operation Anaconda.” America held its breath waiting for Osama Bin Laden to be killed or captured. The war had top billing on every news channel all of the time. Then waited while Sadaam Hussein let the clock run out and “Shock and Awe” began. Vast columns of tanks and trucks crossed the desert and wiped out Iraq’s Republican Guard. America “liberated” Iraq. We had accomplished the mission. Soon after, the glamorous spectacles were over. The wars were not.

An insurgency began in Iraq. They were faceless, borne of a complicated political situation. People without uniforms, generals, or regard for their fellow Iraqis attacked us. Roadside bombs caused horrific wounds. Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen came home in flag draped metal coffins in a relentless, steady march. It got uncomfortable.

America had been told that the mission had been accomplished, that it had won. An insurgency is not what they’d bargained for. Gradually, flags were put back in closets and bright yellow car magnets that said “Support Our Troops” faded to white. Rather than try to understand, many who had the option tuned out like it was a television show that had lost its luster. They had the luxury of choice.

But the military kept paying its dues. We were subjected to multiple tours of duty in combat. Back-to-back without breaks we flew to the desert to fight. America thanked us for our service but let us and our families carry the burden of war alone. Top billing went to celebrity dance shows and singing contests as our fights and our losses went unnoticed. The nation that had come together had become indifferent. America was war weary. America was tired.

America has lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The political and social steam that launched the wars ran out quickly. The Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen who fought the wars won the battles, but ultimately the sacrifice and the fighting was for not. America’s unwillingness to finish what it started, to make payments on its investment, has given rise to new threats. They are the spectacles on the news today. They are born from the threats we didn’t have the stomach to fight yesterday.

The enemies we engaged have occupied the places on the map where we fought and died. The people there suffer still. They, the veterans who fought there, and the families they came home to (or didn’t) can’t change the channel. They can’t cash out so easily. They’re still paying. The burden of that investment has, until recently, rested solely upon them. The chaos of the Middle East won’t go away because we tune it out. Eventually, everyone will pay. Maybe it will be in the form of another, nastier war, fought in those same real places.

Soldiers will always fight when asked. Likely, they’ll fight another enemy that’s little understood, in a place most can’t point to on those colored maps.

History repeats itself. And these wars, like others, have an impact that’s felt long after the beat of the war drums fades away. The dividends of war are terrible. Far from an abstract idea, far from a segment of the news that grows wearisome over time, wars are fought in real places. Real people suffer. If we want to learn from history, this is the time. The real evil that’s been unleashed in those real places represents the steep price we pay for not having paid attention to history.

What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘Thank You for Your Service’

I was recently talking with a friend about the dialogue surrounding ‘thank you for your service’ in the military and veteran community. When I mentioned that it might not be the best thing to say based on what I’d read and heard, she was perplexed. She wondered how a seemingly harmless phrase like that could take on such negative connotations. After thinking about it for a while, I wondered myself. What is wrong with it? Given the pervasiveness of this phrase’s criticism, it’s important to examine what we’re really talking about when we talk about ‘thank you for your service.’

The spectrum of denigration of this saying within the military and veteran community is wide. Some have said it doesn’t go far enough, that society should do more than utter a phrase and offer a free meal on Veterans’ Day to welcome back its warriors. Some say it’s simply sycophantic and has more to do with making people feeling good about themselves than legitimately honoring a veteran’s service. And there’s a chorus of voices that claim such a platitude is a symptom of widespread disengagement, sort of a proxy for any meaningful conversation about war. Still others say there’s simply no need to be thanked for something we volunteered to do.

While there is a degree of validity to much of this criticism, perhaps the interpretations are indicative of something deeper, something that speaks more about the perspective and experiences of post- 9/11 veterans than of the meaning (or the lack of meaning) of the phrase itself.

It’s true that a tiny fragment of American society participated in Iraq and Afghanistan. While we were at war our peers were obtaining higher education or pursuing and building careers, something on which we got a late start because we chose to serve. Life went on normally for an overwhelming majority of US citizens. “America wasn’t at war,” so the saying goes, “America was at the mall.” Sebastian Junger and James Fallows have correctly pointed out that the wars following 9/11 were something that fell on the shoulders of the participants rather than the society in whose name they were fought. Junger discussed a situation in which the public simply doesn’t know what its military does, much less share the moral burden, and Fallows mentioned that the gap between cultures goes further, effectively stymieing realistic, constructive debate about military spending and foreign policy.“Thank you for your service” can, in that light, be seen as something of a hollow gesture coming from across a wide chasm between the experiences of those who fought and those that didn’t.

The character of those experiences themselves can shape the interpretation. Recently, the concept of ‘moral injury’ has garnered some attention. In summary, moral injury is the psychological effect of taking part in an act that goes against basic human tenets of right or wrong, like killing. The ubiquity of civilians on modern, non-linear battlefields coupled with the guerilla tactics we encountered created situations in which innocent civilians were killed even while following the rules of war. Then there’s the feeling that we didn’t do enough or that we didn’t deserve to survive when so many didn’t. In these contexts the acceptance of gratitude seems inappropriate.

War unleashes a complex set of conflicting emotions. As young men and women we were awed by incredible displays of firepower even while knowing the obscenity of its purpose. Sometimes we loved it. Sometimes we hated it. Sometimes we hated that the fact that we loved it. And in the back of our minds, we knew it was something we chose to do. We’re proud of that even if we’re appalled at the sights we saw. That the overall experience can leave a veteran grappling with significant questions is not hard to fathom.

Can the average civilian contemplate the depth of this internal conflict? Probably not. But it seems they are attempting to at least ackowledge it by saying ‘thank you for your service.’ If the recent box office success of American Sniper is any indication, they’re willing to learn more about our experiences. Perhaps we shouldn’t spurn that. Perhaps we should meet them halfway across that gap.

contributed by David P. Ervin