Eating Soup with a Knife
Nathaniel Fick
former Captain, U. S. Marine Corps
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On October 14, the
day before millions of Iraqis voted on a new constitution, The Commonwealth
Club brought former Marine Corps officer Nathaniel Pick to discuss his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mother
Jones publisher Jay Harris moderated questions from the audience. Here are
edited excerpts.
Harris: You clearly lost faith in the chain of command; many of us have lost faith in the chain at the top, How does that affect the kids on the ground?
Fick: On September 11, I was with my platoon in Australia, getting ready to go into East Timor on a humanitarian mission. The morning on the East Coast of the United States was the evening of September 11 in Australia. I was sitting at a bar with some friends. We watched everything happen on CNN, and we knew that we were some of the closest Americans to that part of the world. Before the sun came up on the morning of September 12, we were on our way to the North Arabian Sea.
It felt personal for us. It was cut and dry. I'd had a classmate killed in the World Trade Center, I had Marines who had fathers and brothers in the New York City Fire Department and Police Department.
Iraq was different. But I'm a Marine, a volunteer member of the military, and I swore an oath to obey the lawful orders of a democratically elected government - not just the orders I agree with. You don't swear the oath to an administration or a policy.
For people in my shoes, allegiance isn't necessarily to a policy or a strategy - it's to the people on their left and right.
Now, from down in the weeds - to 50,000 feet: President Bush acknowledged responsibility for federal shortcomings in the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. People will shrug it off as political expediency. But the bottom line is there was an admission of responsibility, which cleared the way for serious thought by people in high-ranking positions of: What we're doing is wrong, so how do we make it right?
Something similar would be helpful in Iraq. That door has to be opened by the civilian leadership, or else those in uniform aren't going to do it - and they shouldn't. But if you want good critical feedback from people who know this stuff well, who are professionals, you have to show your willingness to listen to alternatives. That has not happened.
Harris: How did the Abu Ghralb prison scandal affect your unit's morale? How did the policy of torture In Iraq affect the troops on the ground?
Fick: By the time the abuses at Abu Ghraib were made public, which is when I first learned of them, I was out of the Marines, but I was still in frequent touch with friends in the Marines. The morning the photos ran, I had a phone conversation with my old boss and with a couple of guys who had worked for me; the common feeling was rage and betrayal. They felt, we worked so hard for so long to ensure that that sort of thing didn't happen, and now all of that work is for naught. The catchphrase for us was: Those are the six idiots who lost the war. Which overstates things a little bit. But it didn't get better, because the Abu Ghraib atrocity wasn't handled properly.
The government charged the six enlisted soldiers who were pictured in the photographs, and there was no hard accountability higher in the chain of command. What kind of message does that send - to young Americans in uniform? To the American people who are tryfing to decide whether or not they can support their own country's policy? To Iraqis who are looking at us and thinking, How much better is Abu Ghraib now : than it was two years ago? It's much better - but it was extremely damaging.
The broader question of torture, though, is one worth touching on, because Abu Ghraib as an event is past. There's a very important issue on the table right now about torture: the McCain torture amendment to the Defense Authorization bill. Senator McCain's proposed amendment outlaws cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners.
There has been talk that this could be the subject of the first presidential veto in five years. It blows me away, frankly. I throw my hands up and say if this is vetoed, then we're doing al-Qaida's propaganda work for them; it's just not fighting smart.
As a guy on the ground, I took a lot of prisoners, and I was acutely aware of the fact that I myself could have been taken prisoner. We forget that it's a two-way relationship. Only because the U.S. has had overwhelming power in its last few conflicts has that not been a real possibility for a lot of people. But at the moment of contact, when you're taking prisoners, you're very aware that it could be you on the other side. There have to be rules.
Those who say there are no rules in war are, in my view, wrong.
Harris: How do you view the feervent support of the administration by many of
the troops on the ground? Do you anticipate a change in the future as many of
the prior enlisted, such as yourself, release this less-than-sympathetic view?
Fick: The military is largely a Republican institution, and I pin the blame for that squarely on the Democrats. I grew up in the Northeast, went to Dartmouth, my classmates went to McKinsey and Goldman Sachs or the Peace Corps and Teach for America - and they looked at me like I was nuts because I was joining the military. One contributor to my decision was Tom Ricks, now the Washington Post Pentagon correspondent; in 1998 he gave a talk at Dartmouth about ROTC on college campuses. At the end of his talk, a professor said, "How can you support the presence of ROTC here? It will militarize our campus and threaten our culture of tolerance." Ricks said, "You, Ma'am, are wrong. What it will do is liberalize the military - and that's not politically liberalize; that is, it will ensure that people from all different backgrounds are represented in the U.S. military."
Politicization of the military is a pretty recent phenomenon; it didn't used to be this way, and it shouldn't be this way. It's extremely harmful, not only to the military, but to the whole country. It's incumbent on all us to do what we can to change that. Part of that means that young people who would otherwise be going to investment banks or the more socially acceptable routes have to serve in the military.
Listen to Nathaniel Fick's talk in its entirety or purchase CD recordings at
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/05/05-10fick-audio.html
All CommonWealth club archives are at
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive.
Send comments. to feedback@ commonwealthclub.org.
Nathaniel Fick’s book One Bullet Away (Houghton
Miflin, Oct 3, 2005, ISBN 0618556133) can be borrowed from your local library
or purchased through various web sites, e.g. http://www.amazon.com