Armed forces need better training

A video that surfaced this month puts the United States Marine Corps in a less than golden situation.

The footage, posted online, is of four U.S. Marines stationed in Afghanistan urinating on dead bodies of Taliban members — a horrendous and rather barbaric display.

This is just a group of four individuals and should not be projected onto every person in the Marine Corps — in fact, many Marine officials have openly called this disgusting behavior — but it could be indicative of a larger issue all of our armed forces must confront.

Slightly after the release of the urination video, the public learned about a staggering statistic.

Sex crimes committed by U.S. soldiers have gone up 97 percent in the past five years. The statistics suggest a U.S. soldier committed a sex crime every six hours and 40 minutes last year — another blatant act of disregard for the human condition.

Sex crimes were the worst offense with the greatest increase, but studies also show a significant rise in child abuse and alcohol-related offenses.

Again, certain soldiers do not seem to have respect for humanity in any form. Dehumanizing the enemy has been a tactic in armed forces since the beginning of time. At its core, this principle makes sense.

There is no way a soldier can kill another and see them as a real person, but this strategy has gone too far and has graver repercussions than we could have imagined. These incidents and statistics prove that many members of the armed forces fail to recognize others as humans anymore.

While this might work in the heat of battle, it is clearly detrimental to society outside the battlefield.

Seeing people as nothing more than meat has led to horrifying crimes.

There is something fundamentally wrong in the training of our armed forces. Had the urination been a solitary incident, this bold claim would have no backing.

However, the numbers clearly indicate there is a correlation between teaching people to kill and crimes involving human disrespect.

Even if dehumanization is a necessary tactic for survival on the battlefield, by no means should it be taken to the extreme it has been.

The armed forces need to put more of an emphasis on taking their members out of this mindset when the war is over, so the battle that ensues at home can end.

Help has been asked for in a variety of fashions throughout the years, but the response has always been lackluster.

Army and other armed forces representatives have continually claimed there will be significant improvements to the post-war system, but any changes that have been made are obviously not good enough.

Our wars and battle tactics perpetually become more gruesome and vague. Thus, we need to see perpetual change in support programs for soldiers to accommodate this.

Our soldiers are not enemies and are not fundamentally criminals. They do not need to be trained as such.


­— sjostrow@indiana.edu