Between Cultures

Between Cultures

On April 2, 2005, a month-and-a half after arriving in Iraq, I was in combat for the first time. We were pounded with mortars, rockets, grenades, vehicle-borne explosives, and small-arms fire for nearly two hours. After the fighting stopped, I interrogated a few of the Iraqis who were picked up by Marines during the attack. After I wrote my reports for the night, I went to the chow hall, ate breakfast, and walked back to my bunk. I lay down and slept like a baby.

I slept well every night I was in Iraq. I easily shrugged off every issue that complicated my life: problems with girls, disagreements with superiors, arguments with friends. I would grow angry about the situation in Iraq from time to time, but my anger never affected my work, and I never lost any sleep over it. But when I returned to the United States, things were different. I couldn’t sleep through the night. My temper was fast and explosive. Minor disagreements with the people around me seemed monumental.

I’m not unusual. Adapting to the brutality of war is not as difficult as you might expect. It is a natural survival mechanism. Returning home brings monotony and a sense of safety, which offer opportunities to reflect. That lack of connection to the war can be overwhelming.

But there was more to my feelings of alienation and anger than simply the emotional baggage of a year spent at war in Iraq.

There was culture shock, as though I had traveled to a place that was familiar and found it foreign. The culture and values of civilian America seemed alien.

In July 2006, I was discharged from the army, having served five-and-a-half years on active duty. I spent more than two years in training, two-and-a-half years as a human-intelligence collector and linguist in South Korea, and a year as an interrogator in Iraq. I had done my part. I was through with the army and eager to be a civilian again. I began my studies as an undergraduate at Georgetown University the next month and was excited about the future.

Despite my pride in attending Georgetown and despite my respect for the intellectual caliber of my professors and fellow students, I quickly became frustrated with the lack of interest in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I shouldn’t have been so surprised. By executive design, the burdens of the wars are shouldered primarily by the army and marine corps, with the navy and air force providing constant and vital support to the mission. There have been no special taxes levied on the American people to pay for our recent military interventions. There has been little discussion of changing the way we build, equip, and maintain our fighting force to include more Americans in that process, thus making them more aware of and engaged in the conflict. Whether this was done in an effort to shield the public from the war or because it was simply viewed as unnecessary for the public to be extremely engaged in the conduct of the war beyond seeing it in the news is something on which I can only speculate. What I do know is that I found it troubling to find a war that had played such a central role in my life, and the lives of many others, so distant from the lives of the American public.

But the American public is not only alienated from the wars due to a lack of participation. It also is alienated because the wars are fought by people who experience a different culture, that of the U.S. military. American civilian values are focused on individual liberty. The rights to freely express oneself and to set oneself apart as an individual are important aspects of American civilian culture. In the army, those are the values we are told we are defending, but they are not practiced. The army has its own set of values—solidarity, duty, self-sacrifice—that conflict with U.S. society at large.

It would be wrong to say that all soldiers follow the army’s values at all times. Many are crude. Some visit prostitutes; some commit adultery. I’ve known a few who are bigots. The stereotypes that many civilians have about the military being full of gruff, misogynist types are not accurate, but they are not baseless either.

Soldiers are much like members of other professions and do not always live up to the vaunted ideals of their organization. In some cases, the dishonorable behavior of American service personnel overseas reflects poorly on the country as a whole. These actions are well documented and widely discussed both within and outside the military. It is no secret that our military is made up of normal people, many of whom are deeply flawed.

Nonetheless, the army’s values are important to soldiers. They are important not only because of the pride that accompanies being sworn to uphold a code, but, more important, because those values are necessary for survival. Throughout my time in the army, and particularly during my time in Iraq, I was impressed by the courage and selflessness of soldiers when others were in need and especially when danger was present. Soldiers tend to have intense feelings of loyalty to their unit and those around them, feelings that are inculcated and reinforced by training and the daily regimen of army life. The sense of duty in the army is so strong that it is an insult to be called an individualist, someone who is not a team player.

Failing to be a team player in the army has more lethal consequences than on a sports team. It is not simply a matter of not working well with others. In the army, an individualist makes others less safe. An individualist is someone who places his own well-being above that of others. He is a liability, loathed by those around him. This loathing is sometimes directed at civilians, particularly politicians, who are seen as driven entirely by self-interest.

That culture of duty and self-sacrifice is needed to maintain the good order and discipline of the army, which in turn is needed to defend the people of the United States. But it is in conflict with the values of civilian American society. I realized this as I began my first year at Georgetown. In the army, young minds are developed in an extremely regimented manner. Conformity is the goal, and self-absorption is not tolerated. At Georgetown, the opposite seems true.

Outside of the classroom, the lifestyle enjoyed by students under the watchful eye of campus security guards would not be tolerated on an army post. While I was in training, people were disciplined for nights of underage drunkenness with forty-five days of restriction to quarters and forty-five days of extra duty. In college, although that behavior is not explicitly endorsed by the administration, it is certainly tolerated.

There are benefits to both cultures. Each draws talent from people in important ways. However, it has been odd for me to realize that the culture in which I became an adult is not the same culture I was working to support and defend.

During that first year at Georgetown, I found it difficult to fit in. Experiences that I shared with hundreds of thousands of soldiers sounded exotic to my college peers. The environment I had learned to thrive in, one in which discipline and group effort were praised above all, did not exist on campus. Nor was there an active discussion about war. In the army, where everyone has served during wartime and nearly everyone knew someone who had been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, the nature and the cost of war are familiar to all. In every army community, everywhere in the world, there is a near constant discussion about the war. Some soldiers agree with the government’s policies and some disagree. The way the army functions may be uniform, but the opinions of its soldiers are not. At Georgetown, where international relations is a popular field of study, I expected the same kind of rigorous debate about what I believe are the most important foreign policy issues faced by our country. I was disappointed.

It may be that students do not talk about the wars much because they are opposed to the war in Iraq and at least ambivalent about the war in Afghanistan. Perhaps they think that discussing their opposition with someone like me would create a hostile environment they would rather avoid. I could respect that. I opposed the invasion of Iraq, though my work there inspired me to support keeping troops in the country until it is has a stable, effective, and humanitarian security and police force. But I came to believe that students avoid talking not because they are opposed or ambivalent but because they are unaware. There is extremely little engagement, either pro or con, with American military intervention overseas. Recently, I sat on a student-run panel that discussed civil-military relations. The organizers, two students with no relation to the military, tried to find students who had strong opinions about the military formed by their understanding of the Global War on Terror. They could find no one willing to speak who fit that description. Instead, they settled for a graduate student in international relations who described herself as “living in a bubble” when it came to any understanding of military policies and culture.

Frustrated with my social experiences at Georgetown, I decided to join the ROTC. I will be commissioned an officer when I graduate in May. Thus far, my participation in ROTC has not solved the problem I faced during my first year: cadets may wear uniforms and learn about military tactics and planning, but they have yet to be exposed to army culture. No matter. In a few months, I will be back among veterans whose values are closely aligned with my own. It is a privilege to work with people I admire.

I do not think that army culture is better than civilian culture or vice versa. But I’m not ready to leave one for the other. I’ve had enough culture shock and experienced enough frustration among civilians. For now, at least, the army’s culture offers me more of an opportunity to better myself than I can find in most other places I’ve looked.

Next – Anne Marie Roderick: After the Flood
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William J. Quinn was born in Detroit in 1982 and will graduate in May from Georgetown University with a degree in international politics and security studies. He served as a staff sergeant in Iraq, with Task Force 134, which oversaw corps-level detention operations.