Robert Hooker was an infantry soldier during the Korean conflict. He survived the infamously bloody defense of Outpost Harry. He understands as well as any man that war is hell.
"I was wounded three times in one night," said Hooker, a retired car salesman who lives in Concord. "A lot of my friends died there."
But he and other Bay Area combat veterans of past wars had a similar reaction to photos recently published in the Los Angeles Times depicting American troops posing with bodies -- and body parts -- of dead insurgents:
That's crossing a line.
"What the soldiers are doing," Hooker said, "is inexcusable."
That sentiment was expressed Friday by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga., whom he cautioned against lapses in judgment that can affect how the United States and its troops are viewed by friend and foe alike.
"It takes only seconds -- seconds -- for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline," Panetta said, according to The Associated Press.
It's not just the service members in the L.A. Times photos. It's the military police who were photographed humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. It's the Army staff sergeant found guilty in a court martial in November of operating a kill team that hunted Afghan civilians for sport. It's American troops videotaped urinating on Afghan corpses. It's the burning of the Quran (accidental, according to the military). It's the Army sergeant accused of murdering 17 Afghanistan villagers in a pair of overnight raids in March.
"When you're in combat, things get a little different," said Castro Valley's Jake Dalton, an Army paratrooper in World War II. "You actually have to hate the guy you're shooting at. But when it comes to urinating on bodies, no, I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't condone that kind of behavior. Even though all's fair in love and war, some things don't make sense."
A change in attitude
According to military historian Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, senseless acts have always been part of war. He contends, despite what seems like ceaseless anecdotal evidence to the contrary, that "it's a lot less common now than it used to be."
Some of the incidents that have occurred in the nine years since the U.S. invaded Iraq evoke memories of such atrocities as the Bataan death march, German concentration camps and the My Lai Massacre. Others, Hanson said, are "something more like a lack of respect of the dead, of a sacred document. I think I'd come up with another name."
By any name, they don't sit well with a culture that, Hanson said, is more sensitized to the horrors of combat than, say, the "tragic society" that struggled through the Great Depression.
One example of the change in attitude: The L.A. Times photos drew quick and strong reaction from both Panetta, who issued an apology, and the White House. President Barack Obama's chief of staff called them "reprehensible."
Compare that to the World War II-era photo of a 20-year-old woman seated at a desk and examining the Japanese skull her soldier boyfriend had sent her from New Guinea. Life magazine chose it as its "Picture of the Week" for May 22, 1944.
Defining the enemy
The incidents reported from Iraq and Afghanistan clearly bother the combat veterans, who aren't unsympathetic to the plight of the contemporary service member.
"Let's start with examining the boys in combat today," said Alamo's Bill Green, an infantryman in the Vietnam War. "These young people are serving multiple tours into a combat zone. To be told I had to go back, I don't know how I would have handled that."
Added Hooker, who visits wounded Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers at VA facilities, "They've been over there too long. Their minds are scrambled. They get fatigued."
The veterans cite another factor: The enemy is not as well defined and easily identified as those in World War II and Korea. That dynamic began to change in Vietnam with the widespread use of citizen guerrillas. Where the war on terror is concerned, there is no opposing government or formal military to confront.
"When we were in combat," said Dalton, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, "except for a few situations, we knew exactly who the enemy was. He wore a different helmet than we did."
'5 percent breakdown'
Add to the mix technology and social media, which allow incidents to be reported with facility.
"Nothing is sacred any longer with a pocket phone," said Green, who meets with Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers at the Concord Vet Center and speaks to high school students as a member of the Viet Nam Vets of Diablo Valley speakers bureau. "How long did My Lai go unreported? Today you burn a Quran and it's on the news that night."
Ultimately the veterans and the historian concur it is difficult to legislate morality in a combat zone.
"You go through the finest training in the world to kill," Hooker said. "It's not, 'Halt, who goes there?' when you're in the middle of the night in a hot zone."
Added Hanson: "Society doesn't have any idea what Helmand Province is like, or what the Taliban is like. These soldiers know that if they get caught, they're going to wind up on a tape with their head cut off. Then they're told, 'Don't ever conduct yourself in a way that would reflect poorly on the United States.' It's a noble goal that works 95 percent of the time. The 5 percent breakdown, we should seek to correct it instead of vilifying the whole system."
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