American Soldiers in Iraq

McSoldiers or Innovative Professionals?

Morten G. Ender

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135968748
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

American Soldiers in Iraq offers a unique snapshot of American soldiers in Iraq, analyzing their collective narratives in relation to the military sociology tradition.

Grounded in a century-long tradition of sociology offering a window into the world of American soldiers, this volume serves as a voice for their experience. It provides the reader with both a generalized and a deep view into a major social institution in American society and its relative constituents-the military and soldiers-during a war. In so doing, the book gives a backstage insight into the U.S. military and into the experiences and attitudes of soldiers during their most extreme undertaking-a forward deployment in Iraq while hostilities are intense.

The author triangulates qualitative and quantitative field data collected while residing with soldiers in Iraq, comparing and contrasting various groups from officers to enlisted soldiers, as well as topics such as boredom, morale, preparation for war, day-to-day life in Iraq, attitudes, women soldiers, communication with the home-front, "McDonaldization" of the force, civil-military fusion, the long-term impact of war, and, finally, the socio-demographics of fatalities. The heart of American Soldiers in Iraq captures the experiences of American soldiers deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom at the height of the conflict in a way unprecedented in the literature to date.

This book will be essential reading for students of military studies, sociology, American politics and the Iraq War, as well as being of much interest to informed general readers.

1 Introduction

American soldiers

Who cares?

(American soldier in Iraq)

I feel this survey was the biggest waste of my time since I was deployed, simply because it will probably not make anything better.

(23-year-old, white male E-3, married for the first time with one child)

Thanks for wasting my time by having me fill out this survey just like all other surveys I have filled out in the Army—it will be read and then forgotten.

(26-year-old, white male E-4, married for the first time)

I feel that these damn surveys are a waste of time that somebody with too much time on their hands has nothing better to do.

(25-year-old, Hispanic male junior officer, married for the first time with one child)

I would love it if we could get the results of this survey. I will contact Dr. Ender.

(25-year-old, white male junior officer, married for the first time)

I would like to be contacted about the results of this survey.

(23-year-old white female junior officer, never married)

A suggestion: Send results of this survey to those who participated. I know I would like to have some idea on what the results are.

(27-year-old white male E-5, married for the first time with one child)

I would be very interested in getting a copy of the completed study if one is planned.

(28-year-old unknown race male junior, married for the first time with two children)

So why do we give this survey? Is this going to change the way I live, NO! All this is, is a way to see how people think.

(23-year-old white male E-4, never married)

Introduction

War in Iraq for Americans continues at this writing. Despite the length, no common tag for the war has emerged. Some leading labels given to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that began in earnest in March 2003 include “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” “War in Iraq,” “The Long War,” “Global War on Terror,” and “War against Al’ Qaeda.” Similar to the U.S. experiences in Germany and Japan after WWII and in Korea and Vietnam, the ongoing belligerency in Southwest Asia is experiencing a tyranny of time—U.S. presence is ongoing, intense, and dangerous. Similar to earlier American wars, American soldiers appear to be remaining in Iraq in various capacities for a number of years. Because of the ongoing deployments, this book is certainly not the last word on American soldiers in Iraq. Yet, few to no books exist about the American soldier experience in Iraq from a sociological perspective. There are certainly many macro-level opinionated and strategic treaties on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Likewise many micro-level, personal accounts from individual soldiers, spouses, key leaders, and reporters provide asymmetrical perspectives on the Iraq experience. These works take either political or anecdotal perspectives. This book carves a new niche between case studies and the political and provides a systematic sociological snapshot of American soldiers in Iraq.

The book has a threefold purpose grounded in a century tradition of sociology¹ —offering a window to the world of American soldiers in Iraq, serving as a voice for their experience, and describing elements of diversity in the all-volunteer force that is the American armed forces. First, sociology introduces and exposes people to a world beyond their lived experience. It depicts the others of the social world both domestically and internationally to include subcultures, groups, and populations. A window is important in overcoming the lack of worldliness found among populations. This book aspires to provide the reader with both a generalized and a deep view to a social institution in American society and the relative constituents that few have access to—the military and soldiers. It provides the reader an atypical view, a backstage insight into the U.S. military and experiences and attitudes of soldiers during their most extreme undertaking—during a forward deployment in a foreign land far from home while hostilities are intense.

Second, the book provides a voice for soldiers—it tells their story—not through one personal account but through a collective narrative. It represents their interests by examining their social life as lived and experienced while in Iraq. Their story unfolds empirically through their words, their responses to surveys, and through my observations in Iraq.

Finally, the book focuses on diversity and similarity among American soldiers with specificity to the context of the all-volunteer force. It does so by comparing and contrasting various groups and topics that have long been of keen interest to military sociologists who have studied members of the armed forces from a sociological vantage point. Here, assortments of soldiers’ demographics couple with their miscellany of attitudes, perspectives, and experiences.

The heart of this book captures the experiences of American soldiers deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq in the summer of 2004. In late May of 2004, former military colleagues at West Point requested my assistance in Iraq to help work with local Iraqi researchers interested in broadening some already established systematic, comprehensive, and longitudinal public research of the Iraqi population.² I agreed to assist under the condition I would have enough time and resources available to access and study soldiers in Iraq as well. Thus, I deployed a few weeks later. First to Fort Hood, Texas for 10 days of pre-deployment preparation and readiness that all Americans—military or civilian—participate in prior to going into a battle-space such as Iraq. Next, it was on to Kuwait and then Iraq with a small team of five Army officers, all of whom had similar, short-term projects that summer. Once in Iraq, I attached to the Division Headquarters of the 1st Cavalry Division based out of Fort Hood, Texas. I completed my primary project with the Iraqis rather easily and quickly found, as I had anticipated, that I had freedom, support, and encouragement to study American soldiers in Iraq.

The quotes that open this chapter come directly from American soldiers deployed in Iraq in the summer of 2004. The quotes come from comments written in at the end of a survey I distributed to the troops. Emblematic of most pencil-and-paper questionnaires, the last section thanks respondents and offers them an opportunity to add anything else in their own words related to their experience. Normally, people in general provide few to no comments here. However, soldiers in Iraq are not in a run-of-the-mill social situation and they are expressive about their opinions. I include these personal standout comments here for emphasis for one of the many audiences that I hope will find this book of special interest—that is past, present, and future American soldiers. I also hope to reach the educated public, university and college students, military policy makers and leaders, and social and behavioral scientists.

Americans have certainly learned to differentiate between the war and the warrior. They have become comfortable with the contradiction of supporting the service member and having less or more support for a particular war. This cultural value dichotomy emerged during the first Persian Gulf War in 1990 and 1991 and now weaves through our national fabric. The goal in this book is to get to know the American soldier. Who are these service members? What is their individual and collective experience? What is on their collective minds? What attitudes do they hold? How has the war in Iraq shaped them? These and other questions receive attention in the following chapters with a range of readers in mind.

I can now return to the soldiers quoted earlier and respond to the collective themes. First, throngs of us certainly care about American soldiers. Next, you did not waste your time responding to my survey. Stuffing results away in a drawer in a basement somewhere is not an option for me. I have the privilege— and frankly, there is nothing better to do to bring these words and numbers out into the light of day. Third, consider this my delivery of the findings to you and others. Finally, I certainly hope the results and discussion make people think, and think hard and long, about war, those who experience war, and what war does to people.

Stories about American soldiers in Iraq and their families on the home-front have proliferated in the print media and appear in the pages of The Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, Washington Post, and Newsweek and Time (2003/2004), among many others. They are accessible by Googling the newspaper or magazine of your choice with the key words “American soldiers” and “Iraq.” Likewise, journalists write personal stories from afar or on their experiences embedded in units in Iraq. Scholarly social science publications are appearing, and many more are likely to follow as the slow journalism of social and behavioral science takes the time necessary to produce scholarship (Musheno and Ross, 2008; Wong and Gerras, 2006; Wong et al., 2003). One example is a two-volume special issue on the sociology of the Iraq war in the journal Sociological Focus³ Notably, by the end of 2005, after 38 months into the war in Iraq, roughly 300 books existed about the war (American Association of University Professors, 2006; Greene, 2006; Inskeep, 2006; Memmott, 2005). Many more will certainly appear in the years and decades to follow. Few to none center on the collective social experiences and thoughts of American soldiers in Iraq, particularly while in Iraq.

It is peculiar yet somewhat understandable that the military is of primary sociological interest during times of relative war, only to quietly recede back into public and scholarly oblivion during times of relative peace. It is certainly the largest single organization in America—the largest “company” in the United States that in 2004 comprised roughly 2,230,872 uniformed service members in the four services including the active duty, reserve, and National Guard component as of December 31, 2004 (and not including the millions of civilians working within and governing it) (United States Government Accountability Office, 2005). The active duty military component comprised the largest majority with 63 percent (1,405,449 people). Of the four active components, the U.S. Army was the largest, with 488,143 (35 percent) service members. The military is compelling simply for its hefty socio-demographic composition. There is tremendous potential here in applying sociology to the study of the military, and it deserves a place alongside the study of other social institutions in American society such as the family, medicine, and religion (see Cockerham, 2003). Similarly, the military and the array of constituent members comprising it require continuous empirical scrutiny.

Diversity in the U.S. military

“Military diversity” appears oxymoronic. Like the ubiquitous term military intelligence, many might find military diversity a contradiction in terms. Indeed, the social history of the American soldier in the minds of Americans shows them to be of fairly typical and homogenous social characteristics. He was a “he,” white, young, a U.S. citizen, Christian, fit, and heterosexual. This overgeneralization does reflect the social reality. American soldiers have been predominately male, white, young, full citizens, physically fit, Christian, and straight. The U.S. military has traditionally inducted people lucky enough to possess these seven hegemonic characteristics. Those “unlucky” enough to possess one or more social characteristics other than these face relative exclusion from service to the nation. Relative means either an outright ban from military service or, if in the military, lacking full membership status. For example, African-Americans have consistently served in the service of the U.S. military dating back to the American Revolution, including official segregation up through the early 1950s and even later in Vietnam, where they unofficially experienced exclusion from whites in the combat arms—essentially warranting second-class military citizenship. The less one conformed to the lucky seven historical social characteristics, the less their luck through both official and unofficial sanctions to fulfill service in the U.S. military and gain full citizenship.⁴

The stereotype of the American soldier is of political conservative, violent, traditional, authoritarian, obedient, rigid, macho, bureaucratic, and inflexible—a stereotype perpetuated by American film (Suid, 2002). These attitudes and beliefs comprise a view of a “military mind” that dates far back into American history (Lyons, 1963). This one-sided perspective periodically returns as it did in the 1990s following a series of popular positions that a civilian-military gap emerged in U.S. society (Dunlap, 1992; Ricks, 1993; 1997) with officers collectively possessing the foregoing characteristics and diverging from their more liberal, passive, progressive, authoritative, disobedient, lax, effeminate, impractical, and flexible civilian peers. A barrage of subsequent systematic research did not bear this dichotomy out (see Feaver and Kohn, 2001a).

The American military, much like American society, shifts socio-demographically. American society influences the military, but it does not necessarily reflect the larger societal change. The demographic shift in the armed forces is greatly influenced by the military's (wo)manpower policies increasingly moving toward a military that reflects the larger society more than at any point in her history (Dansby et al., 2001; D.R. Segal, 1989; Soeters and van der Meulen, 1999; Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, 2006). The history of filling the ranks of the American military dominates with obligatory service (with some occasional suspensions of conscription) primarily through the conscription of young males. In 1973, the shift to the all-volunteer force (AVF) replaced obligatory service with a market-model, volunteer military. While members of many minority groups (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities, women, non-Christians, and homosexuals) had distinguished service across American history, the change to the AVF marked a major turning point toward increased proportional representation of some groups in the U.S. military to that of U.S. society.

Following the change in socio-demographics is a similar diversity in mind among service members. While the U.S. military certainly continues to systematically discriminate in institutionalized policy and practice against select populations such as homosexuals, women, and people with physical anomalies, including the aged, there has been increased inclusion in recent years. This increased inclusion has fostered diversity in mind among American soldiers that transcends a typical, singular view about the world—essentially subverting stereotypical views of the way soldiers perceive social reality. This book highlights both the diversity in social characteristics as well as diversity in mind and experience of American soldiers—specifically among the forward deployed in recent years. Further, it offers the reader unique access to their experiences during a major military deployment.

American soldiers: Haiti, Kuwait, and Iraq

The major focus of this book is on American soldiers who served in Iraq. For perspective on the experiences of soldiers in Iraq, I use two additional samples to provide comparison groups: a sample of American soldiers who served in Kuwait in 2003 and a sample of American soldiers who served in Haiti in 1994. Most of the topics addressed in the present study follow up general studies of soldiers dating back to WWII. More than half of the questions asked of soldiers in Iraq came from questions asked of soldiers deployed to Kuwait and Haiti. These latter two data sources provide benchmarks on significant topics both generally and specifically, examining similarity and divergence. The specific topics comparing recent deployments to Kuwait and Haiti to deployments to Iraq include a host of social psychological dimensions from soldier morale to representing the military to others. Chapter Ten, the last chapter featuring data, examines all American service member fatalities from Iraq between March 2003 and October 2007 based on individual casualty data reports provided through the Department of Defense.

The vast majority of the American soldiers in this study are from a deployment to Iraq. These American soldiers mostly represented the 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas. The “1st Cav,” as it is affectionately referred to, deployed to Iraq for a 12 to 16-month deployment beginning in late 2003 and early 2004. The 1st Cav data reported on here originate from a broad range of methods including participant observations, both informal and in-depth interviews, and an open- and closed-ended survey instrument. I sought to survey 1,000 soldiers while in Iraq, and ultimately I obtained 968 surveys from soldiers and saw and interacted with hundreds more both on and off the Forward Operation Bases in Iraq. The research accounted for here channels traditional military sociological topics from past wars. Topics include soldier demographics, preparation for deployment, the tempo of the work day, soldier morale, job satisfaction, reenlistment intentions, representing the military to others, reenlistment options, civilian job options, support of others during the deployment, communication with the home-front, attitudes toward domestic, social, and foreign policy issues, attitudes toward women in the military, and the personal impact of the deployment on the soldiers. In addition to closed-ended survey questions representing the foregoing, 19 open-ended questions solicited feedback from soldiers in their own words on a range of exploratory topics, including creativity, efficiency, quantification, control, predictability, micromanagement, and mission perception, in their daily activities.

The Iraq sample of soldiers represents an availability sample of soldiers deployed to Iraq at the time of the survey. I had the good fortune on one occasion to have all five brigade-level U.S. Army active duty commanders available at one place. With the approval and support of the division commander, I gave them a brief history of the sociology of war and the purpose of the study and I requested they re...