You tend to dehumanize the "enemy," and that in turn dehumanizes you. Sgt. First Class John Meadows declares, "You can't distinguish between who's trying to kill you and who's not. Like, the only way to get through s*** like that was to concentrate on getting through it by killing as many people as you can, people you know are trying to kill you. Killing them first and getting home." Sgt. Antonio Espera told Wright, "Do you realize the stuff we've done here, the people we've killed? Back home in the civilian world, if we did this, we would go to prison." Just as was the case in Vietnam, the brutality you're obliged to enact can have a heavy psychological toll. Sgt. Meadows says men under his command have been suffering from severe depression: "They've already seen psychiatrists and the chain of command has got letters back saying 'these men need to be taken out of this situation'. But nothing's happened. Some soldiers don't even f****** sleep at night. They sit up all f****** night long doing s*** to keep themselves busy---to keep their minds off this f****** stuff. It's the only way they can handle it. It's not so far from being crazy but it's their way of coping.
Just one example of "this fucking stuff," provided in Wright's Rolling Stone article. On March 30, a car races through a roadblock in north central Iraq, producing a massive burst of weapons fire from Recon's Charlie Company. Protracted screeching of tires. Unarmed men run from the car, waving their hands, dropping obediently to the ground at Marines' instruction.
"Two Marines cautiously approach the car. It is shot up, its doors wide open, lights still on. Sgt. Charles Graves sees a small girl of about three curled up on the back seat. There's a small amount of blood on the upholstery, but the girl's eyes are open. Graves reaches in to pick her up---thinking about what medical supplies he might need to treat her, he later says---then the top of her head slides off and her brains drop out. When Graves steps back, he nearly falls over when his boot slips in the girls brains No weapons are found in the car. A translator asks the father, sitting by the side of the road, why he didn't heed the warning shots and stop it. He simply repeats, 'I'm sorry,' and meekly asks permission to pick up his daughter's body. The last the Marines see of him, he is walking down the road carrying her corpse in his arms."
