Brutal Hazing Has No Place in Marine Corps Culture

No American who has seen the videotapes of young Marines being sadistically abused by other Marines in a bizarre rite of passage--who heard the screams and saw the blood--can fail to share the outrage expressed by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles Krulak. But outrage, no matter how deeply felt at the top of the chain of command or pervasive among the citizenry the Marines are drawn from, won’t end such instances of brutality. If, as some in the military suggest, it is the culture that provides the context and the incentive for such abuses, then the culture itself must be changed.

“There is no place in the corps,” says Krulak, “for those who would degrade, in word or deed, one another.” Those words--no place in the corps--have to be literally enforced.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen says the Pentagon’s policy toward sexual harassment, racism and physical abuse anywhere in the military is “zero tolerance.” But the reality is that torture of the kind seen on the videotapes, when the prongs of jump wings won by newly qualified parachutists were pounded into their chests and in some cases twisted to intensify the pain, hasn’t disappeared simply because regulations have long forbidden it.

These abuses almost always take place in secret, and a code of silence shared by victims and their abusers assures that the event will be sealed from view. It’s significant that the videotapes shown on television depict events in 1991 and 1993; so far as is known, not one of the men who underwent the so-called blood pinning informed commanders about their ordeal.

Does that mean that commanders were ignorant of these and similarly cruel hazing incidents? Possibly, though that seems unlikely. Like everyone else, people in the military gossip, brag, complain. Word pretty quickly gets around, especially when the talk is about what is so clearly meant to be a brutal test of manhood. It’s hard to believe that at some point commanders at Camp Lejeune did not learn of the grisly ritual.

The message that must once again be unequivocally driven home is that the deliberate infliction of pain on another person is not evidence of strength or manliness, and the barbaric misuse of authority is not proof of leadership. Those who think otherwise should not be wearing the uniform of any of the services. The nation was revolted by what it saw the other night. It’s up to service commanders to assure that such incidents are finally ended.