The Violence Professionals
We don’t like to admit it, but those who wear uniforms and serve this country are trained killers.
Deeply troubling news coming out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina:
Panic and fear spread throughout the special operations community at Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, North Carolina as CID and FBI agents investigated members of 3rd Special Forces Group and Delta Force who allegedly were involved in drug and in one instance human trafficking, according to nearly a dozen current and former military sources.
The arrests began Thursday, Jan. 5 and culminated with a 100% recall and accountability formation for 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group yesterday.
Fort Bragg is one of the world’s largest military installations and headquarters to the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps and Special Operations Command, along with many of other subordinate units. Unfortunately, the base has come under fire over the years for a seeming epidemic of disturbing events for which the Army has no explanation. You can read more about them in this Rolling Stone piece.
More:
It is unknown when the investigation into drug and human trafficking in the Fort Bragg area began, but it is known that the FBI became involved in investigating the deaths of Timothy Dumas and Delta Force operator Billy Lavigne in 2020 when both were found shot to death at a training site on Bragg.
Last week's arrests began with investigators receiving more evidence after an undercover law enforcement officer posing as an underage girl helped arrest a member of 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group back in December. That individual was known to moonlight as a bouncer at a bar in Southern Pines frequented by the Special Forces community, a military source close to the situation explained to Connecting Vets. The Green Beret is alleged to have been pimping underaged girls to the Special Forces community at drug-fueled parties in Southern Pines.
The following comment by an anonymous Green Beret caught the eye of many observers:
"This is what happens when there is no war, no direction, and an 18-month red cycle with no mission," a Special Forces soldier said. "So dudes are fucking around with young kids and the craziest drugs. All these lives ruined because people are just bored."
Bottom line up front: There’s no excuse for any of this behavior. None. No war is a good thing and anyone who needs to fight a one in order to avoid engaging in criminality is either a nihilist or sociopath who needs to seek help immediately or be removed from society.
That said, I think the reason the soldier’s comment struck such a nerve, at least for me, is because it contains a grain of truth. Let me explain.
Soldiers exist to fight wars. We don’t like to admit it, but those who wear uniforms and serve this country are trained killers. Even those who perform other tasks in the military other than directly fighting the enemy are still part of a vast killing machine. Ironically, they also represent the best of us. Bravery and selflessness are job requirements and those who wear the uniform are among our best and brightest. Not always, but often.
When we’re talking about special operations forces, we’re talking about a whole different level of soldiery. Special operations forces not only receive more training, but many of them join the elite ranks as seasoned veterans. Despite what the “special” descriptor may imply, these units are utilized far more frequently than conventional forces, due to their flexibility, ability to operate in secret, and capabilities in unconventional warfare short of overt, all-out armed conflict, often in direct support of high-level national policy. They operate behind the scenes, beyond the public’s sight line, yet what they do is consequential, not to mention dangerous.
Then again, war is dangerous. But it’s also kind of boring. No other saying encapsulates the military experience besides “Hurry up and wait.” War is seldom the persistent action-packed affair it’s often depicted as in popular culture. Instead, it’s lots of time sitting around waiting for something to happen. When something finally happens, it’s a terrifying tidal wave of total chaos and sensory overload. Still, sometimes, the boredom can also be overwhelming. You want something to do, be it work or play, but you cannot “switch off” either, since something could happen at any moment and find yourself in fight-or-flight mode. In my conversations with veterans, what I’ve found is that post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is often the result of being in a constant state of alert and anticipation and not always due to a specific event.
Since 9/11, tens of thousands of Americans have gone off to war, many of them members of these special units. They’ve comprised the tip of the spear and have participated in as many conventional operations as they have unconventional activities. In one word, these people are dangerous. But so are those who haven’t gone to war. It takes a certain kind of individual to make it as a special operator and the units themselves cultivate certain personalities and ways of living. Special operators aren’t exactly the super-laid-back types, but instead competitive, Type-A personalities who require heavy doses of stimulation. Suffice it to say, special operators need a mission, something to pursue.
Finally, even with the admission to women into the ranks of special operations (a controversial decision, no doubt), the vast majority of the special forces’ ranks remain male and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. There’s a lot of aggression and testosterone in the air within the special forces and it all needs an outlet of some kind. If soldiers in general don’t get to exercise their craft once in a while, the boredom pushes them to find other ways to occupy their time and not always in a productive fashion.
I realize I’m painting a picture of special operations forces as loose cannons, but this isn’t what I’m conveying. Dangerous as they are, special operators are among the most disciplined and reliable soldiers in any military. They’re respected not only for their abilities and daring, but for their can-do, winning mentality and sharpness. The special forces’ mystique comes from the perception these units thrive in situations with no room for error and where losing simply isn’t an option.
On the other hand, when your job is to do dangerous things and get away with doing them, when your job is to kill effectively, and you don’t get to do any of it, you need to do things to occupy your time and energy. Again, sometimes these impulses manifest themselves in degenerative ways and the Fort Bragg story isn’t the first such where special operators have been caught behaving badly. In 2017, three Navy SEALs and one Marine killed a Green Beret in Mali after a night of binge-drinking. The victim apparently had issues with the behavior of the SEALs during the deployment and had also caught wind of a cash-skimming scheme from a budget intended to pay informants.
This horrendous incident occurred out in the field during deployment. Imagine what could happen in garrison, when there’s no war to fight? Again, it’s no excuse for criminal misconduct, but soldiers aren’t exactly taught to be merciful. More importantly, how they’re expected to conduct themselves in wartime and how they’re expected to conduct themselves in peacetime are often at odds and it’s not easy to reconcile the contradiction.
The following video is the ending of The Profession of Arms, the Academy Award-nominated third episode of an excellent 1983 documentary series titled War. Here’s narrator Gwynne Dyer explaining how soldiers basically live in two worlds at odds with each other:
What Dyer speaks of is obviously different from what I’m talking about, but the point is that soldiers are constantly being pulled in two directions. They exist to protect society, but to be good at what they do, they need to be dangerous and that danger can be wielded against those they’ve sworn to protect. We don’t like to think of our men and women in uniforms as potential enemies, but it’s the truth and throughout history, the military has often proven most threatening to a society.
In the second episode of War, titled Anybody’s Son Will Do, here’s a Marine Corps drill instructor talking about what he was like when he came back from the Vietnam War:
Maybe the problem isn’t the lack of war. Maybe it’s the fact they came back from one. As the Marine says, you get over it eventually, but keep in mind the Vietnam War had been over for at least eight years by the time this documentary was released. Some servicemembers never get over it, unfortunately:
The fact is, war unearths instincts inside us most are unaware exists. That’s because as residents of civilization, we don’t need to spend every waking moment of our lives in our “lizard brain,” focused only on survival. Soldiers don’t get that luxury. When your existence becomes one of kill or be killed, all sorts of barriers get broken down - you can endure conditions most people would prefer to avoid, you deliberately seek hardship, and, sometimes, you engage in self-destructive behavior because… why not? You survived getting shot at by the Taliban. You’ve captured terrorists. You watched your friends get killed and maimed. You’re a veteran. You’re indestructible and nothing should ever stand in the way of what you want. Or maybe it’s that you know you can die at any time, so why not live like there’s no tomorrow?
I wrote last month about how we don’t need to fear our veterans, but I also believe we shouldn’t worship them, either. We can love our troops all we want, but they’re human, they come from the same society the rest of us came from, and they’re not infallible. Their purpose is to do awful things on our behalf against those who threaten us, but as we’ve seen here, their abilities can be weaponized against the people they’re supposed to protect. We need those able and willing to kill on our behalf, but killing people isn’t some kind of virtue. It’s a horrible way to live and something most of us should strive to avoid or be thankful we never had to do in order to survive.
As Gwynne Dyer’s explained in War, this is why the military so emphasizes discipline and order. Without it, an armed force becomes little different from marauding barbarians. But imposing discipline and order isn’t an easy task. Some individuals are simply not fit for such an environment and are better off coming nowhere near the profession of arms. This is where the American military’s desire to recruit as many people from a diverse array of backgrounds may be foolhardy; it becomes more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Unless the intent is to use them as cannon fodder, recruiting soldiers shouldn’t occur under the mindset of “any son or daughter will do.” We did away with the draft and moved to the All-Volunteer Force in large part because we saw that forcing people to serve didn’t produce the best force possible.
In fact, a soldier I spoke with who served immediately following the post-Vietnam era looked at the story and saw it to be reminiscent of that era of poor discipline and too many people in the ranks unfit for military service. Again, that was during a time when there were still conscripts in the service, but now we have only volunteers. Who are we recruiting, exactly?
Anyway, these are just some of a number of thoughts that went through my mind after reading this story. Most of America’s troops aren’t criminals or degenerates, but it’s also clear it’s a matter of more than a few bad apples, especially if these problems are showing up in our elite forces. Achieving a state of true professionalism in our armed forces has always been a work in progress, and I’m not sure if we’re ever going to get there under the existing order and regime.
What are your thoughts? Share them in the comments below, if you please.
Max Remington is a defense, military, and foreign policy writer. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentLoyalist.
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