My Reactions to A Marine Domestic Terrorist

I've been pretty derailed this week, so here's an adaptation of my facebook rants and twitter threads on the subject of the mass murderer and disgraced Marine who turned on his fellow Americans:

The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert B. Neller, disavowed Thousand Oaks killer Ian Long as an “ex-marine,” while “Lance Corporal of the Marine Corps” Maximilian Uriarte said that the adage “Once a Marine, Always a Marine does not apply to this one.” I think the idea of the "once & always Marine" DOES apply here, because if ex-Corporal Long thought that seeking and accepting help is weak, who taught him that? Who taught him that you're not a real Marine—or a real man—if you're not in the infantry (with a Combat Action Ribbon & confirmed kills, preferably)? I know who.

By the by, did you know that isolating blame around an individual's presumed moral failings is *the* USMC scapegoating tactic, and has been since at least Ribbon Creek in 1956? Hey, it's not the MARINE CORPS' fault that recruits drowned marching in a swamp as punishment for pissing off their drunk DI. I mean, the Corps only created the culture of swamp marches as punishment on a base featuring a booze-soaked NCO club where DIs relaxed between shifts. But that one DI, boy, he should have known better than to engage in all those activities the Marine Corps taught him.

This mass shooting thing is a cultural problem, and the Marine Corps (really the whole military industrial complex) is idolized within that culture. The very same USMC attitude driving people to say "he crossed a line, now he's nothing" is THE SAME hard-charging Marine attitude that drove this killer to tell himself "that's it, I've had it, lock and load.” This is a realization I’ve made with the help of a decade of excellent mental health care from my local VA (which I've been told is one of the best). I think it's a cultural problem first, tied to the secondary gun control problem. If the guns and mags and ammo weren't around, they couldn't be used. But they're around because of the gun-loving, take-charge, macho individualist culture, and they're used because of the same culture's glorification of violence. I think the same cultural problem applies to the VA debate, too. The idea that there's a silver bullet to fix the system; there isn't. Disgruntled veterans saying "I've tried to use [the VA], it's screwed" and throwing their hands in the air is part of why it's screwed. We don't need "better care for our veterans," we just need to care, period. 

This makes me think…Doesn’t immediately distancing this former Marine into a non-marine kinda shirk any responsibility the

@USMC

 might have to address its own culture of violence? The Marine Corps intentionally endeavors to create & tame killer devil dogs who sometimes break off the leash or follow the wrong scent. We don't *teach* atrocity, nor *try* to bring the war home. But we are taught to kill, and inculcated to equate gunsmoke with glory. Whatever Ian Long’s problems before going the Corps, he spent years in its hardass culture, one that says don't go to sick-call or ask for help, and that motivates leaders to demean those who do. 

Maybe Neller is trying to say that Marines shouldn't externalize their violence, and that's admirable, but his boss Mattis said a few months back that lethality is everything. Our military isn't *meant* to *murder.* To kill, yes, if need be, but it's *supposed* to purposeful, bound within the laws of war, and controlled and reflected upon within constraints of good order and discipline. 

That's why I'm questioning the role of leadership failure.

Obviously the 

@USMC

 doesn't intend to produce individuals who massacre civilians; that's against our core values. And 

@JimLaPorta

 is right that even traumatizing armed service does not automatically equate to a greater propensity for violence. But that doesn't disentangle the Corps from all responsibility. I feel that there's a need to be very careful here, and thoughtful and deliberative in our dialogues, because young, impressionable, constantly stressed recruits and Marines can easily misinterpret things. 

If 

@GenRobertNeller

 is saying "this betrays our values, and won't be tolerated in my Corps," that's great. But if his message can be construed to mean "this isn't our problem," then that's troubling, because that's just another manifestation of the "suck it up" attitude. In the end, it can't be denied that Long’s 

@USMarineCorps

 recruiters shipped him, his Drill Instructors passed him through boot camp, and his unit awarded him for good conduct. 

So yes, rebuke his heinous actions, but not as an excuse for failed leadership or to avoid painful revelations. 

I'm not saying the Marine Corps is responsible for a culture of mass shootings. I am, however, arguing that the Marine Corps needs to actually deal with the role its own celebration of violence plays in creating these circumstances, perhaps especially as pertains to "ex-corporal" Ian Long. The repression of his own pre-service assault of track coach Dominique Colell itself shows how the Corps DOES benefit from the American culture of military worship, and the resulting willingness to dismiss warning signs when there's a perception the aberrant behavior can be made to serve to a military mission through sanctioned violence. Sometimes, that violence finds its way out of the Corps, to be inflicted tragically upon the very same civilian public that Marines swear to defend.