“They do what they want.”

February 7, 2022 3:17 AM

In total, a staggering 83 active-duty soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg died in the 18 months ending June 2021, according to data obtained by Rolling Stone. [...] The Army can’t or won’t say how a whole platoon’s worth of soldiers died at its largest installation, home of the Special Forces, the Airborne Corps, and the Joint Special Operations Command. Over this same 18-month period, just three Fort Bragg soldiers died in overseas combat, meaning these elite troops are a dizzying 27 times more likely to die stateside than in war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

[CW: murder, violence, sexual assault, self-harm, suicide, overdose, harm to children]

Rolling Stone's recent reporting on Fort Bragg, in chronological order:

The Fort Bragg Murders - April 2021

In 2018, Lavigne shot and killed his best friend, a Green Beret named Mark Leshikar, in an inexplicable, drug-fueled altercation that no one witnessed but two little girls. Sheriff’s deputies took him to the station, but he was never placed under arrest or charged with a crime. He was taken home that same night by some of his Delta Force teammates. “They are a very hush-hush community,” says Diane Ballard, a police detective in the tiny town of Vass, where numerous Delta Force operators, current and retired, own houses. “They do what they want.”

Delta Force's Dirty Secret - December 2021

By the time of Vallejo’s trial, it was clear that the Army had missed a chance to intervene in the boundary-pushing, motorcycle-borne debauchery of the Coast x Coast club as early as September 2016, when Scanlon went to CID and alleged that Vallejo had raped her behind their un-permitted clubhouse in downtown Fayetteville, which just happens to be adjacent to the county jail, a building full of cops.

She Asked the Army to Investigate a Rape Trial. They Fired Her - January 2022

Knapp, who observed the trial firsthand, says she was “livid” about what she saw as a carefully managed legal process that minimized Vallejo’s chances of being convicted and left Scanlon at a severe disadvantage. She drafted a detailed, five-page letter, dated August 10, 2018, and emailed it to the commander of USASOC. [...] In response, USASOC swiftly opened an investigation into Knapp, accusing her of “conduct unbecoming a federal employee.” She was put on administrative leave for the next two years, at the conclusion of which, she was harshly reprimanded in writing, then terminated from a position she’d held since 2014. She has not worked for the military since.

Exclusive: Army Files Charges in Mysterious Fort Bragg Beheading Case - January 2022

The next day, around 7 p.m., the group of soldiers reported Roman-Martinez missing. Becerra was the one who spoke to a 911 dispatcher. “We lost our friend,” he said. “When we woke up he was not here, and we’ve been looking for him all day. We were trying to find the park ranger or their offices or anything.” That last part wasn’t true, it later emerged. Earlier in the day, park rangers had approached the group to ask them to move their vehicles, which were encroaching on protected sand dunes. At no time during that interaction did the off-duty soldiers mention a missing person.

All articles are Rolling Stone links by author Seth Harp

posted by chappell, ambrose (40 comments total)

It's almost as if training people to overcome any disinclination to kill people while inculcating a sense that their new skills make them morally superior to those who remain so disinclined both works as designed and fucks people up. Who'd have thought?
posted by flabdablet at 5:12 AM on February 7, 2022 [46 favorites]

Incredible reporting. Couldn't finish.. very disturbing. Seems to tap into many deeply toxic and intertwined aspects of the culture of militarism, masculinity, impossible body standards and emotional and cognitive dissociation.
posted by latkes at 6:00 AM on February 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

Defund the military.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:16 AM on February 7, 2022 [28 favorites]

Fort Bragg is named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg.

When you name an army base for a traitor who helped murder 360,222 US soldiers, you open a doorway to hell. There's a commission to rename them, but until it's done the evil will continue to be summoned.
posted by mikelieman at 6:18 AM on February 7, 2022 [10 favorites]

Yikes. No one is saying they don't.

Did not read entirely.
posted by firstdaffodils at 6:29 AM on February 7, 2022

until it's done the evil will continue to be summoned.

I have a feeling it will still be there after a renaming.
posted by os tuberoes at 6:39 AM on February 7, 2022 [24 favorites]

It's almost as if training people to overcome any disinclination to kill people while inculcating a sense that their new skills make them morally superior to those who remain so disinclined both works as designed and fucks people up. Who'd have thought?

Are the problems reported at Fort Bragg common across all US military bases? Genuine question. Because if not, the simple "killers trained to kill end up killing people duh" answer doesn't explain what's going on here.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:17 AM on February 7, 2022 [23 favorites]

One of the articles mentioned another base with similar problems, and there were hearings, and pretty much the entire command structure was excised. After that, the death rate dropped precipitously.

The individual actions are problems with individual people, but the overall toxic atmosphere is a failure of the entire command structure, which needs to be addressed from the top by a wholesale clearing of the command structure and installation of officers who will do the long and difficult job of cleaning the place up. And the Executive Branch is also complicit because, apparently, no one is doing this work.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:39 AM on February 7, 2022 [19 favorites]

There is a culture of violence common to most of the armed forces and most of the police departments in the United States. Layer onto this the levels of PTSD and drug use, and the results should not be surprising. These murders and sexual assaults are just the tip of the iceberg. It is also fueled by a civilian culture that glorifies the military, ignores its faults and failures, and "thanks them for their service." It should not be surprising that Trump's thoughts went to using the military to confiscate voting machines during his attempted coup. The scary thing is that, had he gone through with it, the 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, might have been perfectly willing to comply. (Richard Nixon considered using them to suppress civilian protests, as well.)
posted by beagle at 7:42 AM on February 7, 2022 [12 favorites]

War is easy if you managed to make it through boot camp alive.
posted by zengargoyle at 7:43 AM on February 7, 2022

They could rename the fort after Billy Bragg.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:47 AM on February 7, 2022 [18 favorites]

Ft Bragg (82nd) and Ft Campbell (101st), are where the airborne and airborne special ops forces train and are based. They both have these high suicide and violence rates, higher than seen at ordinary infantry and support installations. Related? Leadership issues? Vanity Fair looked at issues across the Army last year - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/inside-the-rash-of-unexplained-deaths-at-fort-hood
posted by PandaMomentum at 7:50 AM on February 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

There is a culture of violence common to most of the armed forces and most of the police departments in the United States. Layer onto this the levels of PTSD and drug use, and the results should not be surprising.

"What is fascism, if not imperialism turned inward?" - A. Domise
posted by mhoye at 7:50 AM on February 7, 2022 [27 favorites]

At the end of the article it talks about soldiers unresponsive and dead in the barracks. Get some fentanyl test strips and use 'em, kids.
posted by poe at 8:20 AM on February 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

Are the problems reported at Fort Bragg common across all US military bases?

From what I understand, mixed bases aren’t as bad, but bases that are primarily infantry-only get real, real bad. I think it’s a combination of these being gender segregated units and the particular culture of the infantry.
posted by corb at 9:22 AM on February 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

Every time I read something about special forces I think they all need to be dismantled. You take a bunch of men, train them to be the best at violence, and tell them that they're heroes, and you apparently get a wildly abusive and out of control culture.
posted by Mavri at 10:00 AM on February 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

Cf. “Unmasking Insubordination,” Eoghan Matthews, Modern War Institute at West Point, 02 February 2022
posted by ob1quixote at 10:09 AM on February 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

This in one of the first links is baffling to me:

The deaths began in January 2020, when a 19-year-old Texan’s body was discovered in his bunk in an advanced state of decomposition; the Army has not disclosed the cause, and one year later, the investigation remains ongoing.

Not only was he dead, but he was dead long enough to be badly decomposed and no one knew he was dead? Or noticed a smell? Or was he relocated to his bunk long after his death? WTF?
posted by jacquilynne at 10:34 AM on February 7, 2022 [9 favorites]

“Virtually everything to do with this organization is classified,” says Sean Naylor, author of Relentless Strike, a history of JSOC. “It went from being very rarely used to becoming, in the post-9/11 era, an organization that was running a dozen missions a night around the world.”

If only there was some proverb about the corrupting influence of absolute power that would help make sense of this.

Really good reporting here and reading these stories is just tragic, so much drug use to treat un-diagnosed (or at the very least untreated) mental illness and then the consequences are covered up.
posted by slimepuppy at 11:51 AM on February 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

They could rename the fort after Billy Bragg.

Fort Bragg Liquid Aminos.
posted by box at 11:52 AM on February 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

Re: special forces: in Meditations on Violence, Rory Miller defines several types of violence, based on social context and mindset of the participants. He says that special forces and other elite, behind-enemy-lines sorts of units are unusual in that rather than a combat-as-equals sort of mindset, they fight in a predatory mindset. In this mindset, they see their opponents as less-than-human. This is the same mindset as serial killers and predatory rapists. Miller says it is incredibly effective in that they are able to calmly and thoughtfully plan and carry out military missions that would terrify normal people, but that it also makes them far, far more likely to commit war crimes. I'm sure this mental 'ability' (or deficiency) is transferable to contexts outside the theater of war.
posted by agentofselection at 12:35 PM on February 7, 2022 [14 favorites]

I wonder sometimes if places like these might really be haunted. I think this is the animist in me. It’s probably just the culture, but sometimes culture is bound to place just like a haunting. Changing the name so it no longer honors slavery, sedition, treason and murder would be a good start. Names have weight like years or granite. You can’t exorcise ghosts like these with just a name. But you can with words, and names give you something to point to.
posted by bigbigdog at 1:15 PM on February 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Check out Nate Powell's "Save It for Later" for excellent cultural observations on the rise of proud boys out of the endless wars and militarization of America society.

And when you teach men not only is it ok to kill, it is ok to DIE, then they lose their humanity.
posted by Mesaverdian at 1:31 PM on February 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

It looks like you can order "Save It for Later" via Nate Powell's site?
posted by elkevelvet at 1:51 PM on February 7, 2022

and you apparently get a wildly abusive and out of control culture.

No you damn well don't, at least not automatically. Not without a severe management culture of tolerating that and sweeping problems under the rug. One thing everyone associates with the military is discipline. You can't call yourself an "operator" without having discipline. It's easy to be an indiscriminate killing machine, it's hard to be a controlled deadly weapon. Looks like they're just doing the easy part and hoping the hard part works itself out eventually.

Sounds like entire units and command structures are missing the fundamental military elements of integrity, discipline, and accountability. These are basic qualifications. They should all be considered disqualified and stood down until they can show they have what it takes to be the national heroes they think they are.
posted by ctmf at 2:14 PM on February 7, 2022 [14 favorites]

The individual actions are problems with individual people, but the overall toxic atmosphere is a failure of the entire command structure

Couldn't agree more.

And the Executive Branch is also complicit because, apparently, no one is doing this work.

Sure, when the Commander in Chief and his cronies can do whatever they want with no consequences, and they reward people with that same attitude and punish people who stand up for what is right, what message do you think the lower level people are getting?
posted by ctmf at 2:36 PM on February 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

One thing everyone associates with the military is discipline.

I would have said "the killing."
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 3:05 PM on February 7, 2022 [12 favorites]

One thing everyone associates with the military is discipline. You can't call yourself an "operator" without having discipline. It's easy to be an indiscriminate killing machine, it's hard to be a controlled deadly weapon.
I agree, but there's more - it's much easier to train someone to be a controlled deadly weapon when it's all hypothetical. So many 'special ops'-type units have seen so much active duty over the past couple of decades in seriously horrifying circumstances that those experiences have become part of the psyche of these units. To cap it off, we do just what has been done since forever - send those damaged people back into the community and expect them to just get over it and pretend it never happened. Then we pretend to be surprised when they kill themselves or others. Just like we trained them to.
posted by dg at 4:36 PM on February 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

As someone who lived on Infantry Row during my time, yeah it was always bad. But this is next level bad. You got poor violent kids who are broken down and trained up into a death cult. Once the sanctioned killing is done, you turn it on yourselves. It took me a long long time to get better. Most guys don’t. And the nice (but oh so gullible) kid I was before I joined? He died.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:14 PM on February 7, 2022 [11 favorites]

By “poor” I mean economically. I only met two rich guys ever in uniform.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:15 PM on February 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

I won't say there has *always* been a big disconnect between the civilian population and the military, but the disconnect was certainly there when I was in. (Early to mid 1980's. Peace time, for the most part). You would see the general public in places far enough away from military bases with the "Soldiers are heroes" attitude, while folks in the town/city next to the gate would have a far different attitude, because they saw the off-duty behavior of a lot of young men drinking and getting into trouble of one kind or another, turned up to 11 with testosterone and the kind of mental conditioning you go through to become a soldier. Meanwhile, on the military side of the fence, the uniformity is an illusion. People from all over the U.S. (and territories) enlisted for a variety of reasons, and bring their issues and attitudes (drug dependency, poor impulse control, kleptomania, homophobia, you name it) with them.

Going through some training beyond basic, a staff sergeant (also going through the training) said to a small group of us younger enlisted (and seemed perfectly earnest); "You guys need to go to war while you're young and can enjoy it. Think of it, you can have anything you want. Who's going to stop you? You've got the guns!"

So, with years (decades!) of constant war, I am sadly not surprised about anything in those Rolling Stones articles.
posted by coppertop at 6:05 PM on February 7, 2022 [11 favorites]

"Sounds like entire units and command structures are missing the fundamental military elements of integrity, discipline, and accountability. These are basic qualifications."

Without a structure associating the concepts with actions and consequences, 'integrity, discipline and accountability' are mere words. Soldiers are trained in deception, the opposite of integrity. They are encouraged to act on certain impulses, the opposite of discipline. The Unites States' military has -never- passed an audit; it is arguably the least-accountable institution in the world. It's a giant money laundry where dollars are washed in blood.

The UCMJ is meant to provide such a structure, as I understand it. If the UCMJ fails to regulate the behavior of these soldiers, can it be said to work? Is that the military's best effort?

Disqualifying these individual solders will not solve the problem. The military gets the soldiers it makes.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 6:45 PM on February 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

Disqualifying these individual solders will not solve the problem.

Exactly my point. It's the commanders who failed to contain and control the hazard they created. Even better would be to not create them in the first place, of course. But we have them.
posted by ctmf at 7:08 PM on February 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

My roommate in college was in ROTC, and ended up a Ranger. Good guy in my experience but after a number of years he was discharged for psychosis.

…while still in ROTC he was involved in several training missions/scenarios at Fort Campbell. In one of those his team was tasked with recovering a downed pilot. Being sharp, he realized this was a Kobayashi Maru problem; his solution was to call forward his best shooter, kill the pilot, and exfil.

He got a prize for that solution. His youth minister had been involved in the Phoenix Program, “amusingly” enough.

(Nobody was hurt, this was all MILES gear stuff)

If you create monsters, they will create monsters.
posted by aramaic at 9:36 PM on February 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

Soldiers are trained in deception, the opposite of integrity

Citation really, really needed.
posted by corb at 8:04 AM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

"Soldiers are trained in deception, the opposite of integrity

Citation really, really needed."

Well I'd love to help you with that but which bit do you need cited?
Do you disagree that soldiers are trained in deception, or that deception is the opposite of integrity?

For the former, Sun Tzu says: "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. "

That's copypasta from a website, I don't have my copy of The Art of War handy just now. If you are unfamiliar with that work, it's been used as part of soldiers' training for a few thousand years. Other famous works of military instruction also cover deception extensively.

For the latter: https://thesaurus.plus/antonyms/integrity has a list of antonyms which includes "deception".

Those aren't the most authoritative possible sources, I'm sure, but then this is not an academic debate. I'm going after military culture in general and the US armed forces in particular because of my own feelings about what those institutions have done to people I knew personally and cared for. Mostly all gone now.

I'm sorry if by doing so I've given you bad feelings from talking trash about an institution that matters to you and which has given you good things (and I apologize also if I'm guessing wrong about yr motivations).
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 9:06 AM on February 8, 2022

It’s not that I disagree with your main point, Rev. Irreverent Revenant, but citing Sun Tzu, and only Sun Tzu, for claims about US military training practices or overall approach or culture is a really obvious and blatant non sequitor. Like, maybe a subset of West Point grads take a class that involves reading Sun Tzu, and probably there are a couple out of context quotes that are frequently used by some groups of soldiers, but it’s quite obviously not part of the core organizing principle or culture of the US military.
posted by eviemath at 10:06 AM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

I don't have my copy of The Art of War handy just now. If you are unfamiliar with that work, it's been used as part of soldiers' training for a few thousand years

Look, I have my own feelings about militarism, and in particular, the United States' use of its military, but you absolutely can't be like "Sun Tzu says deception is important, thus soldiers are trained to deceive", especially when we are having a conversation about why particularly certain horrors are occurring at a specific US military base in a specific time period.

Military training has a number of things wrong with it that I think /could/ in fact impact this situation - loyalty to the unit before loyalty to others, an implied disdain for civilians (Calling all civilians sir/ma'am, then training-through-example soldiers to respond 'I'm no Sir, I work for a living', for example). But deception is absolutely not something that your rank and file soldier is trained in. That's not defensiveness on my part, that's an awareness of military doctrine and who is making those tactical decisions - and it is absolutely not your average enlisted person. In fact, integrity is literally one of the official Army values.

From the material, which is provided to literally every soldier the moment they get to basic training and are forced to memorize,

Do what’s right, legally and morally. Integrity is a quality you develop by adhering to moral principles. It requires that you do and say nothing that deceives others.

Now again, there are things wrong with the values it teaches and doesn't teach - for example, I think the focus on service to your "nation, Army, and subordinates" really leaves out for example the civilian populations...but that's a different story altogether.
posted by corb at 11:06 AM on February 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

Memorizing the official Army values is not the same as committing to them, though. I might dare say nobody old enough to enlist needs to be trained in "deception"; we humans seem to learn it very well on our own. And the observant will note what happens to whistleblowers, despite policies against retribution. When a lack of integrity among the higher ranking is seen by the lower ranking, it is unsurprising that the lower ranking could feel justified in ignoring the value statement as it sits and instead practice their own "situational integrity".

I did not have any personal experience with the UCMJ, but I would be surprised if it is applied uniformly.

I met some really good people when I was in. I also met some pretty bad people. Most I met were somewhere between.
posted by coppertop at 6:29 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Grew up in a military town. Every "AJ" ("Army Jerk") I ever encountered was exactly that. Just the worst kind of thuggish, tribal hypermasculinity. A combination of their natures, and the ADF's "nurturing". Awful people.
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:49 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]