The puppy-throwing video that brought death threats for a Monroe Marine and his family has highlighted a new and growing problem for the U.S. military.
As young tech-savvy warriors head into combat zones abroad, they’ve begun posting raw, disturbing images online, apparently without realizing how easily they can stir outrage or hurt others, including loved ones stateside.
The military is scrambling to control the risk new technology poses for military security and the reputations of America’s servicemen and women.
The 17-second video on YouTube.com went viral earlier this month, prompting international criticism of the U.S. Marine Corps, and leaving a digital record of what appears to be an act of animal cruelty.
The Marine Corps is investigating the video and has roundly condemned the conduct it appears to have captured.
Unlike in previous wars, where the ugliness of the battlefield most often lived on only in memory, the images may follow the Marine for the rest of his life, lingering in Web site caches for decades — even a lifetime — after the flap is forgotten.
“This was a gleaming example that if (Marines) are irresponsible, that they can give their unit, their family, their American people a bad reputation,” said Marine Sgt. Maj. Richard Lewallen, a leader in the Monroe Marine’s unit. “It’s been a great lesson that these Marines have had to learn. It sends a resounding message that you have to be responsible and who you affect when you do stupid things like this.”
The military is trying to catch up with security issues posed by such popular Web staples as MySpace, YouTube and blogging, said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, a spokesman for the Department of Defense in Washington, D.C.
The Pentagon “does not currently have a specific blogging policy, but we do have existing policies on DOD information and government-owned information systems and computers that cover blogging,” Withington said.
Social networking sites and video hosting businesses such as YouTube.com have a lot of implications for the military, said Philip Howard, assistant professor for the University of Washington’s department of communication.
Those sites can spread sensitive military information fast worldwide, including acts of battlefield brutality that servicemen and women in years past rarely even spoke about once they returned home.
“It’s sort of a loss of content control by the military,” Howard said.
At the same time, not everything that is posted is helpful, because the Internet allows information to spread quickly, regardless of accuracy or important context, Howard said.
“YouTube doesn’t have editors,” he said.
Young people who grew up using the Internet as a way to socialize are not always being careful, Howard said.
“Most people don’t realize what they put out on MySpace or Facebook isn’t necessarily private content. They often think it’s for their family and friends,” he said.
Many people in cyberspace already have concluded that the Monroe Marine is the person throwing the puppy on the video. That brief clip doesn’t capture the man’s character, said those who fought with him in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I know for a fact he is not the person that in a normal everyday situation would take pleasure in animal cruelty. Not at all,” said a young Marine corporal from the Monroe man’s unit. The Marine Corps allowed him to speak only on the condition that his name not be published out of concern over the Internet death threats that have been made since the video appeared.
A different world
Life in a combat zone changes how a person views the world, said Joseph Evans, 24, of Snohomish. He served as an Army sergeant and returned from a deployment to Iraq in April.
“When you are over there, things don’t seem the same as when you are here,” Evans said.
He doesn’t condone killing a puppy, but Evans said fighting men and women constantly encounter danger and face many challenging decisions.
“I think threatening the family is ridiculous,” he said. “You can’t blame the family.”
Access to the Internet and other communication technology helps many servicemen and women keep in touch with their loved ones at home, Evans said. When he was stationed in Iraq in September 2006, his wife gave birth to their first daughter in Monroe. Evans was able to see his baby girl right after the birth, using a Web cam.
“It was amazing,” Evans said. “I was so excited. It helped everybody’s morale.”
Exposure to the brutality and harshness of war can change one’s character, said Dr. Jonathan Shay, a clinical psychiatrist with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. People involved in war engage in violence that may seem irrational to others.
“That brutality part is nothing new,” Shay said. “Why would anybody be surprised?”
He hasn’t seen the puppy-throwing video, but Shay said if it accurately depicts what happened that day, it may document how war changes people.
“War itself can do this to people,” he said. “Their mind, spirit and character are being affected, occasionally in a good way, often in a bad way.”
People stateside often don’t understand what servicemen and women experience in a battlefield, Shay said.
“The public needs to take some responsibility because we send people to war,” he said. “It’s very painful.”
In addition to the puppy video, YouTube and other Web sites are brimming with videos and images showing American servicemen encouraging Muslim children to chant “I love pork,” soldiers cheering as an apparent insurgent disappears in an explosion, Marines shooting dogs while searching a house and many “trophy photos” of Iraqis killed in combat.
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow of foreign policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., specializes in U.S. national policy. He thinks that civilians seeing images of war as experienced by men and women on the battlefield is a good thing.
“In a war like this, it is somewhat useful for a society to keep in touch with soldiers and Marines. I think there is a benefit to that. If a military is fed up with this war, they need to let us know and this is one way in which they can do that,” O’Hanlon said.
He also stressed that multiple blogs from different units and sources can expand a reader’s understanding of conflict in a way that isn’t possible through mainstream media outlets.
American culture, with its reliance on mass media, has long presented the military with challenges. The advent of easy Internet access and Web tools that make it easy to post content has made information about military operations much more accessible, O’Hanlon said.
“Operational security is very critical, and military personnel in the field need to be careful,” he said. “These soldiers have a very personal stake in making sure their personal information on their blogs is not being found.”
Restricting access to the Web and social networking sites to combatants may not work, O’Hanlon said.
“I’m not sure that the right answer is to shut it down. There is a reality there that is hard to dismiss,” he said. “You can’t stop it.”
Viral effect online
The puppy-throwing video started getting attention on March 3. Within two days, it was viewed more than 145,000 times on YouTube.com. Countless people posted their opinions about the video online.
It made international headlines and was broadcast on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Aljazeera.com, a news Web site based in United Arab Emirates, reported that the video “adds to the atrocities committed by occupation forces in Iraq, where not only people are being killed on a daily basis, but apparently animals have their share, too.”
The Monroe man is a member of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines. The unit calls itself the Lava Dogs because of its hard training on the volcanic slopes of the Hawaiian islands.
The unit repeatedly engaged the enemy in the sere landscape of Afghanistan as part of Operation Mountain Lion, a corporal in the unit said. That was the second-largest U.S. military combat operation in Afghanistan since the war began.
“I remember stumbling around rocks and waking him up for radio watch while on Operation Mountain Lion,” the corporal said.
Posted in Iraq, the Marines of Charlie Company saw action near the village of Haqlaniyah, where they regularly came under attack by insurgents and made repeated patrols of the countryside.
“Guys were getting such little sleep it was a superhuman effort at first to keep up,” the corporal said.
Staying focused around the clock, accepting self-discipline as a lifestyle, is what it means to be a Marine, Sgt. Maj. Lewallen said.
“We actually teach that from day one,” he said. “You are a Marine 24-7.”
Instilling those values comes with an added challenge during the Information Age, where many Marines have cell phones capable of sending text messages, images and video, even from Iraq, Lewallen said. It is impossible to monitor every message sent all the time, so the military must rely on troops to make the right choices.
In Monroe, the young Marine’s family immediately came under cyber attack, with threats posted worldwide as their names and address were spread on the Web.
Even the business where the Marine’s mother works received repeated phone calls threatening acts of vandalism unless she was fired.
The Monroe Police Department and the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office watched out for the family, and the community came together during the online storm, the mother’s supervisor said.
“The best thing we learned from this is that we can turn to the community as a whole,” the supervisor said. “There’s a lot of resources that can help you.”
The Monroe man’s family declined to comment, the supervisor said.
The Marine Corps continues to investigate the controversy. The rage against the Monroe Marine’s family has quieted down, with fewer people contacting his mother’s workplace in Monroe.
The Marine is training with his unit in Hawaii, preparing for another combat tour in Iraq this fall.
Reporter Justin Arnold: 425-339-3432 or jarnold@heraldnet.com.
Reporter Yoshiaki Nohara: 425-339-3029 or ynohara@heraldnet.com
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