When Noble Warriors Go to War

Review by Bill Doughty––

Warriors must be prepared for what they'll encounter in combat as well as what they'll experience before and especially after.

Karl Marlantes's "What It Is Like to Go to War" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011) is "dedicated to the Marines I served with in Viet Nam, those who came home and those who didn't, and to all combat veterans who fought and are fighting with noble hearts –– all."

How to find and develop a "noble heart" is part of Marlantes's quest in this excellent book of advice, life sketches, and philosophy –– all punctuated by you-are-there whipsaw jungle combat. Scholar-warrior Marlantes earned the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation medals for valor, two Purple Hearts and ten air medals.

He deals with his own post-traumatic stress disorder and some personal and family issues in painful soul-baring book that is both enlightening and brutal. "The Marine Corps taught me how to kill but didn't teach me how to deal with killing."

But this book is not just for warriors and their families, it is also for people in power who send their nation's sons and daughters to war.

"All conscientious citizens and especially those with the power to make policy will be better prepared to make decisions about committing young people to combat if they know what they are about to ask them," Marlantes writes.

Marine veteran Karl Marlantes discusses ethics with students, staff and faculty at the U.S. Naval War College, May 16, 2017. (Photo by MC2 Jess Lewis)

"War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetuated by adults." 

He asks us to remember how many times the United States has been involved in violent conflicts –– more than a dozen times –– since Vietnam: Cambodia, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Panama, Grenada, Gulf War I, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Not counting the ongoing war with Islamist terrorists, or intervention in Somalia, or assisting Saudi Arabia in the Yemeni civil war, "We've aided and abetted killing in the Falklands, El Salvador, Afghanistan (when the Russians were there), Angola, and Israel/Palestine," Marlantes reminds us. "We are a very aggressive and warlike nation."

"Noble hearts" may not always be aligned with noble causes, either. Marlantes asks us to consider communist revolutionaries in Russia, early Baathists in Iraq, rebels of the American Civil War Confederacy, Germans of the Third Reich. "No professional warrior should be ignorant of Nuremberg."

Gen. William Westmoreland (Khe Sanh), Col. Oliver North (Iran-Contra), and George W. Bush (Iraq invasion), as examples in this book, were warriors or leaders who may have believed they were fighting for a right cause for the right reasons, though history shows how wrong they were.

Marlantes describes the concept of pseudo-speciation: creating a false species of another human being, creating "the other" so it becomes easier to kill. Marlantes warns, "The warrior has to be very careful about whom the politicians make out to be devils."

His advice: Question motives and loyalty. Increase consciousness. Contemplate intentions of right and wrong. And know when violence is justified. Defenders should go to war only to protect others from violence, Marlantes says. "Using violence other than to protect makes a person a bully or a murderer."

Which is not to say there are no justifiable uses of military power when diplomacy fails. "As long as there are people who will kill for gain and power, or who are simply insane, we will need people call warriors who are willing to kill to stop them," he writes.



"Warriors must always know the people they are protecting and why. They must undertake the personal responsibility for deciding when to kill and for what higher cause. This implies a commitment to a cause beyond self-interests, or even national interest alone." A noble warrior ethos requires introspection and wisdom.

"Committing troops as warriors," Marlantes writes, "requires a sober assessment of whether or not using coercive violence to accomplish a change in commonly accepted law is moral, particularly if those who don't agree with us aren't threatening us," he says. Can wrongs be righted, can disagreements be resolved without violence? Marlantes gives South Africa as an example; apartheid was defeated without military conflict.

Marlantes refers to thinkers, authors, books and myths to help develop "noble warriors" and enlighten us all: Joseph Campbell, Jane Goodall, Eric Hoffer, Inazo Nitobe, Tim O'Brien, T. E. Lawrence, Clausewitz, Sophocles, Yeats, Norman MacLean, Alice Miller, John Bradshaw, Adele Faber, Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita, Grail legend, Viking warrior poetry, Illiad, and Táin Bó Cúailnge.

Never give up boot camp training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island. (Photo by LCpl. Ryan Hageali)

It's not just about reading and thinking, though. Tough physical and mental training is necessary, as well, especially in order to manage risk:

"The primary reason you don't make sound judgments in combat is that you too often are exhausted and numbed. There is little that can be done about this except training under extreme duress to learn how to function at such times –– one very strong reason why I deplore ignorant attempts by civilians and noncombat veterans to make boot camp more 'humane.' There is nothing humane about dead kids because someone cracked under pressure."

In his lead-in to Chapter 5, "The Enemy Within," he warns of the need to recognize repressed and despised weaknesses of character that can cause petty acts: "In the crucible of war those same weaknesses and petty acts can lead to consequence of immense horror and evil." 

He discusses My Lai and other atrocities and issues he had to confront, in some cases decades later.

Marlantes offers advice about how the military approaches spirituality and also recommends incorporating the "explosion of knowledge about psychology and brain chemistry into its training programs."

He advocates for spiritual contemplation and reflection incorporated in training and even right before and after combat –– more "Gunny" philosophy and psychology; less military chaplaincy and religion.

"What It Is Like to Go to War" examines concepts like killing, guilt, numbness, lying, loyalty, heroism and home, among others. He helps us define "warrior," too.

Warriors, he says, must choose sides as they make an individual commitment to the mission. "Individuality must not be suppressed even though individual action is subordinated." And, they must make an a fundamental additional choice –– willingness to risk death or maiming resulting from using violence against violence.

"The first decision, choosing sides, means taking on the warrior spirit. People who take on the warrior spirit become metaphorical warriors they are like warriors in certain aspects, but they are not warriors. This choice is serious enough, often entailing commitments of great personal sacrifice. A prime example is a government or corporate whistle-blower. The second decision, however, choosing to use violence to protect someone else against actual and intended violence, a choice that usually also entails danger to the lives and psyches of the people who choose the violent path, moves one from being a metaphorical warrior to being a warrior in deed. Warriors are prepared to kill people."

Karl Marlantes at the U.S. Naval War College (Photo by MC2 Jess Lewis)

In addition to being ready to kill another human being, warriors must be prepared for –– and even willing to embrace –– seeming incongruous feelings of guilt, joy, shame, fear, exhilaration and grief in order to achieve "transcendence."

Transcendence helps the individual return to society after combat.

"The warrior of the future will need to know how to enter and exit both worlds, if not with ease, then at least without permanently disintegrating his or her personality." With nobility and a noble heart must come humility and an open mind.

"The more we recognize the feelings of transcendence and the psychological and spiritual intensity of war, the easier it will be to prevent their appeal from clouding our judgment about going to war the next time," Marlantes concludes in this indispensable book.

"Without the integration of the positive and negative sides of the war, the experience isn't transmitted in any practical and meaningful sense, and we will continue to seek the glory of war unchecked by wisdom about all the costs of war."

U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Robert Swift presents the Marine Corps flag during an Honor Guard practice session at Joint Base Charleston - Weapons Station, S.C., June 21, 2017. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Thomas T. Charlton)

(Marlantes's book "Matterhorn" is on the Navy Reads "50 for 50" post –– Fifty books to honor the half-century commemoration of the Vietnam War: "Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War" by Karl Marlantes. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010. "The light died. Voices were silenced. Darkness and fear replaced light and reason. The whisper of a leaf scraping on bark would make heads turn involuntarily and hearts gallop. The surrounding blackness and the unseen wall of dripping growth left no place to run. In that black wet nothingness the perimeter became just a memory. Only imagination gave it form.")