Genocide in the making

An Evolutionary roadmap

Here is an example of freestyle writing. I define this term as something I do when I just want to write with passion and without interruption. I edit almost nothing beyond grammar and spelling and just let my thoughts come out. There is no policing of my own thoughts at these times; I have never embraced self-censorship; such writing comes naturally for me. I liken my freestyle of writing to a place in Copenhagen in the middle of the night, mid 1840’s when a brilliant philosopher, the very father of existentialism, in the late hours, wrestling with his own, and humanities, constant state of existential angst.

A famous quote from Kierkegaard that most people know or at least know a paraphrase of is “What labels me negates me”. This phrase doesn’t seem like much, but it is everything. It is perhaps a partial antidote to a history of murder that manifested out of our human nature to collectivism or tribalism. I am quite well read and educated in history, philosophy, psychology and have an extreme love for literature. I feel confident in my knowledge and ability to understand patterns in human existence. I also understand our 200,000-year-old human evolution well enough to know what we have evolved from but are still very much related to. The empirical data is available and hardly up for debate, hitherto, if you want to study it. In conclusion I know that one of the main components (though not the only one) when we form tribes, we kill each other. Oh, and we do indeed always form tribes.

I know firsthand how murder becomes easy once you can group identify your enemy’s guilt. If you see your enemy as an individual, you will empirically observe the nature you share. It’s much harder to kill at that moment of realization. A moment when you know this person has the same existential journey that you face, the suffering, the triumphs……the very things that make us individual humans but yet share a common bond over. Life is very difficult; nobody is without suffering, but our suffering takes place in unique stories that are individual. These stories of individual triumph are worth hearing. Viktor Frankl was a great psychologist who invented “Logotherapy” and spent 3 years in Nazi concentration camps to include Auschwitz, his wife dying in the process from typhus and his father dying of starvation. Viktor Frankl himself in his biography quotes Dostoevsky on his own life experiences “there is only one thing that I dread, not to be worthy of my sufferings” Frankl then went on to change the lives of millions in psychology. Read “Mans Search for Meaning” if you want to know his story and read about his philosophy. Is it ironic that Frankl, a true victim of collective guilt, found personal salvation in individualism?

In 2004 I was conducting a foot patrol with 14 other Marines in the Al Anbar province, city of Ramadi, population over 220,000. In our lingo, we call this area “The Sunni Death Triangle”. About 93% of all Muslims are Sunni. However, despite Saddam Hussein being a Sunny, Iraq, like Iran its neighbor, is comprised of mostly Shia Muslims. The Al Anbar province is Saddam’s stomping grounds, his loyalists are here, and everyone is Sunni, smack dap in the middle of a Shia country. This is why most Iraqis were for the fall of Saddam. He was brutal to most of the population who were Shia.This is not at all a justification for the war, I am simply explaining to you the local politics at the moment. The triangle or death triangle as we called it, was at the time by far the most violent part of Iraq. Needless to say, not a great place to be on a foot patrol with 14 other guys. The tribal conflict between the Sunnis and Shia is extremely heavy in that area, you also have both groups fighting us and you also have Iranian fighters joining the Shia side. I get anxious when I think about this geographical area and just how much death I have seen there.

It was early March, about 1 month before the 4-week assault on nearby Fallujah by First Marine Division. I was working directly for division HQ in what they called “A quick react force” My job had a few functions, to be inserted directly into hot zones in real time and neutralize the threat, patrol “hot spots” (areas with frequent fighting) and basically get ambushed and then neutralize the threat, sometimes it was something a little more specific. Normally when you have a job in war time you are doing that job your entire tour excluding perhaps a big promotion. I worked in this “quick react force” for less than two months before moving back to first Marine Division and commanding a company during the assault on Fallujah. In part this position was so short because it is considered too risky on one’s mental capacity. You might very die as well, there is also that aspect. The road to having this kind of job is very complicated, but I will tell it in full one day

These were not just any 14 Marines with me. They were 0321 infantry reconnaissance Marines. They are of the highest level of killers the Marine Corps puts forward. We were in a staggered foot patrol with me second to the last guy. I had the guys patrolling at 25-30 yards apart from each other. This distance isn’t typical in an urban foot patrol, in fact it’s very dangerous as it can cause a man or two to get isolated from the rest of the patrol. However, the threat of improvised explosives in this area is so high that you have to keep distance so not everyone is killed in a single blast. The biggest threats on this type of patrol are first, the above mentioned, then sniper fire, then probably suicide vest and more, but less threatful tactics. My fear was the first mentioned I.E.D.s. Anything and everything can be one. The patterns are hard to catch, in part because your mental observations have to be so sharp, you may indeed ignore and become vulnerable to other threats in your distraction.

I was about to pass by a market I had passed by maybe slightly less than ten times, I had even exchanged small pleasantries once with the husband and wife who ran one of the stands. The man was educated in the US and had been a professor, in Tenn of all places. I remember deeply our conversation about being at war but as individuals, we had few differences, good man, I liked him and feel very guilty having forgotten his name. I looked for his face to give a quick nod. At this point there is a slight turn in the road, it’s very dangerous to stop, you can’t fully see around the corner. I planned only a nod and to keep moving. I never saw the stand keeper because I was distracted by a small Toyota car, white and covered in rust, more rust than white. I just described almost every personal car in Iraq. The reason the car bothered me was because the market stall is usually livelier with more people, and they would usually be standing where that car is. If it was the car of a stall keeper, it would be parked behind the stall having been unloaded there. I knew immediately this was a bomb. I, with an even tone, talked into my headset to my entire platoon “stop” I was second closest to the car, the Marine closest to the car was probably a little over 30 meters from it making me 60 meters. Every one of my Marines were frozen in place, not saying a word, waiting for instruction. I told the Marine closest to the car to move to my exact position. This was very unusual to call one of them to me like that. It’s worth mentioning because it speaks to the level of discipline these men had, he without hesitation did exactly what he was told.

We were being watched; the car exploded once the person realized we knew and were moving to a defensive posture, they blew the car. At least, I assume that’s how it went down. Why the didnt blow it in the middle of the platoon, I can’t say. It’s a rich target for a Shia militia fighter, kill some Marines and some Sunny Muslims as well. Speaking strictly on fighting tactics, I hold no grudges. I had studied war tactics extensively in order to lead in such a unit despite being a 28yr old kid myself. I often looked at the battle ground in front of me like a game of chess. I had studied even our historical enemies, Rommel for mechanized desert, Hochi Min for guerilla warfare and so on…Knowing the consequence of my failure would be fatal, gave me a forced adrenal rush that I can’t quite explain. I say forced, because you are not walking away at this point, not without getting bloody. I got bloody on this day.

The Marine to my front was rapidly moving already toward me. I remember seeing that half rusted, half white driver’s side door flying off with smoke and fire behind it. Then my face was filled with a mixture of smoke, dirt and small debris that I was frantically trying to wipe from my face. I wanted to get my eyes on the Marine in front of me and looking back it feels like I was trying to clear my face for minutes. In reality it was more like a few seconds before I had blurred vision but all I could see was very dark and thick smoke, which was also going in my face. I had to move back, I couldn’t breathe. I heard on the headset one of the Marines who was about halfway back in the patrol say he had “contact on the building to my left” . Him and the two closest Marines reached that small building first and killed three men who had engaged them in a brief firefight. I was too far away to help, and my vision was 20% at best. If last phase of their ambush had been closest to me, I would be dead today. I wouldn’t have been able to engage.

In the aftermath, the Marine that was in front of me who went down in the blast was ok but in complete shock, shaking violently. He had some minor shrapnel in the back of his legs and around his neck where his flak jacket stopped in the back. He was just outside the lethal blast range of the explosion. I had like four pieces of metal in my right shoulder. They were small pieces, we pulled them out with pliers from a Humvee tool kit. The Marine who went down and myself, in solidarity we never reported our injuries. I will let you figure out the significance of that. Nearly 20 years later, I stand by that decision. I will tell you a fun fact about that Marine who went down in front of me, he to this day says I saved his life. It’s a bit dramatic, it’s hard to say exactly where the kill zone of that blast was. I also feel it diminishes the three Marines who saved both of our lives that day. That same Marine nearly 10 years later serving as a fireman in a small town in Penn where he is from, he saved a little girl who had drowned with CPR.

There was no celebrating though, I walked among the dead bodies of the 10 or so (we actually couldn’t tell) Iraqi people who died from the blast as many of them were only a few feet away. The new friend I had briefly made that I mentioned before, the stall owner and his wife were killed in the blast. There were several children and I want you to read this, blown up beyond recognition. I saw a young child’s leg detached from a body with bone and gore hanging from it. The rest of the child’s whereabouts were unknown. I helped tend to the dozen or so wounded. The army had come by with a small support unit for medical help. The Army brought along an Arabic speaking translator. An older man, slightly heavyset wearing a typical Iraq Dishdashah that was black with some white under showing around the edges was introduced to me from the translator. He had a thick black beard that was unkept. I knew the local garb well enough to know exactly where he was from, and I also knew he was currently deep in enemy territory being a Shia in the Sunni death triangle. He was zip tied with his hands behind his back, the army guys had zip tied him after he confessed to being a relative to one of the men who rigged the bomb. It was there way of taking credit, which can be important in this region.

I spoke to him through the translator. I do believe the translation wasn’t perfect I should admit. He was telling me that Iraq was rightfully a Shia country and that we should leave, and they will settle the dispute with the Sunni population. This means death for Sunnis, and I have to admit, I didn’t much disagree with him. But mostly because I knew I would have no impact on Iraq beyond individual horror I am certain to bring some families and a sense of rescue or redemption for others. This dual reality can change daily and even hour to hour. I will explain, because I think that concept is important, though off topic. I once rescued a woman in Tikrit, Iraq. When I found her by accident, she was naked and chained to a wall in a private residence. She had been raped and physically tortured to include being branded like cattle. She is probably glad I was in Iraq. The man who was holding her captive is probably not glad I was in Iraq, as he lost his life that day. The moral choice isn’t usually as easy as the one I just mentioned.

There are people you meet in life that have a real impact on your existential journey. This impact can’t always be reduced to one categorical imperative or another. I can’t explain that further, I will leave you to think about that. This man in front of me was such a man. His argument was based on a tribal war that started with the Prophet Mohammeds death in 632. Here I was standing in the middle of this 1,400yr old tribal dispute. I was representing the red, white and blue tribe, which for some reason few can fully explain, has a deep interest in involving itself in this 1,400yr old feud. I asked him what his future intentions were. I met several of these men and even questioned a few, their bravery is unmatched, they will tell you to your face they plan to kill you if you let them go. I admire that courage tremendously and I also know it means my enemy there was to be respected and considered very dangerous and capable. A man who will tell you while in captivity that he wants to kill you, is a man who you must respect in a combat theater.

He told me that there was nothing in his future. He said he was too old and wounded or injured to fight (remember translation was not the best) and he was here to simply take credit on behalf of a certain Militia group. I have my reasons for not sharing with you that groups name. I am not a patient man and that certainly was most evident after the stated events. I say this because this man perplexed me so much that I studied his face and demeaner. His rhetoric was different then I had heard before, almost at peace and he was finished with this war after this message. I broke my silence and asked him if he had served in the 10yr Iraq/Iran war. He said he had and had sustained a leg injury that still plagued him. That war was brutal and very bloody and crushing to both countries’ economies. Iraq then had several more wars. This man had seen a lot. I didn’t scare him the least. When the Army translator assumed our conversation was done, he said “I will prep him to take him to division for questioning” I told him to hold and ask the men does he want to go. If he goes to divisiontThis means he will live, and he knows it. He would be questioned, maybe detained for a year at the most then free. I am not saying its glamorous, but he would live.

Surprisingly he told me he would prefer that I set him free right there, where we were at that moment. The Army officer started to protest, I told him to “shut the fuck up” and repeat exactly what we both say without deterring from my exact words. The gentlemen from the Army didn’t know the death triangle like I did. This man was Shia and surrounding us were a lot of angry Sunni people who want revenge. I knew if I released him, his life would end within a few mins. I asked him again, “do you want to come back with us for questioning?” I have never asked this question as if it was a choice before or since. He again replied, '“set me free” I didn’t respond immediately. The Army translator was frantically half whispering and pleading with me to not let him go, but his reasoning was different. He saw a free man. I saw a dead man. I took my time a minute or two making a decision. I needed to know that he knew my releasing him meant his death and that he didn’t have the same viewpoint as the army officer. Finally, I said it “release him”. He was shot and killed within five mins by a Sunni local.

This man spent his whole life fighting for tribalism. Religious and political tribalism, regardless of who you may or may not think is right in each theater of war he participated in. It was still based on our nature; we form tribes, and we kill each other. I do admit looking back, I admire his will. This day really haunted me and still does for so many reasons, dead children, dead families I had met, and old warrior of many tribal conflicts who I believe passed on the way he wanted. The heroism of my guys and the Sunni people who just wanted to buy bread for home. We were all participating in humanities cycle, different roles but all involved.

If you notice from my story, describing this day, I had a personal connection and interaction with several people. They had an individual story, and I don’t see a universal as to who is right or wrong. I see people with different stories. Hard universal truths of morality when your enemy is no longer an individual begin to dissipate. That day I saw almost everyone as an individual as the setting was too intimate to be ignored. If we had started the day as individuals, we might have talked about literature, or religion, or food, maybe culture. Instead, we all spent the day in a hellish nightmare of human existence that is all too common. Our libraries are filled with the non-fictional accounts of our history of forming tribes and butchering each other. Sometimes our nightmares are filled with them as well. Despite all this documentation available to us to study, we repeat it again and again.

A friend recently asked me if I was surprised at how bad our current political tribalism has gotten. I said no, of course not. It would be more surprising if we avoided it considering our 200,000-year evolutionary history. It should actually be an a priori that we will eventually in all global regions, eliminate individualism for collectivism resulting in collective guilt and then the killing starts either by mutual war or genocide as the guilty are rounded up. Right now, as I write this without looking it up, I can think of five genocides based on collective guilt going on as I write this. 1. Somalia The Bantu 2. Sudan North Darur, tribal conflict 3. Syria, Christians and Shi Muslims are being slaughtered 4. The Congo, mass rape and genocide of the Hutu and Tutsi people 5. Afghanistan civilian deaths have raised by 20% and woman and tribal groups are being cleansed since the US departure. I could do this all day, and on current events.

If you’re thinking “well those are underdeveloped countries, what do you expect?” “Education can fix that”, to which I say “bullshit”. Education is not an inoculation from this tribalism that we cling to, and often it can contribute to it. On January 20th 1942 the “wannsee conference” which finalized plans for the industrialization of murder “The final Solution” had 15 participants of the Nazi party, eight of which had doctoral degrees. Pol Pot from Cambodia was educated for three years in Paris before returning to Cambodia with the sole purpose of a revolution. Pol Pot took a Marxists theory promoted by the university in Paris. He developed a thought and was praised for it that was based on the educated people of Cambodia and the well to do “city dwellers” as being to blame for the struggles of the poor farmers historically. His plan was to go back to Cambodia and force the city people into the fields to work in camps for the good everyone. Between death from slave labor and outright murder up to 2.5 million people died, that’s around 1/3 of their population.

But what I really want to talk about is America, the good ole US of A. The country seems and always have seemed to be far removed from this world of tribalism and death at least in recent times that is. Long enough for us to almost all be fat and busy watching Netflix or finding people to hate on social media. Looking at history, tribalism probably started as groups pulling recourses together to survive. It seems to have evolved fast from there into tribes forming tribes to also war with other tribes. This makes sense, recourses were scarce and still are. Look at the situation in the Ukraine, major exporter of grain, land located on and within a fossil fuel pipeline, and an important trade port and more. You can actually go to youtube and watch videos from multiple big news stations on how the Ukraine from about 2015-2020 is a hub for white supremacy (CNN did several specials on this several years ago) They also did a special on a UN report that the Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe and Zelenski had all these questionable ties, I forget what they all were, and I don’t actually care, its slightly relevant to the topic though. It’s almost comical that the UN and CNN as two examples were saying the same thing about the Ukraine that now Putin is saying but yet for us, the Ukraine has become this little darling and our previously accusations seems 100 years ago. I have been in and studied war to extensively to know better, nobody is a darling and nobody is the evil genius character either. Well, most of the time. The west usually also has a complicit role in these issues.

But what I really want to say is why is the Ukraine always on TV and I can’t find any news from the US on the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar? It goes back to what I am saying and our tribal history and recourses. What does Myanmar have to offer the west for example? Not a damn thing. The Ukraine is different and one of our biggest rivals has a stake. I know this is old news; I am not saying anything you don’t know. But I bet you didn’t think about it as a global historical a priori of our existence at least hitherto. If I am right and it’s our nature, then the US will eventually fall to the same thing. We know because it has before, several times and even now in our foreign policy.

But it is also manifesting in our culture war and politics. I would say I am seeing things I am shocked about but as I said, it would be more shocking if it didn’t happen. Look at the hatred between our two ridiculous political parties. Polls now show 1 in 5 Americans think violence is appropriate for political gain. I saw recently an LA times article that talked about it being ok to mock the dead who were not vaccinated. I can’t even bare to look at social media for a minute, the hatred spued at collective groups thought to be guilty of this or that is extreme from all sides. People are not taking time to see others as individuals who probably mostly have the same life desires and the same struggles and individual triumphs as themselves.Instead, they are collectively guilty. If someone has a different opinion on politics especially, they are to be silenced and shamed and even physically attacked. We have a two-party system that for about at least the last twenty years from what I can tell have been weaponizing government agencies to go after political opponents and even private citizens who don’t agree with something politically. There is also about a twenty-year history of both parties also denying election defeat. Most of you think this is more to one party or another, as an outsider looking in who truly doesn’t subscribe to a party. You are part of the problem; you are part of the tribal culture. News channels and social media are massively profiting from this tribal war and most of you are complacently involved. Thats not me being judgmental, those are simple facts based on how people self-identify politically.

All of this we are doing seems petty at the moment, but it keeps escalating and we are now seeing small violent skirmishes in the name of politics. If you don’t know that, you are not paying attention. This silencing of people with different opinions, labeling large groups of people as collectively guilty, rhetoric surrounding class warfare etc. The overall dehumanization of people as individuals and ranking them instead as being collectively guilty; it only has only one destination in history…it leads to the Valley of the Fallen in Spain, to Auschwitz, to the killing fields of Cambodia, the genocide of east Timor by Indonesia, the genocide of Laos by America and to a battered city in central Iraq. It will lead to death, where it has always led.

I told my rather gruesome story of Ramadi to perhaps give you a slight peek into the reality of this world. A reality that most of you will get to see if you continue to play along in the cycle. What role you will play, it’s hard to predict that. Will you be in a Japanese American in an internment camp? Maybe worse, you will watch your father starve to death at a place like Auschwitz as Viktor Frankl did as he stood with collective guilt. Or you might play this role, here is an actual interview from a man who served in a Lithuanian police battalion that committed genocide in Belarus in 1941 “we were issued Russian guns and bullets. Some were exploding bullets; a person’s skull opens up so fast. They would carry children, the little ones, they would take the others by the hand. They lay down and lay the child next to them. First you shoot the father; how would the father react seeing his child shot, then you shoot the child.”

Now say to yourself, we are at a point where at least one in five people walking amongst you agrees with an act of violence for political gain. Look at the amount of people wanting to silent others and strip away their freedoms from all sides like I have stated. The many examples I stated above of violence seem so far from where we currently are. They didn’t start as the extremes the history books gloss over. If you read more deeply, you will see the exact same early trends every single time without exemption. This isn’t a conspiracy theory; this is our human history. I doubt we can change it. I also doubt many of you truly want to change it.

There is a common warning in many of the greatest works of literature against collectivism. Dostoevsky, Nietzche, Foucault, Orwell, Kierkegaard, Solzhenitsyn, Frankl, Locke, Tolstoy, to name just a few. They all knew where it leads and has always led.

“There aren't just bad people that commit genocide; we are all capable of it. It's our evolutionary history.” James Lovelock (climate scientists and expert on human evolution)