13 Mar Marines and chaos

I don’t talk about what i study outside of a few spaces because it really isn’t good dinner conversation. I think it should be the fourth, really – politics, religion, money, militarization of humanitarian aid. But i broke my own rule the other day, and a friend from across campus sent me this delightful gem (make sure you have your volume up):

http://www.marines.com/global-impact/toward-chaos

I made the mistake of watching the Haiti video (i mean, Operation Unified Response) after three days of re-reading news articles, op eds, academic and think tank reports about the first two months after the earthquake. It’s under four minutes, if you have the time. The misrepresentation of those first few weeks is breathtaking. But it’s the strange juxtaposition of Marines as Saviors (problematic in itself) next to Marines as Killing Machines that Securitize that i find particularly disturbing.

AS AMERICA’S CRISIS RESPONSE FORCE WE ARE ORGANIZED, TRAINED AND EQUIPPED TO FACE DOWN THE THREATS OF OUR TIME, ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE.

General James F. Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps

So which is it? Saving people from themselves or saving us from them? Threats to what, exactly? Well, apparently it’s a little of both?

From the mountains of Afghanistan to the shores of Haiti, Marines are ready and able to face down the threats of our time at a moment’s notice. Now for the first time, you can move with the Marines toward the sounds of chaos in the web series filmed on the front lines by the Marines fighting on them. Check back often for new videos-because chaos lurks around the corner. And where there is chaos there are Marines nearby; ready and able to silence it.

When did handing out water bottles and life-saving food become “front lines” of “threats”? Why must we imagine that we live in a world with a threat of chaos always “lurking” around some corner? What kind of world do they think we live in? And who do they think actually causes most of that “chaos?”

When the earthquake struck, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), in conjunction with the Department of Defense, deployed multiple branches of the armed forces to engage in immediate relief efforts. Among the first to land were hundreds of troops from the 82^nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, NC (Baker III 2010) who immediately took command of the airport and incoming aid supplies. Unfortunately, this also meant making decisions about what aid supplies provided by whom were allowed to land and be distributed in those first crucial weeks. By some estimates, as many as another 20,000 people were dying each day from lack of medical supplies, clean water, and food (Mullings 2010; Dugan, Dade, and Lauria 2010). These early deployments were met by 15,000 U.S. marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors along with an additional 3,500 UN Peacekeepers to add to the 7,000 already on the ground at the time of the earthquake (Aziakou; Nisbet and Couzens 2010; Anon. 2010). (for a comprehensive recount of the military action, see DiOrio’s report) Further, hospitals were surrounded by armed guards and tanks in the weeks following the earthquake (Dugan and Dade 2010).

This strong-armed militarized approach to the humanitarian response belied a set of assumptions that have been made and remade about the Haitian people that were further illustrated through the language of political pundits and military spokespersons. What was made plain was a discourse of the Haitian people as violent and unruly and desperately in need of orderliness. These discourses were further marshaled in the construction of notions of deserving and undeserving bodies (which is Chapter 2 of the dissertation).

Let me be clear – i’m not saying that this is an either / or prospect. This is not that the Marines are “bad” or doing “bad things” – rather, it’s the mixed discourse and the subsequent actions that need to be brought into question. It is the juxtaposition of Glorious Savior and Killing Machine that cannot be plied together. It is their need to construct the Haitian people, not as victims of centuries of oppression, but of some kind of presumed disorderliness to justify this mixed representation. And yet, by all accounts, in those first few days after the earthquake, the Haitian people were calm. It was the delays in relief aid distribution that eventually led to eruption in violence – with MINUSTAH troops firing rubber bullets and tear gas into crowds gathered to collect water and food (DiOrio, 2010).

And it is the prospect of men in war clothes, carrying machine guns, that needs to be rethought. Whether or not the military branches (all of which participated in the humanitarian response) supplied the kind of aid needed, the necessary securitzation, communications set, or other operational duties in an appropriate way is really the last question that should be asked. Rather, why does if have to be done with guns? Why does a humanitarian site have to be treated first like a war zone (where everyone is a presumed combatant) and not as – well… a humanitarian site?

Borrowed from:http://marinesmagazine.dodlive.mil/2010/08/31/salvation-haiti-disaster-relief/