Military comings and goings

By: JOHN VAN DOORN - Staff Writer | Saturday, April 14, 2007 9:29 PM PDT ∞

On the same day last week, right on the front page, were two stories about U.S. Marines. The stories had nothing to do with each other, save Semper Fi, and yet everything.

One was about the latest legal development in the Camp Pendleton case called Haditha: Eight Marines are being prosecuted in the deaths of 24 Iraqis. To generalize for a moment, with nuance to come: They are being prosecuted for killing Iraqis.

The other story was about 2,200 more Marines shipping out on the Bonhomme Richard for "out there," which means the war. There the aim will be to kill Iraqis.

San Diego is a military stronghold. There will always be stories, because history tells us so, of Marines back from war and Marines heading to war, their Humvees passing on the I-5, their loved ones on pier and tarmac.

But something about these two strikes home. They are not your basic tales of coming and going and not your standard fare. They are exceptional, taken together. The touching bravado of all young Marines as they sail away. And just across the county, the dark side of service.

Even that is too neat, like a painful but satisfying drama, all the loose ends tied up.There are complexities in the Haditha case that don't fit gracefully onstage; too much hell and too many unfinished sentences.

None of the eight is exactly at the center of a grand homecoming. Haditha is messier than that, more like life than a play in two deft acts.

Hard homecoming

On the one hand, up at Pendleton last week, you had Marines trying to stand tall in the docket with the madness of war swirling around them still, two years on, trying to understand and explain the difference between killing and murdering.

They were sent to kill and apparently did their jobs. Whether they killed as real warriors do or flew over that chasm separating murder from, well, other kinds of killing, and behaved like crazy men, is not known.

It is altogether likely that men ---- and perhaps these men ---- caught in the clamor and scream of war, caught in frenzy and guilt, wrapped up in slaughter and afraid of kindness and fearful of death, cannot for brief terrible moments know right from wrong.

That's pretty facile. Well, this is not to excuse anyone who may have put innocence against the wall and cut it down with automatic weapons. But these men, and all men, deserve to explain, if indeed they can. They are not now who they were then, and they surely have trouble distinguishing between the two.

They deserve to try to look into themselves and see if there are threads still connected, or if everything is unraveled beyond reassembly. If they need help to see and work on the threads, they ought to get that much.

Probably the military prosecutors are themselves not too clear about what's what. Last week there were stories emanating from several sources well acquainted with the case that it is anything but airtight. There are problems.

Off they go

On the other hand, fresh faces sailed away. Some were headed for the killing fields for second and third tours. But many were fresh and new, barely aware of the Haditha Eight, and were determined by their own proud declarations to fight for Bush and country. They said so.

Other men go to the heart of things, knowing deep down what matters. One of them spoke to writer Teri Figueroa, who has covered many of the send-offs and returns.

He said, "My buddies aren't going to let me fall." Also, "It's pretty rough to say goodbye to the good land, the home front."

To godawful date, 3,200 American service men and women have been killed in Iraq, 326 of them from Camp Pendleton. From whatever causes, Iraqi deaths number 10 times that. Estimates vary, but sources who seem to have done their best to gather data accurately say that there have been more than 30,000 civilian victims. Other sources, less celebrated, say the number is closer to 100,000.

Juxtaposition, then, is not an unfair construct. "We're back, and see what can happen when war blurs and blinds," is the message from Haditha across the pages. "We're off," is the message from the new passengers of the Bonhomme Richard. "We hope to see better."

Contact columnist John Van Doorn at (760) 739-6647 or jvandoorn@nctimes.com.