The military's hazing hell

Carol Burke, author of "Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane and the High and Tight," talks to Salon about the military's frat-boy culture, how torture and initiation rites are used to transform civilians into soldiers -- and how Abu Ghraib is just a drop in the bucket.

By Suzy Hansen

Jun 4, 2004 | By now, the photos are hard to forget: A hooded and draped Iraqi stands on a box, his limbs attached to electrical wire, like some menacing, anonymous art project. Naked men configured in a macabre version of a cheerleading pyramid. An Iraqi prisoner being forced to simulate oral sex on another man. The recent images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison were stunning not only because of their cruelty, but because of the peculiar, sexualized, almost theatrical manner in which the prisoners suffered. Perhaps most sickening, however, was the fact that all of this misery was accompanied by the grinning, gleeful faces of the American soldiers evidently proud of their work. It's natural to wonder: Where did these servicemen and -women get such sick and twisted ideas?

Carol Burke, author of the new book "Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High and Tight: Gender, Folklore and Changing Military Culture," wasn't at all surprised to learn that soldiers ritualistically tortured Iraqi prisoners and documented their deeds. Her research, done long before the Abu Ghraib news broke, shows that these types of practices are widespread in military cultures around the globe. Initiation rites often involve elaborate, carnivalesque ceremonies, which can include dressing up, physical pain, and personal and sexual humiliation. And the soldiers nearly always leave behind a trail of photographs and videotapes.

Burke's analysis of militaries as specific cultures, and very nearly cults, provides another way to understand what happened at Abu Ghraib. Her ideas also make the problem much more complicated. Ultimately, according to Burke, to truly eradicate such practices, the military would have to reform not only the fraternity-like initiation at service academies, but also the traditions long used to transform soldiers from civilians into soldiers.

Burke, a professor of English at the University of California at Irvine, spoke to Salon about the military's shocking marching chants, some disturbing examples of military initiation rituals, and why it's not surprising that women committed torture at Abu Ghraib.

How did you become interested in military culture?

In the late '80s and early '90s I was a civilian professor at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. While I was there I was working on a book on women in prison. I found a number of similarities between prisons and the institution I was going back and forth to every day. One experience I had during the first semester I was there was a formative one. I came in really early one morning and this small group of would-be Marines [the Naval Academy recruits Marines too] were doing a running march together. Like a lot of groups in the military they were chanting and as they came by me, I heard: "Rape, maim, kill babies, hooah. Rape, maim, kill babies, hooah," over and over.

Later that day I met my class and I said to my students, "I just heard the most bizarre thing," and told them. My class looked at me and said, "Oh, ma'am, after a couple of weeks, you don't really hear the words that they're saying anymore." And I said to them, "What you just said to me is far more frightening than what I heard this morning."

Next Page: Male initation rites -- including simulated sex, infantilization and sleep deprivation -- are still common in the military

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