‘Victim/volunteer’: heroes versus perpetrators and the weight of US service-members’ pasts in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

How might military service members figure as perpetrators of human rights violations? The question remains a taboo, painful and suppressed topic in United States’ face-to-face communities with strong veteran and active-duty presences. Our 2008–2014 ethnographic, team-based anthropological fieldwork focused on a mid-sized American city and its adjacent army base. We argue that the ambiguities and contradictions between soldiers-as-perpetrators and more common and public designations for soldiers and veterans – as heroes, protectors and volunteers, but also as victims of circumstance and injury – impede such exploration. War as a framework for legitimising lethal force complicates what constitutes perpetration, as do the implications of all-volunteer forces fighting protracted campaigns. The legacy of the Vietnam War brings key historicity to civilians’ efforts to not repeat the a priori victimisation of veterans as presumed perpetrators, alongside recognition that the signature, psychological and moral injuries of the post-9/11 wars also can render veterans as victims in the public's perspective. Finally, as counterpoint to the generalised avoidance of confronting rights violations, we draw on a journalist's account of a veteran who sought to face an Iraqi victim who lost family members directly; their mutual victimhood is sharply qualified by the civilian's innocence and the veteran's willing volunteerism.