Eight Marines and a sailor tragically drowned in a training exercise gone wrong off the coast of California in July 2020. Military hearings are underway right now at Camp Pendleton in California to determine whether some of the leaders involved that day will be kicked out of the Marine Corps.
Parents of the dead military personnel want answers, and understandably so, but is dying in military training worse than dying in combat?
The troops drowned returning to the USS Somerset from San Clemente Island in an amphibious assault vehicle (AAV). These are armored personnel carriers that become boats in the water. Yet, “Some of the aging vehicles broke down.” Some of the troops were allowed to take part in the exercise even though they hadn’t passed their required swim tests and egress training. Officers in charge told their commanders about problems with the AAVs (which have since been pulled from sea duty), but none of them stopped the training exercise.
Turns out that “sixty Marines have died in training in the last five years.”
Lupita Garcia, the mother of one of the dead—Lance Corporal Marco Barranco— attended the hearings, where she was interviewed by NPR at a local park east of Los Angeles:
I always thought the military was very organized. They knew what they were doing. And so I do feel guilty a bit because I didn’t look more into it. Maybe if I would have known that there was all these flaws, maybe, all these accidents, I would have talked to my son about it.
I believe in God. I have faith. And sometimes I just say, this is what God wanted. But then I don’t accept that it was in training. That’s what really, really gets me so angry. Why in training?
I’d rather have my son die in combat because I would have been prepared for this. I would accept it so much more because I knew this was his job. They would ask me, it’s been almost two years. Why are you still mourning? I’m like, because I can’t accept this. I don’t get to have an open casket. I don’t get justice.
Again I ask: Is dying in military training worse than dying in combat? The mother of Lance Corporal Barranco, and no doubt many others, think so. But is this the case?
All military combat that U.S. troops have been engaged in since World War II has been unnecessary, unjust, senseless, undeclared, and immoral. U.S. troops who died in Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, or some lesser conflict did not die in defense of our freedoms, supporting and defending the Constitution, securing our borders, guarding American shores, patrolling American coasts, watching over American skies, protecting Americans from credible threats, or fighting “over there” so we don’t have to fight “over here.” They died for the military/industrial complex. They died for the U.S. empire. They died as an expendable pawn of the U.S. government.
It is tragic when U.S. military personnel die in training. But why is it that no one ever stops and asks what it is they are being trained to do? Here are ten things:
- Make widows and orphans.
- Destroy foreign industry, culture, and infrastructure.
- Bomb, maim, and kill people who were no threat to the United States.
- Create terrorists, insurgents, and militants.
- Carry out a reckless, belligerent, and interventionist U.S. foreign policy.
- Be a member of the president’s personal attack force.
- Invade and occupy other countries.
- Police the world.
- Unconditionally follow immoral orders.
- Engage in offense while calling it defense.
Dying in combat in some foreign war is not heroic. Dying in combat in some foreign war is not worthy of glory, laud, and honor. It doesn’t matter if a soldier was just “doing his job.” Dying in combat in some foreign war instead of in a training exercise does not give the death some sense of meaning or purpose. It is a death in vain and for a lie.
