A Parallel Universe

...This is really a book about values: their absence in society, their transmission in the corps, and the growing gap between the two...

...Then he followed many of the recruits when they left the island’s hermetic conditions to return to an imperfect, temptation-filled civilian world...

...and Alfred Gray, the no-nonsense gruntempathizing general whom Webb, as secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, appointed commandant of the corps...

...He shows how the Marines remake their charges, and he examines how the institution remade itself from the lows of the 1970s...

...Those subscribing to that notion may be a subculture in the corps now, but it is one with a growing constituency...

...The Marines, Ricks says, ultimately were rescued by two men: James Webb, a Vietnam veteran and novelist whose books chronicled the alienation between elites and the military and heavily influenced the outlook of those who served after him...

...a bond trader’s son, and dozens of working-class denizens who see the Marines as perhaps their last escape from lives dead-ending at Taco Bell...

...They are soft in every sense...

...They are muscled and strong, able and even eager to endure pain...

...With that foundation, Gray concentrated on improving fighting capability by insisting that every Marine undergo infantry training and restoring combat training to boot camp...

...He concedes that it likely saved his life...

...Ricks himself might have done more to make clear how the seemingly arbitrary hazing and abuse pays off in battle, when disobeying orders or placing your life above others or not doing your best, can be life- and mission-threatening...

...hcks notes that while the Marines have not done as well as the Army at ending racial strain or promoting blacks, they have done much better than society...

...His observations made for a remarkable Journal article, and now they form the core of a compelling book on the corps...

...They disdain selfishness...

...Generally, the farther away from their hometowns these new Marines are posted, the more they like the Corps...

...And they do it partly by cunning, forcing, for example, the white supremacist and black gang member to share a tent during Basic Warrior Training...

...They are all deposited in the swamps of South Carolina, where their hair is shorn and their possessions and pasts stripped...

...They aspire toward excellence...

...They emerge friends...

...Ricks notes that base closings have left most of the military concentrated in the South and West, geographically alienating it from the more liberal Northeast...

...What does it say that an inner-city resident feels safer in the military than on the streets...

...A Parallel Universe The growing gap between military and civilian values, and why it's a problem By Amy Waldman YOUNG AMERICAN MALES arrive at the Marine Corps Parris Island boot camp with sitcomstuffed brains, fat-riddled bodies, and spirits drained of purpose...

...This recruit was perfect at itarmed robbery, drug distribution, distribution of firearms, drive-by shootings...

...Drill instructors, formidable characters who have made the corps their life, do that partly by example: They are tireless, and their dedication to the Marines is bottomless...

...Add to that the lack of a clear enemy with the Cold War’s end and the military’s superiority complex because it has solved problems, such as drugs, that civilian society has not, and you are left with a potentially toxic combination...

...But most Marines adhere to the codes of conduct, and the mindset, with which they leave Parris Island: honor, integrity, duty, discipline...

...And they are ignorant, which makes it even more difficult for the military to respect their policy decisions, even as those decisions often involve placing blind faith in the military...

...Those reasons lure a motley crew to Platoon 3086: a black gang member, a former white supremacist, a pacifist Dutch-American...

...They wade into a blizzard of orders, insults, and constant, grueling activity, deliberately designed to disorient...

...That can only mean they will become more resistant to orders from civilian overseers they see as amoral, and more inclined to impose their values on societyto define it, rather than simply defending it...

...Ricks uses this section to provide a history of the corps, which has resurrected itself from the lows of the postVietnam era, when it was rife with crime and drugs and riddled with substandard recruits...

...The treatment seems cruel, arbitrary, even brutal, but it is carefully structured...

...So demanding is Parris Island now that 14 percent of recruits will not last through boot camp (compared to 7 percent in the Army...

...At Camp Lejeune, for example, the new Marines encounter superiors who are dishonest, lazy, overweight, and prone to excess of drugs, drink, or women...

...The end of the draft both narrowed the pool of people serving and professionalized the military...

...They learn that if they follow orders, their life will be calmer,” says one sergeant, offering a rationale the recruits are never privy to...

...hcks’ detailed week-by-week chronology of the recruits’ experience tends to reflect their lows and highs, lagging during repetitive exercises such as rifle training, and climaxing during Basic Warrior Training, or “Warrior Week,” when the recruits go into the woods for a dose of crawling through the mud and a taste of real combat, and return, says Ricks, “more Marine than not...

...That end product-confident young men capable of handling extraordinary responsibility-understandably fascinated Thomas Ricks, The Wall Street Journal‘s Pentagon reporter, when he observed Marines on patrol in Somalia, so he followed his curiosity to the source...

...But one-third of all new Marines fail to make it through their first term of enlistment, including some of those Ricks follows...

...A thread hanging from a uniform is a sign of disrespect for themselves and their superiors, a lack of attention to detail...

...From Earnest Winston Jr., the former gang member, comes the suggestion that some cultures may be even stronger than the Marines: “This recruit loved what he was doing being a criminal,” he says just before graduation...

...They do it partly by humiliation and haranguing...

...But there is no easy way to replicate in society the close proximity and shared enterprise of boot camp...

...fewer people circulate through on the short tours of duty that once instilled both appreciation for and understanding of the military...

...it must alter mentalities...

...Ricks points to two factors that have worsened the civil-military gap: the lack of elites serving in the military, and the maintenance of a large military in peacetime...

...As long as that self-imposed isolation continues, and as long as parents of all classes (and schools for all classes) fail to demand the discipline, excellence, teamwork, and honor instilled at Parris Island, the estrangement will only deepen...

...The corps had been purged of its deadwood, and recruit quality and training improved, before their tenure...

...If boot camp is to succeed, it must do more than reshape bodies...

...brawn, brains, and history for its identity...

...Given that that seems unlikely in the immediate future, he says, other options should be considered: expand ROTC programs, for example, and encourage military officers to pursue both civilian education and civilian careers, including perhaps political office...

...When Platoon 3086 was deposited on Parris Island in 1995, Ricks was there, and he was still there eleven weeks later when those who had survived graduated into the Marines’ elite ranks...

...They are now part of a brotherhood...

...For those who make it, and are transformed in the process, graduation, when they are pronounced Marines for the first time, is poignant, the pronouncement of the words, “Good morning, Marines,” a moment gleaming with hope...

...Meanwhile, political leaders, especially in Congress, are increasingly indifferent to military issues, even as their actions have major repercussions for that military...

...And as liberals have shunned the military since Vietnam and the draft’s end, often driving ROTC branches off college campuses, the officer corps has become more conservative-actively so, kcks says...

...Saying “I” is a cardinal sin: It shows they are thinking of themselves, not the unit...

...Since those aren’t exactly the ruling values in the civilian world these days, the Marines are, put simply, disgusted by everyone from their friends to their president...

...More than that, they are better people, stripped of prejudices and instilled with discipline...

...The Marines are the smallest and poorest of the military’s armed services, but they are also the proudest, an elite that relies not on big boats or planes, but AMY WALDMAN is a reporter for The New York Times...

...And it is a wake-up call: That cultural alienation, Ricks suggests, has the potential to become not just a matter of sociological interest, but a danger to society...

...When they leave, they have been emptied out, broken down, and built back up...

...And so the real clash between worlds comes when values and behaviors drilled in a perfectly controlled environment are suddenly tested by reality...

...Ricks offers several suggestions for bridging the gap, starting with reinstating the draft, or combining it with a national service option...

...Ignorance of the military, he says, is just one manifestation of a larger problem: “the separation of professional Americans, or the upper middle class, from the broad concerns of society...

...It is very easy when defining the threat as ‘chaos,”’ Ricks notes, “to blur the line between foreign and domestic enemies...

...Some come also because of tradition, and the prestige of what Ricks calls the working class’s Ivy League...

...Ricks ably chronicles the decline in service among those in leadership positions...

...But the biggest change, Ricks argues, needs to come not from the military but from the rest of us...

...At the time Ricks goes to press, Winston is still skeptical about the Marines-but still in the corps...

...Parris Island makes the Marines what they are, but it also is an anachronism, so alien to society that Disney has actually started offering tours of the island...

...Some, however, become disillusioned with the corps itself...

...The single greatest predictor of satisfaction in the Corps for the members of 3086 is simple distance from home,” Ricks writes...

...People may be enticed into the Army or Air Force by the prospect of vocational training and GI educational benefits,” Ricks writes, “but they enlist in the Marines to measure, better, or change themselves-and to have an adventure...

...The smaller number of people serving, and their longer term of service, has led to an “US-and-them” mentality...

...They are felled by the strains of young marriages, financial stress, or simply temptation...