Train Marines tough, but train them right
“We Make Marines.”
The sign at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island sharply tells the mission that has guided this great American institution in Beaufort County for the past century.
We as its home community share in that pride and mission.
But, like the rest of the nation, we want it done right.
Make Marines and make them tough, but make them the right way.
That’s why we all have a problem — the Corps, the depot, the nation, the community — when a news story reads like this one earlier this month:
“The drill instructor who allegedly hazed recruit Raheel Siddiqui moments before his death was the same instructor who had previously ordered a Muslim recruit into a commercial clothes dryer and interrogated him about his religion and loyalties.”
Recruit put in a clothes dryer? Really? In the 21st century?
And the same drill instructor was on duty in March when Siddiqui, a 20-year-old Pakistani-American Muslim from Taylor, Mich., died after jumping into a stairwell and falling 38 feet. The recruit had asked to go to sickbay, but the drill instructor thought he was feigning illness, ordered him to do sprints and allegedly slapped him after he collapsed, crying. At that point, Siddiqui jumped to his feet, ran the length of the squad bay, opened and ran through a door, and vaulted over the third-floor stairwell railing.
The Corps ruled it a suicide, and outlined a number of internal repercussions and investigations. Many officers and senior enlisted Marines face administrative discipline or criminal charges, but the Corps would shoot itself in the foot again if it does not root out systemic problems.
This long-bubbling story has needlessly opened the Corps and the nation to criticism.
A Chicago Tribune editorial states: “Marine boot camp should be tough. It should challenge, and it should winnow. But hazing motivated by intolerance serves only two purposes: It makes a lie of the American values our military defends, and it supplies the Islamic State with fresh fodder for its global recruitment efforts.”
The Washington Post editorial board writes: “It is hard to imagine a greater propaganda gift to Islamist extremists than the incidents now under investigation at Parris Island, which can and will be portrayed as evidence of America’s cruelty and inexorable hostility to Islam. The revelations are also likely to subvert the Marines’ recruitment efforts at home, and not only among young Muslim Americans.”
We are saddened locally because all of this is the exact opposite of what we were told and saw last year when we celebrated the 100th anniversary of recruit training here.
The Corps has been through this before, right here on Parris Island in 1956. A forced night march into Ribbon Creek left six recruits dead. It also left the Corps itself hanging in the balance due to congressional and public scrutiny. It was determined that drill instructors had too little oversight, too little support and too few specifics on best practices. Everything changed that day. The Corps realized the issue was not limited to a single drill instructor. And it realized maltreatment of recruits was unacceptable to society at-large.
What happened?
Special report
Parris Island: Making Marines for 100 years
Oct. 25, 2015 A special report on the past and present of Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island on its 100th anniversary | READ
This story was originally published September 25, 2016 at 1:00 AM with the headline "Train Marines tough, but train them right."