Because we were angry: The formal laws of war versus the military subculture’s code to violence in the Vietnam War and war in Iraq

Abstract

While international laws of war have existed in one form or another for centuries and have been updated to include the Rules of Engagement (ROE) for American service members, compliance has been difficult to enforce, contributing to high numbers of civilian casualties. We used grounded theory to analyze testimonies given by members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) at their Winter Soldier event in 1971 (before ROE were issued) and testimonies given by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) at their own Winter Soldier event in 2008 (after ROE were issued) to better understand why service members continue to violate the laws of war. Despite the important changes made to the military between those two time periods, we found compelling similarities between the two sets of testimonies. We found that war has both front and back regions. In back regions of war, service members described some commanding officers as prioritizing the military subculture’s code of violence over the formal laws of war. This alternative guide encouraged the use of violence to express anger, gain status, and have fun. Service members who followed the subcultural code of violence and killed noncombatants constructed accounts for front regions of war in which their violence was compliant with the formal laws of war. Such findings suggest that informal military subculture must be addressed to increase compliance.