Casualties of Their Own Success: The 2011 Urination Incident in Afghanistan

This article explores the individual, situational, and system roles influencing the 2011 incident in which a small unit of US Marine scout snipers urinated on three Taliban corpses. Without absolving individual responsibility, the authors emphasize a strong command climate is the most important influence behind ethical and professional behavior. I the waning days of 2011, the leaders of 3d Battalion, 2d Marine Regiment, could justifiably reflect with pride on the unit’s accomplishments during the past year. Tasked with a key role in the largest, most austere area of operations in northern Helmand province, the commanding officer instituted a comprehensive ethical warrior program into every aspect of operations and through each phase of training, combat operations, and post-deployment recovery. During the seven-month deployment, 3/2 garnered high praise for its innovative tactics and for the exploits of its successful scout sniper platoon. The Commandant and the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps subsequently hosted a congratulatory breakfast for the scout sniper platoon. The battalion even garnered national attention and praise when actress Mila Kunis attended its post-deployment Marine Corps Birthday Ball in November 2011. With the loss of six marines and one US Navy corpsman, the deployment had been challenging and difficult. But, the battalion had returned triumphantly with its honor clean. Little did it suspect, twelve days into the new year, a 39-second video clip posted on YouTube would forever transform the legacy of that deployment. The video showed four marines from the unit urinating on the bodies of a few Taliban fighters. This article explores the professional and ethical dimensions of the four marines’ actions and focuses on why the event happened. The main objective is to understand whether this unit of marines fully grasped the ethical implications of its behavior. We analyze the urination incident by adopting the ethical decision-making typology of outcomes developed by Ann Tenbrunsel and Kristin Smith-Crowe. Their typology “distinguishing between the process that produced the decision (moral or amoral decisionmaking) and the decision that resulted (ethical or unethical), produces four different outcomes—intended ethicality, unintended ethicality, 1 The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Colonel Timothy S. Mundy for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. 66 Parameters 47(3) Autumn 2017 intended unethicality, and unintended unethicality.”2 Tenbrunsel and Smith-Crowe explained “the moral decision-making that follows from moral awareness can result in unethical decisions as well as ethical ones; likewise, the amoral decision-making that follows from moral unawareness can lead to ethical decisions as well as unethical ones.”3 Thus, the incident potentially falls into the categories of intended unethicality, and more likely, unintended unethicality. Our research indicates the marines associated with the incident accepted the behavior as normal: urinating on dead enemies was not a desecration, or a war crime, but a strong victory statement made against an extremely cruel enemy. In the moment, it is questionable whether the marines clearly perceived the unethical dimension of what they were doing. To the extent their behavior had become normal—a victory statement—such behavior also became unintentional. Thus, it is very likely the action occurred in a condition of ethical blindness. At least one marine came to regret his action, which is consistent with a temporary inability to see the ethical dimension of such behavior. Several marines, however, showed no regrets for their roles, which leads to the belief that they intentionally engaged in unethical behavior. It can be argued their perceptions of the conditions in which they operated, no longer filtered by a healthy command climate, removed ethical thinking from their decision-making. Thus, their conduct would be consistent with unintended unethicality. To understand what led these experienced and high-performing marines to engage in such unethical and unprofessional actions, we explore three main elements significant to explaining human behavior. First, we focus on the individual to understand whether these marines exhibited or had different characteristics from other marines and, therefore, might have been more inclined to engage in unethical behavior. Second, on the situation to evaluate whether these marines operated in an exceptional environment, which contributed to their unethical behavior. Third, on the system, the organization they belonged to, to evaluate whether it failed to promote ethical behavior and actually might have encouraged unethical behavior. We posit the consequential element of this system to be the command climate. Unethical behavior is the result of several elements failing. Indeed, a functioning and resilient system should be able to prevent unethical behavior. Yet the following analysis provides strong evidence that the command climate in which these marines operated over a number of months had degraded to a dangerous level. This finding does not excuse the behavior of the individual marines nor absolve them of responsibility for their actions. Our objective is to provide an opportunity to reflect on the role of the command climate, or the system, to determine the behavior of unit members and to ensure it is prepared for difficult challenges, particularly in highly stressful situations such as combat. More important, this article emphasizes the pivotal role commanders play in shaping command 2 Ann E. Tenbrunsel and Kristin Smith-Crowe, “Ethical Decision Making: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going,” Academy of Management Annals 2, no. 1 (2008): 553, doi:10.1080/19416520802211677.