Alcohol, Drugs and Rape:The Dark Side of the US MilitaryAround the World

Col. David Buckingham was neither the first nor the last American soldier to be suspended from his duties for having too much to drink. The aggravating circumstance that can justify the adjective “exceptional” in the episode, in which he was involved on the night of July 3 (the day before the opening ceremony of the new military base in Vicenza, Del Din-Dal Molin, after a night of partying for Independence Day), was that he had allegedly raised his voice and maybe laid hands on the military police, the body that supervises the U.S. military men on and off the bases.

“The military’s alcohol-soaked culture plays out on weekends and on weeknights, in the apartments of noncommissioned officers, where subordinates guzzle liquor straight from the bottle.” This vivid picture is taken from a semi-official bulletin of the military, Stars and Stripes. The normal alcohol abuse in the U.S. barracks is described in an article published December 26, 2012:

“Marines know they will be punished if they get caught drinking underage or drinking hard liquor in the barracks … But that doesn’t mean the drinking has stopped.”

One of the soldiers said, “People just keep their doors closed, … and if the platoon sergeant is coming at 6:30 a.m. for inspection, ‘that means all the evidence is gone by 6:15.'”

Drinking in the army is not surprising. The life of a soldier is subject to constant trauma and stress, to put it mildly, like the lives of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team based in Vicenza, Italy, whose members are coming and going between missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the situation is taking a turn for the worse, and has been confirmed by the nongovernmental organization Institute of Medicine’s report that describes drinking and drug abuse among the troops as a “public health crisis.” A study conducted by Stars and Stripes says that 43 percent of active duty service members admitted that they drank heavily a month before the interview, reporting that 67 percent of the drinking buddies were between 17 and 25 years old.

Technically, rules are strict. On April 30 on the Vicenza base of the United States Army Garrison, a policy memorandum titled “Policy on Alcohol Consumption and Illicit Drug Use” was published. According to the memorandum, the garrison commander (Col. Buckingham, until recently, but now temporarily replaced by civilian James Walls) has “the sole authority to allow consumption of alcoholic beverages by U.S. Military and Civilian employees during duty hours, and at any unit or Directorate-sponsored events conducted on any installation under his control.” The organizers of the events will have to “submit requests to the GC no later than five days prior to the event,” including location, date, hours of the event, and the chain of command that will be present at the event. The consumption of alcohol is prohibited in the shops and artisanal workshops, areas visited by kids, libraries, and crossover areas for wounded soldiers.

Furthermore, the consumption of alcohol is strictly prohibited for those under the age of 18. An interesting footnote to this is that while in the U.S. drinking alcohol is not permitted under the age of 21, the laws of the host country are still recognized on the bases outside U.S. borders. This policy started to come into effect at the beginning of 2006, when Japan decided to adapt to the local customs. Therefore, in most cases a soldier in a foreign country will begin drinking before the legal age in the U.S., similar to the situation in Italy. But the situation is getting worse everywhere and the U.S. Army is obliged to take a step backward.

Bans are spreading. In December 2012, the U.S military base in Okinawa, Japan banned the consumption of alcohol outside the military base’s walls. This decision became almost inevitable after the rape of a woman by two U.S. sailors and a series of accidents, fights and accounts of vandalism. In South Korea, since last March an entire division of 10,000 soldiers (2nd Infantry Division) has been “grounded.” Drinking alcohol has not been permitted since St. Patrick’s Day weekend, when five soldiers armed with knives were involved in a fight in a nightclub, and two other soldiers were found fighting the Korean police in Seoul in the early morning.

Alcohol consumption is considered to be one of the causes of the peak in sexual violence on U.S. Army bases. In South Korea a task force was created in order to prevent rape among U.S. troops. According to a national report, even two years ago, the local anti-rape policies were not put into action, did not manage to establish adequate accountability (an obligation for the authority to account for its actions), and widely misrepresented what actually happened. Last May, President Obama denounced the increasing number of rapes in the U.S. Army. According to a Pentagon report, there were 26,000 estimated cases of military sexual assault in 2012. This is a significant increase compared to last year’s 19,000 cases. Only 3,374 cases were reported, a slight increase compared to 3,192 in 2011.

The reform proposed by Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, D-NY, is in discussions in Washington to remove the investigation and prosecution of serious military sexual assaults from the military chain of command.

Sen. Gillibrand was criticized in the Senate hearings by military leaders, who do not want to give up exclusive power over their subordinates. However, some U.S. military officers in charge of handling sexual assault prevention have been involved in some accounts of sexual assault. The latest was Lt. Col. Darin Haas, manager of a sexual assault response program, who was accused of stalking his ex-wife.

On the Vicenza military base there is an active group called SHARP, or Sexual Harassment Assault Responses and Prevention, which provides a hotline to report sexual assaults. Concerning alcoholism and drug abuse, treatment programs are available for those who need them. For the soldiers there is an interactive video available called “Full Throttle,” which shows some typical situations where you need to keep your cool. The video suggests how soldiers should behave when on leave: avoid drunk driving and speed racing. On the Wiesbaden, Germany military base, a specific program is underway that aims to discourage soldiers from drunk driving. The creators of the project said that accidents involving drunk soldiers happen once every five or ten days, on average.