Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 101

BOOK REVIEWS
As powerful as their story is, None of Us Were
Like This Before is much more than this sad tale.
Just as Herman Melville in Moby Dick used his
storyline as a springboard for explanatory and
speculative essays, Phillips explores in depth many
questions that the core story raises but fails to
answer completely.
How did U.S. forces turn to torture? How widespread was it? Why, as in the case of the FOB Lion
jail, were many cases never investigated? When
investigated, why were these inquiries often the
“whitewash” claimed by the former head of the
Detainee Abuse Task Force in Iraq? Did torture
work, to gather intelligence? What effects did it
have on the tortured? On the torturer? What was
the fallout of public scandals like Abu Ghraib
on Iraqis? On the insurgency in Iraq? On Arab
opinion of Americans? To what degree were U.S.
political and military leaders to blame for the torture committed by their soldiers? To what degree
was American media to blame, when the “good
guys” were increasingly depicted as using torture
to good effect?
The well-organized, accurate answers that Phillips provides are grounded in deep research, to
include his own dangerous fieldwork in Afghanistan, Syria, and Jordan. In addition, the writing style
that conveys his points is clear, logical, and highly
readable, and his supporting quotes and anecdotes
are well chosen, impactful, and often poignant.
The book does have one minor flaw, the incomplete answer to the question, “How did American
soldiers turn to torture?” Phillips rightly emphasizes
the role that America’s media (especially movies
and television shows) played in encouraging young
soldiers to torture, a role given short shrift in
overly politicized accounts that dwell on the Bush
administration’s enabling policies. He also correctly
describes how soldiers transferred onto prisoners
corrective training (such as push-ups and jumping
jacks) they themselves had received. Inadequately
supervised and fuelled by the passions of war and
the dark psychological impulses secretly harbored
by all human beings, such hazing often escalates
into torture.
However, Phillips does not emphasize enough
of the role that survival, escape, evasion, and resistance (SERE) schools played. He properly delimits
the importance of the formal promulgation of SERE
MILITARY REVIEW ? November-December 2013

techniques, pointing out that there were no enabling
memoranda for many abuse cases. But he fails to
acknowledge the far broader impact these techniques had because some of the tens of thousands
of service members who have been instructors,
trainees, or role-playing guards at a SERE course
chose to use these techniques against prisoners.
This use, too frequently, also descended into torture.
When, for example, an officer who served at
Guantanamo Bay tells Phillips that, prior to the
adoption of abusive interrogation memoranda, interrogators were blasting loud music at detainees and
subjecting them to hot and cold temperatures, it is
less likely that the interrogators were “freelancing”
than they were using SERE techniques they had
either personally experienced or heard about. When
he describes conventional soldiers mimicking how
Special Forces operators were treating prisoners,
he does not acknowledge that these operators were
required to attend SERE courses. But this is cherry
picking. In the end, None of Us Were Like This Before
will endure as war literature. This will be primarily due to its contribution to the subject of “moral
injury,” a psychological condition little known within
the U.S. military but increasingly studied by mental
health experts. These experts say that, while PTSD
is an anxiety disorder occurring after a physically
traumatic event, moral injury occurs when people
see or do things that conflict with their own deeply
held values. Those inflicted with moral injury, they
claim, share some symptoms with PTSD sufferers
but tend to exhibit symptoms that last longer and are
felt more intensely.
By way of powerful anecdotes, Phillips makes the
compelling case that this claim is true. It is therefore
fitting that Dr. Jonathan Shay, the psychiatrist and
celebrated author who first clinically defined moral
injury, wrote the book’s foreword. Shay writes,
“Sober and responsible troop leaders and trainers are
concerned about the prevention of psychological and
moral injury as a readiness issue.”
These words succinctly point the way to the primary readership this book deserves—anyone who
cares about the readiness and welfare of America’s
soldiers. It should also be essential reading for foreign policy makers, military historians, mental health
professionals, military policemen, and interrogators.
Lt. Col. Douglas A. Pryer, U.S. Army,
Fort Huachuca, Arizona

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