While spearheading the American invasion of Iraq, the marines of the elite First Recon—nicknamed ‘First Suicide Battalion’—often operated deep behind enemy lines and far beyond anything they had trained for. They faced death every day—and above all, they killed a lot of people. From America’s first generation of disposable children, more than half of these young men come from broken homes and were raised by absentee, single, working parents.

They are the first generation of young Americans since Vietnam to be sent into an open-ended conflict. Yet if the dominant mythology that war turns on a generation’s loss of innocence—young men reared on Davy Crockett waking up to their government’s deceits while fighting in Southeast Asian jungles; the nation falling from the grace of Camelot to the shame of Watergate—these young men entered Iraq predisposed toward the idea that the Big Lie is as central to American governance as taxation. This is, after all, the generation that first learned of the significance of the presidency not through an inspiring speech at the Berlin Wall but through a national obsession with semen stains and a White House blow job. Even though their Commander in Chief tells them they are fighting today in Iraq to protect American freedom, few would be shaken to discover that they might actually be leading a grab for oil. In a way, they almost expect to be lied to.
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