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

Formal laws of war and new warfare

Customary practices based on both state interests and Christian charity during war were formally codified into international law during events such as the Hague Convention and the Geneva Conventions to protect victims of war such as civilians, the sick and wounded, the shipwrecked, and prisoners of war (Forsythe, 2019; Morrow, 2007; Posner, 2003; Roberts, 1993–1994; Schindler and Toman, 1988). These laws have been modified to address “new warfare” in which the lines between “war” and “nonwar” blur (Ehrenreich Brooks, 2004; Sitaraman, 2009). Rather than fighting uniformed soldiers, service members increasingly confront nonstate actors, making it harder to distinguish combatants from civilians (Blank and Guiora, 2010; Pennekamp, 2013). Fighting now occurs in cities and refugee camps rather than on battlefields, and combatants or resistance groups often operate under civilian cover (Blank and Guiora, 2010). Developed in response to new warfare, ROE have been criticized as vague, imprecise, overly detailed, complex, or too restrictive (Pennekamp, 2013; Roach, 1983). They focus on self‑defense without privileging avoidance of force and often implicitly value soldiers’ lives over civilians’ (Pennekamp, 2013). Some argue that clearer rules would reduce civilian deaths (Aldrich, 2000; Pennekamp, 2013), but such proposals generally overlook military subcultural norms. Our research indicates that despite legal revisions and ROE, subcultural incentives can impede compliance by promoting forms of violence incompatible with the laws of war.

Violence and audiences

Previous scholarship shows that audiences strongly shape violence. While observers often deter it (Ejbye‑Ernst, 2023; Ejbye‑Ernst and Bernasco, 2022; Levine et al., 2011; Parks et al., 2013), they can also escalate it, with audience encouragement or opposition closely linked to violence levels (Collins, 2008). Grossman (1995) argues that most people, even trained soldiers, find killing difficult, ³ but leaders and peers can raise the likelihood of violence through group dynamics such as regard for comrades, respect for leaders, concern for reputation, and a desire to help the group (p. 112). Leaders’ explicit expectations increase firing rates, and fellow service members strongly motivate violence. The microsociological approach likewise emphasizes that physiological confrontational tension and fear (ct/f) inhibit violence and must be bypassed. Collins (2008, 2009, 2013) identifies five bypasses—targeting weak victims, staging audience‑oriented controlled fights, remote violence, deception, and absorption in technique. Outnumbering a victim or having an encouraging audience dramatically raises the chance of violence.

Katz (1988) and Anderson (2000) show audiences can heighten humiliation and pressure offenders to retaliate to save face. Katz links public humiliation to rage and homicide, while Anderson (2000) argues that defending one’s street reputation makes public violence necessary. Beck (2011) frames violence as involving target, performer, and audience, with perpetrators communicating to victims and observers; audiences may be the public, eyewitnesses, peers, media, or researchers. Studies of terrorism, civil war, and genocide likewise treat violence as communication to bystanders (Barnett, 1999; Grunfeld and Huijboom, 2007; Kalyvas, 2006; Schmid and de Graaf, 1982; Vetlesen, 2000). Cooney (2009) concludes that audience effects vary by relational closeness. Observers close to both parties tend to reduce violence, whereas those close to the offender but not the victim increase it.

Culture and codes of violence

Previous scholarship shows violence is a culturally learned behavioral script used to express feelings, demonstrate power and inequality, and communicate threats (Beck, 2011; Hoover Green, 2016; Lee et al., 2007, 2014). Cultures define when violence is acceptable, and some foster a “culture of violence,” which treats violence as an appropriate solution across contexts (Gastil, 1971; Hackney, 1969; Lee et al., 2007, 2014; Steenkamp, 2005). Such cultures produce codes of violence, “norms with sanctions that regulate violent acts” (Matsueda et al., 2006: 334), which are typically rooted in masculine definitions and doing gender (Anderson et al., 2009; Applin et al., 2023; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Curtis, 2019; Thomas, 2022).

Codes of violence are prominent in both street culture and cultures of honor (Dietrich and Schuett, 2013; Kim and Cohen, 2010; Leung and Cohen, 2011; Mosquera, 2013; van Osch et al., 2013). In honor cultures, reputation is a social capital that affects business and politics (Allen and Reed, 2006; LaVanque‑Manty, 2006). Codes often require individuals to defend their honor physically, so insults can trigger violence. Street culture likewise emphasizes defending one’s reputation, so insults or disrespect can prompt violent responses. Collins (2008) discusses both street and honor codes, downplaying street code as bluster and treating honor codes as peer mechanisms for ritualized fair fights, though he concedes that such areas have higher rates of violence. He focuses on peer conflicts and episodic wartime “moral holiday” massacres. By contrast, we examine a code targeting outsiders and find many violations were routine, not frenzied panics. Critics note that Collins does not account for how groups maintain and diffuse violent techniques (Cooney, 2009; Magaudda, 2011; Thomas, 2022). We examine how military subcultural norms and social processes help circumvent ct/f and contribute to noncompliance with formal laws of war.

Although law enforcement and military units differ, they share important commonalities (Doherty, 2016; Campbell and Campbell, 2016). Policing research shows tension between formal front‑region guidelines and informal subcultural norms governing force (Obasogie and Newman, 2019; Paoline, 2003; Reiner, 2017; Silver et al., 2017; Waegel, 1984). Officers do not fail to follow formal codes simply because they are unclear (Hunt and Manning, 1991; Terrill et al., 2003); they often view formal use‑of‑force rules as problematic (Worden and McLean, 2017) and rely on informal codes. Officers may frame and justify violence (Eisenberg, 2023; Jeursen, 2022; Westley, 1953) in ways that mirror street and honor cultures. Like service members, police develop cultures rooted in shared strains, isolation, peer dependence, hegemonic masculinity, and intergenerational transmission of attitudes (Bloom and Labovich, 2021; Dermikol, 2020; Dulin, 2020; Ingram et al., 2018; Rogers et al., 2022; Sanders et al., 2022; Waegel, 1984).

Military subculture and codes of violence

Research shows the military has distinct subcultural norms emphasizing obedience, risk‑taking, and dehumanization, all of which shape how violence is constructed (Greene et al., 2010). The military often functions as a total institution; ⁴ entry disrupts one’s sense of self through uprooting and mortifying experiences that resocialize members (Goffman, 1961; Soeters, 2018) into this subculture of hegemonic masculinity, toughness, self‑reliance, and aggression (De Volo and Hall, 2015)—especially during boot camp and academies (Maringira, 2016). ⁵ This subculture uses specialized language and symbols to reinforce hierarchy, which English (2004) calls the “the bedrock of military effectiveness” (p. 10), and cultivates traits needed for military occupations: a willingness to kill, self‑sacrifice, emotional distance from enemies, teamwork, loyalty, hardiness, and rapid life‑and‑death decision‑making (Do and Samuels, 2021; Grossman, 1995; Hoover Green, 2016; Sarkesian and Connor, 2006). These expectations form the “masculine‑warrior paradigm” or “battlemind” (Dunivin, 1994).

Many features of this subculture are problematic. Military institutions often foster a “macho‑violent” masculinity that valorizes violence and marginalizes peacefulness. Service members may recount violence in detached, analytic, or humorous terms to signal masculinity and cohesion (Andén‑Papadopoulos, 2009). The subculture is also steeped in traditions of Western sovereignty and colonialism that treat some lives as disposable—what Gregory (2004) calls the “colonial present”—which are maintained through everyday practices that label others as irredeemably Other and permit violence (p. 16). Nonconformity to subcultural norms may lead to the guilt of letting down one’s unit as well as coercion from officers and peers, effectively making participation “nonoptional” (Cooper et al., 2018: 159; Hockey, 2003; Welzer, 2008). Commanding officers shape unit culture by defining situations for subordinates and leveraging the military’s emphasis on obedience (Overy, 2014). Leaders can grant moral “permission” for acts otherwise unacceptable, fail to clarify required treatment of noncombatants and prisoners, or model violations themselves. Better officer leadership correlates with greater ROE compliance. However, many service members report that their Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) and officers did not clearly prohibit the mistreatment of noncombatants (Castro and McGurk, 2007). Building on work that violence carries different meanings for different audiences, our research examines how offenders manage audiences by committing violence in back regions and reframing it for front regions. We analyze how a military code of violence emerging from and reinforcing subcultural norms contributes to noncompliance with formal laws of war.

VVAW, IVAW, and the Winter Soldier investigations

VVAW, founded by six Vietnam veterans in 1967, grew to over a thousand members and organized veterans for antiwar protests and worked to expose the war’s brutality. VVAW was especially vocal after the military’s investigation of the My Lai massacre (see Kelman and Hamilton, 1989) and the subsequent claim that the civilian slaughter was a “unique and isolated incident” (Wilson, 2007). In response, VVAW organized the Winter Soldier Investigation. In 1971, hundreds of people packed into a ballroom in a Detroit motel to witness 118 veterans and 16 civilians narrate firsthand (either as participants or witnesses) accounts of murder, sexual assault, and the destruction of homes, crops, and livestock. Some showed slides and photos of weapons, abused corpses, tortured detainees, bombing victims, and infants deformed by chemical agents. The testimonies made it clear that My Lai was not isolated but reflected broader misconduct and a cover-up failure. The event was filmed and released in 1972 as Winter Soldier (available on YouTube). VVAW published a book of transcripts; Senator Mark Hatfield entered them into the Congressional Record, and Senator J William Fulbright discussed the event at the Fulbright Hearings (Hunt, 1999).

After Vietnam, the US military abolished the draft, shifted to an all‑volunteer force, implemented standardized ROE (Roach, 1983), and professionalized the armed forces (Nielson, 2010). Yet in 2004, IVAW formed, demanding the “immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq,” “reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered and stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that their people can control their own lives and future,” and “adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other support for returning servicemen and women” (www.ivaw.org/about). IVAW also called for the prosecution of Bush administration members as war criminals and opposed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the occupation of Gaza.

IVAW sought to turn the American public against the Iraq War by highlighting how the “degrading forces of war and occupation . . . dehumanize and destroy . . . human beings” (IVAW and Glantz, 2008: 3). Inspired by VVAW, IVAW organized Winter Soldier, Iraq and Afghanistan, in March 2008, where 55 veterans testified to injustices they had witnessed or committed in Iraq and Afghanistan: killing civilians, torturing prisoners, looting, and mishandling the dead. Some speakers presented photos or videos of alleged war crimes, including graphic images of dead bodies. IVAW published 44 transcripts in Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupation and posted event videos on YouTube and its website. IVAW members also testified before the Congressional Progressive Caucus; that testimony aired on C‑SPAN.

The incidents of violence that members of IVAW and VVAW recounted varied considerably. Some acts of violence occurred in ambiguous contexts that made it difficult to determine if an individual was an innocent civilian or an enemy combatant. In other scenarios, service members recounted violence that could not be justified with even the most liberal interpretation of the formal guidelines of warfare, such as when service members recounted intentionally killing innocent civilians, including children.

Transcript analysis

To conduct our analysis, the first author ⁶ examined both the VVAW Winter Soldier event transcripts and the IVAW Winter Soldier event transcripts. The first author identified 137 named testifiers at the VVAW Winter Soldier event: 16 civilians, 80 soldiers, 39 Marines, and 2 sailors. ⁷ Five of the veterans were military doctors. The ages of 101 of the veterans were included. No explanation was provided for why not all the ages of veterans were given. The ages of the 101 veterans ranged from 20 to 37. The average age was 23. Eighty‑three individuals spoke at the IVAW Winter Soldier event: 52 veterans, 16 civilians from Iraq or Afghanistan, 8 parents of deceased veterans (killed in action or who died by suicide after deployment), and 7 activists, writers, or scholars. Of the 52 veterans, 34 were soldiers, 15 Marines, 2 sailors, and 1 Coast Guard member. Ages documented in the Winter Soldier book ranged from 21 to 42, with an average age of 26. While all the testimonies from both events were analyzed, not all of the accounts concerned topics relevant to this article, as the events were organized to discuss a variety of topics relevant to the war. Of the 121 service members who testified at the VVAW Winter Soldier event, 37, or about 30% of them, spoke about topics that were relevant to our research. Of the 52 service members who testified at the IVAW Winter Soldier event, 16, or 30% of them, spoke about topics relevant to our research. In both cases, members who spoke about relevant topics often made multiple statements that were relevant to our research.

Although VVAW and IVAW include women, all testimonies analyzed here are from male members. Most VVAW testifiers were male, except for a medical doctor captured in Hue in 1968 and the mother and sister of a US prisoner of war (POW) in North Vietnam and a member of the American Friends Service Committee. The three women who testified did not speak on topics relevant to this article. At the IVAW event, 22 women testified: 8 veterans, 9 civilians, 3 parents, and 2 scholars/activists, but none spoke on the ROE panel or provided testimony pertinent to this article.

This male predominance reflects combat demographics in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. An estimated 11,000 women volunteered to serve in Vietnam, mostly as nurses or in administrative roles, and were not assigned combat roles (Lange, 2023). Women’s participation in the armed forces rose after the draft ended in 1973 and the military shifted to an all‑volunteer force, a change that affected many aspects of the armed forces (Congressional Budget Office, 2007) and coincided with increased female enlistment as force size shrank (Patten and Parker, 2011). By 2010, women comprised roughly 16% of officers and 14% of enlisted personnel (Patten and Parker, 2011). The Iraq War (2003–2011) prompted policy shifts that reduced barriers to women serving in combat (Buckley and Thompson, 2021), yet men remained the vast majority in combat roles.

We used a historical comparative analysis, which Skocpol and Somers (1980) refer to as a “comparative history as the parallel demonstration of theory” (p. 176), to identify elements common across cases rather than contrasts. As they note, the point is to assert similarity in the applicability of the overall theoretical arguments (p. 177). For this study, we compared the social construction of violence in two US military eras: the Vietnam War (prestandardized ROE) and the Iraq/Afghanistan wars (poststandardized ROE) (Frost-Nielsen, 2018; Roach, 1983; Sandvik, 2014). ⁸ We chose two archival sets that documented parallel events, where service members publicly voiced grievances and accounts of violence. IVAW modeled its event on VVAW, addressing comparable concerns and formats. Despite military reforms and different geographic and political‑economic contexts, testimonies showed strikingly similar constructions of violence in front and back regions, suggesting the military subculture and the code of violence remained largely consistent between the two conflicts. ⁹

We applied grounded theory to understand how service members make sense of violating or complying with laws of war—an approach suited to explaining processes when data are hard to access (Glaser, 1998; Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Miller, 2015). The first author read both transcript sets, noted recurring compliance concerns, and used open coding and memoing to identify provisional themes where service members discussed laws of war, noncompliance, violence, and the military subculture (Strauss and Corbin, 1998).

Memos focused on how service members made sense of violence, including their stated motivations, reactions, and emotions to the use of force. More specifically, because the analysis focused on how service members made sense of noncompliance, the first author focused exclusively on excerpts in which veterans specifically stated motivations for their noncompliance or the noncompliance of others. Memos focused on veterans’ own acts of violence as well as violence they witnessed and noted whether others were present and if other service members or officers discouraged, encouraged, or ignored the acts. Memos also noted any concern about complying with laws of war or ROE, general views on the laws of war and ROE, and any deception when reporting violent acts to journalists, peers, or in combat reports. Noncompliance with the laws of war included destroying homes, firing into civilian housing or religious buildings, and mutilating corpses, though most involved harming or killing civilians.

The first author then clustered memos and quotes on complaints about the laws of war, commanding officers’ influence, noncompliance, deception about violence, and how service members made sense of violence. The memos originally identified nine meanings attached to violence: boredom, games/entertainment, fun, revenge, hatred, anger, trophies, showing off, and gaining respect. Memos showed service members were highly critical of the laws of war and ROE and were often deceptive in field reports and with the media and that officers were frequently indifferent to, or even encouraged, violence and deception. At the same time, service members were often candid with peers and frequently bragged about violent acts. Because violence seemed linked to the military subculture, axial coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) was then used to clarify the links between the two.

The nine open‑coded meanings were collapsed into three themes. A coding scheme was developed to identify instances of these three themes. Violence for fun included violence linked to boredom, games/entertainment, and fun. Accounts of noncompliance with the laws of war that included the words “game,” “play,” “joke,” “contests,” “for kicks,” “boredom,” “laughing,” “cheering,” “enjoy,” and “excited,” as well as accounts of violence for amusement or accounts of tricking children into getting injured or killed, were coded as violence for fun. Violence to express anger grouped cases concerning anger, revenge, and hatred. Incidents mentioning “anger,” “hatred,” “holding a grudge,” “revenge,” “embittered,” “hardened,” “mad,” or “taking out aggression” were coded as anger‑driven. Violence for status included accounts of taking trophies, showing off, and gaining respect. Accounts for noncompliance that included taking or displaying body parts, posing with corpses, bragging about kills, using symbols to demonstrate body counts, receiving congratulations for kills, and gaining acceptance through killing (often signaled by words like “trophy,” “body count,” or “club”) were coded as violence for status.

The VVAW Winter Soldier transcript contains 10 mentions of violence for status, 7 for anger, and 29 for fun. The IVAW transcript contains 8 mentions of violence for status, 8 for anger, and 15 for fun. All three themes included both retellings of specific incidents of violence as well as reporting general patterns of violence. Therefore, the tallies refer not to a specific number of instances of violence but instead to instances in which service members attributed meaning to violence. For instance, the following statement by Mackay of VVAW about an ongoing pattern was coded as violence for fun:

One kind of joke that went between the pilots was if they fired or not, upon anybody they saw, it was whether they waved or not. This was a kind of joke going between the pilots, but it didn’t count, because they just shot anything they saw, any structures.

Because witnesses reported patterns, we cannot determine how often such events occurred or how many individuals or units engaged in them. In other words, we do not quantify the frequency of noncompliance, the percentage of service members who are perpetrators, or the representativeness of Winter Soldier testifiers. Instead, our analysis identifies and explores three recurring testimonial themes (violence for fun, for anger, and for status) across the VVAW and IVAW accounts from Vietnam and Iraq.

When service members gave accounts of violence that reflected more than one theme, the first author coded the account as an example of each of the themes. For instance, the following excerpt was coded as both violence for fun and violence to express anger:

We’d be holed up in houses for a few hours and maybe a day or two and we’d get bored. We’d get angry and be like, “Let’s break stuff.” We ran out of people to shoot, so we turned to dogs and cats, chickens, whatever’s moving.

There were also many instances in which service members recounted violence without applying any meaning to it. These instances were not included in the tallies for specific themes, as the analysis focused solely on how service members make sense of noncompliance. Interpreting service members’ motivations for noncompliance in scenarios in which they did not directly state such motivations risks an interpretive bias. However, these instances were still considered relevant to our research when they documented service members violating the laws of war, or filling out false combat reports, or officers’ reactions to violence. The example below is an instance of an account of violence in which the veteran did not apply any meaning to the use of violence but did note that his officers took part in violence that violated the laws of war:

[W]e were about 5 miles down the road, where there were some Vietnamese children at the gateway of the village, and they gave the old finger gesture at us. It was understandable that they picked this up from the GIs there. They stopped the trucks—they didn’t stop the truck, they slowed down a little bit, and it was just like response, the guys got up, including the lieutenants, and just blew all the kids away. There were about five or six kids blown away and then the truck just continued down the hill. That was my first day in Vietnam.

While it could be inferred that the service members felt angry at the children, because the veteran did not overtly attribute anger or any other meaning to the violence, this example is not included in the tallies of any of the three themes identified. It is, however, an example that was included in a memo to inform our understanding of the role of officers in noncompliance with the laws of war.

Similarly, the following quote by McCusker of VVAW was not coded, as no meaning was attributed to the violence, but it was noted in memos as an example of deception concerning the use of violence in Vietnam:

“Over the next hedge row there were thirty dead children . . . An officer, a captain walked up to me and said, “Well Sgt. McCusker,”—remember I was the reporter—“do you see what the Viet Cong did to their own people?” And I said, “Captain, I saw our planes drop the napalm.” He says, “Well, Sgt. McCusker, you had better write that the Viet Cong did it.”

Examples such as these helped form our analysis of the front and back regions of war and the ways that service members performed for outsiders away from the front lines.

Our data set did not include any ambiguous cases in which coding decisions needed to be revisited and reevaluated. This is likely because the analysis focused on accounts in which veterans explained violence that they enacted or witnessed in their own words and did not include accounts of violence in which no clear meaning was identified by the veterans. Because the coding scheme was clearly defined, coding mostly consisted of identifying specific words and phrases, leaving little room for ambiguity.

Of the cases coded, it was not always clear if civilians had been hurt or killed by the violence of a service member. In some instances of violence that were coded or included in memos, the veterans made it clear that they were referring to violence against civilians. For instance, Eckert of VVAW stated,

I was up in Quang Tri visiting a friend of mine who was on security, which is like a rat patrol. They go out in the little jeeps and patrol the perimeter . . . they spotted this old woman about—she looked about fifty but she was probably about twenty-five . . . from dusk to dawn there’s not supposed to be anybody out there, and if there is, you’re supposed to stop them, check them out, and eliminate them if you have to. So, these guys decided that they would kind of play a little game and they let her run about fifty yards, and they’d fire in front of her so she’d have to turn around, and then they’d let her run another direction and then they’d cut her off. This went on about a half hour . . . then they decided it best to eliminate her as soon as possible, so they just ripped her off right there, and then . . . the corporal that was in charge, he decided that they’d better check her out for an ID card just to be safe about it . . . she didn’t have anything. Her only crime was being out probably tending to her buffalo before the time she should have been. These guys just took it upon themselves to waste her.

In other cases, service members reported that they willingly violated the laws of war and were willing to kill or injure civilians but did not know for certain if their actions led to civilians being killed or injured. For instance, Duffy of VVAW stated,

Also, I was flying tail gun at the time on one mission into HUE, and just for kicks, the pilot told me to spray a house with my M-16. I don’t know if the house was occupied, but the area was occupied by civilians. This was common policy. Kill anything you want to kill, any time you want to kill it, just don’t get caught.

This example was coded as violence for fun even though the service member did not know for certain if any noncombatants died.

In other cases, veterans noted that while they were in “free-fire zones,” or other similar scenarios in which they were permitted to shoot at will, they still believed that many of the individuals being killed were civilians. For instance, Hicks of IVAW stated,

First item, April 2004, free-fire zone in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood of Baghdad: During Operation Blackjack, I was instructed by our troop commander, a captain, that one sector was now a free-fire zone. He told us there were “no friendlies in the area.” He said, “Game on. All weapons free.” . . . I did not fire my weapon on this operation, but other members of my unit embraced the weapons-free order by firing indiscriminately into occupied civilian vehicles and at civilians themselves . . . I swear until the day I die, I did not see one enemy on that operation. Judging from what I saw on the ground, the majority of those so-called KIAs were civilians attempting to flee the battlefield.

In these scenarios, while service members were technically allowed to engage, they indicated that their reasons for discharging their firearms may still have been influenced by the military subculture and its code of violence. For instance, Emanuele of IVAW stated,

An act that took place quite often in Iraq was taking pot shots at cars that drove by. This was quite easy for most Marines to get away with because our Rules of Engagement stated that the town of al-Qaim had already been forewarned and knew to pull their cars to a complete stop when approaching a United States convoy.

While ROE and other laws of war are generally concerned with violence using firearms, the transcripts contained several examples of service members killing or hurting civilians that did not involve weaponry. They were especially likely to involve hurting or killing children by tricking them into eating toxic substances, such as trioxylene heat tabs, or causing them to get run over by vehicles. These examples were coded as well, although they did not involve firearms.

The first author coded transcripts for instances where commanding officers encouraged, participated in, or ignored violations of the laws of war, and for episodes of lying, hiding, or concealing information about such violence. These instances informed the front and back-region analysis and included specific incidents as well as statements about general patterns. In VVAW transcripts, officers were cited as encouraging/participating/ignoring violations 24 times and deception in combat reports or with the media 26 times. In IVAW transcripts, those counts were 15 and 12, respectively. Using memos on criticism of the laws of war, noncompliance, officer influence, deception, and the three violence themes (status, anger, and fun), and guided by literature on the military subculture, front and back regions, and the construction of violence, we concluded that where commanders prioritized the military subculture’s code over formal law, service members presented compliance in front regions but engaged in illegal violence in back regions.

Military subculture and the code of violence

The testimonies of IVAW and VVAW members demonstrate that the military subculture presented service members with a code of violence that deemed violence to be an appropriate response in a much larger range of circumstances than the formal laws of war. More specifically, service members were allowed and even encouraged to use violence to express anger, gain status, and to have fun when in the back regions of war.