This is what we are

Rating: 10/10 (11 November 2005)

Excellent movie.
I spent five years in the Marine Corps. I never went to war, but when I was stationed in Japan we had a wary eye fixed on North Korea. It was constantly beat into our heads that the war could come, and probably would come, very soon and without warning.
Put people in this situation, and things like Jarhead depicts do happen. Training people to kill and telling them they probably will get a chance to very soon will warp their minds. This isn't bad, or good... it's just the way it is. Normal people just aren't capable of warfare.
We never actually deployed, so things didn't quite rise to that level, but they definitely moved in that direction. And when warning signs got a little harier... or there was an incident along the DMZ... the pre-war insanity went up a notch.
Not every Marine or Marine unit will respond to the pressures of impending combat the same way. Individual personalities, unit cultures, assigned missions, will all work together to shape a different response. But the response of these Marines to the impending war is completely believable.