Killing soldiers' humanity
The American military is training its soldiers to become so inured to killing that it becomes easy.
'Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like 'All right, let's go get some pizza'."
That's an American soldier, Private Steven Green, interviewed in Iraq in 2006.
Green's words sound shocking but they represent the reality of combat in places such as Iraq: good soldiers kill quickly and dispassionately. Even with modern, high-tech weapons, someone must still pull the trigger.
And that's not necessarily easy.
A famous World War II study by S. L. A. Marshall shocked military theorists when it suggested that only a minority of American soldiers could bring themselves to fire directly at another human being in combat, even with their own life at risk.
"The average and healthy individual … has such an inner … resistance towards killing a fellow man," wrote Marshall, "that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility."
The Soviet journalist Vasily Grossman noted a similar phenomenon on the Eastern Front. "Sixty per cent of our soldiers haven't fired a single shot during the war at all," a commander told him. "We are fighting thanks to heavy machine-guns, battalion mortars and the courage of some individuals."
Since then, military trainers have developed various techniques to overcome the inherent human resistance to killing.
To read the full article from The Age, click on:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/killing-soldiers-humanity/2007/06/03/1180809336364.html
'Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like 'All right, let's go get some pizza'."
That's an American soldier, Private Steven Green, interviewed in Iraq in 2006.
Green's words sound shocking but they represent the reality of combat in places such as Iraq: good soldiers kill quickly and dispassionately. Even with modern, high-tech weapons, someone must still pull the trigger.
And that's not necessarily easy.
A famous World War II study by S. L. A. Marshall shocked military theorists when it suggested that only a minority of American soldiers could bring themselves to fire directly at another human being in combat, even with their own life at risk.
"The average and healthy individual … has such an inner … resistance towards killing a fellow man," wrote Marshall, "that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility."
The Soviet journalist Vasily Grossman noted a similar phenomenon on the Eastern Front. "Sixty per cent of our soldiers haven't fired a single shot during the war at all," a commander told him. "We are fighting thanks to heavy machine-guns, battalion mortars and the courage of some individuals."
Since then, military trainers have developed various techniques to overcome the inherent human resistance to killing.
To read the full article from The Age, click on:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/killing-soldiers-humanity/2007/06/03/1180809336364.html
posted by Pax Christi @ Monday, June 04, 2007
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