Let me be explicit about some of my views. I believe war is always a failure, that combat leaves unhealable scars on everyone who lives through it, that a soldier's job is more about being willing to die than being ready to kill, and the ideal warriors are those that win wars without fighting a battle.
I have too many friends who are still suffering from what they lived through in Vietnam and other wars and know others who are now in the service, doing their best and giving their best in difficult circumstances day after day. Their war will continue for the rest of their lives. Whether we support the present Bush wars or not, we all need to support our troops after their homecoming and understand a little of what they had to go through. The Republican line that we can't support our troops without supporting the war is a dangerous lie and we cannot, must not let it stand.
As this book makes clear, one way to reduce the severity and amount of post-traumatic stress is the support and services we provide our soldiers and sailors once they return to us all. We should remember and act on that knowledge.
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Lt. Col Dave Grossman
Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1995
ISBN0-316-33000-0
(5) The fight-or-flight dichotomy is the appropriate set of choices for any creature faced with danger other than that which comes from its own species. When we examine the responses of creatures confronted with aggression from their own species, the set of options expands to include posturing and submission. This application of animal kingdom intraspecies response patterns (that is, fight, flee, posture, and submit) to human warfare is, to the best of my knowledge, entirely new.
(38) Glenn Gray, driven by his own personal guilt and anguish resulting from his World War II experiences, cries out with the pain of every self-aware soldier who has thought this matter through: "I, too, belong to this species. I am ashamed not only of my own deeds, not only of my nation's deeds, but of human deeds as well. I am ashamed to be a man."
"This," says Gray, "is the culmination of a passionate logic which begins in warfare with the questioning of some act the soldier has been ordered to perform contrary to his conscience." If this process continues, then "consciousness of failure to act in response to conscience can lead to the greatest revulsion, not only for oneself, but for the human species."
(41) "Psychiatric breakdown remains one of the most costly items of war when expressed in human terms." Richard Gabriel No More Heroes
(43-44) Swank and Marchand's much-cited World War II study determined that after sixty days of continuous combat, 98% of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties of one kind or another. Swank and Marchand also found a common trait among the 2 % who are able to endure sustained combat, a predisposition toward "aggressive psychopathic personalities"....
It is interesting to note that spending months of continuous exposure to the stresses of combat is a phenomenon found only on the battlefields of this century.
(48) The key understanding to take away from this litany of mental illness is that within a few months of sustained combat some symptoms of stress will develop in almost all participating soldiers.
(52) The Israeli military psychologist Ben Shalit asked Israeli soldiers immediately after combat what most frightened them. The answer that he expected was "loss of life" or "injury and abandonment in the field." He was therefore surprised to discover the low emphasis on fear of bodily harm and death, and the great emphasis on "letting others down."
(67) "The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only the second. Poverty, privation and want are the school of the good soldier." Napoleon
(70) Napoleon stated that the moment of greatest danger was the instant immediately after victory, and in saying so he demonstrated a remarkable understanding of how soldiers become physiologically and psychologically incapacitated by the parasympathetic backlash that occurs as soon as the momentum of the attack has halted and the soldier briefly believes himself to be safe. During this period of vulnerability a counterattack by fresh troops can have an affect completely out proportion to the number of troops attacking.
(74) "I am sick and tired of war. It's glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a short nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell." William Tecumseh Sherman
(89-90) Numerous studies have concluded that men in combat are usually motivated to fight not by ideology or hate or fear, but by group pressures and processes involving (1) regard for their comrades, (2) respect for their leaders, (3) concern for their own reputations with both, and (4) an urge to contribute tot he success of the group.
(109) ... average fifty thousand rounds of ammunition required for every enemy soldier killed in Vietnam
(127) I believe that there are two factors in play in this increased killing of an enemy whose back is turned, and the resultant fear of turning one's back to the enemy. The first factor is the concept of a chase instinct. A lifetime of working with and training dogs has taught me that the worst thing you can ever do is run from an animal.
(136) One American soldier compared the killings at My Lai to the closely linked guilt and satisfaction that accompany masturbation.
(141) Dr. Stanley Milgram's famous studies at Yale University on obedience and aggression found that in a controlled laboratory environment more than 65% of his subjects could be readily manipulated into inflicting a (seemingly) lethal electrical charge on a total stranger.
(143) "The mass needs, and we give it, leaders who have the firmness and decision of command proceeding from habit and an entire faith in their unquestionable right to command as established by tradition, law and society." Ardant du Picq Battle Studies
(144-145) Authority factors: proximity of the authority figure to the subject; killer's subjective respect for the authority figure; intensity of the authority figure's demands for killing behavior; legitimacy of the authority figure's authority and demands.
(149) The defeat of even the most elite group is usually achieved when so many casualties have been inflicted (usually somewhere around the 50% point) that the group slips into a form of mass depression and apathy.
(151) Konrad Lorentz tells us that "man is not a killer, but the group is."
(168) The paradox of war is that those leaders who are most willing to endanger that which they love can be the ones who are most liable to win, and therefore the most likely to protect their men.
(180-181) A more accurate conclusion would be that there is 2% of the male population that, if pushed or if given a legitimate reason, will kill without regret of remorse. What these individuals represent - and this is a terribly important point that I must emphasize - is the capacity for the levelheaded participation in combat that we as a society glorify and that Hollywood would have us believe that all soldiers possess. In the course of interviewing veterans as a part of this study I have met several individuals who may fit within this 2%, and since returning from combat they have, without fail, proven themselves to be above-average contributors to the prosperity and welfare of our society.
(187-189) Milgram Factors
Demands of Authority: proximity of authority figure to subject; subjective respect for authority figure; intensity of demands by authority figure; legitimacy of authority figure's demands and authority
Group Absolution: subject's identification with group; proximity of group; intensity of group's support for the kill; number in immediate group; legitimacy of group
Total Distance from the Victim: physical distance between killer and victim; emotional distance between killer and victim, including social distance, cultural distance (racial and ethnic differences permitting dehumanization), moral distance, and mechanical distance (buffers such as thermal or sniper sights)
Shalit Factors
Relevance and effectiveness of available strategies for killing victim
Relevance of victim as a threat
Payoff of killer's action in terms of killer's gain and enemy's loss
Predisposition of the Killer
Training/conditioning of the soldier
Recent experiences of the soldier
NB: Notice that the author switches from "killer" to "soldier"
(193) "The basic aim of a nation at war is establishing an image of the enemy in order to distinguish as sharply as possible the act of killing from the act of murder." Glenn Gray The Warriors
(205) The most important point here is that nobody has ever pointed out to me the potential repercussions of improper POW handling. No leader of mine has ever stood up and clearly stated this proposition to me and defended it. In fact, the opposite has occurred. As a private and a sergeant, I have had enlisted superiors strongly defend the execution of POWs whenever it was inconvenient to take them alive, and at the time I accepted it as reasonable. But they never made me understand the vital importance add the deadly ramifications of POW handling (or mishandling) on the battlefield because I think they themselves did not understand.
On the next battlefield our soldiers may commit war crimes and thereby cause us to lose on of the basic combat multipliers that we have available to us: the tendency of an oppressed people to become disloyal to their nation.
NB: Prophecy fulfilled. This book was published in 1995.
(231) The basic response stages to killing in combat are concern about killing, the actual kill, exhilaration, remorse, and rationalization and acceptance.
(253) The method used to train today's - and the Vietnam era's - US Army and USMC soldiers is nothing more than an application of conditioning techniques to develop a reflexive "quick shoot" ability. It is entirely possible that no one sat down to use operant conditioning or behavior modification techniques to train soldiers in this area.
(255) Basically the soldier has rehearsed the process so many times that when he does kill in combat he is able to, at one level, deny to himself that he is actually killing another human being. This careful rehearsal and realistic mimicry of the act of killing permit the soldier to convince himself that he has only "engaged" another target.
(271) Arthur Hadley, author of Straw Giant, conducted an extensive study on major warrior societies around the world. In this study he concluded that all warrior societies, tribes, and nations incorporate some form of purification ritual for their returning soldiers, and this ritual appears to be essential to the health of both the returning warrior and the society as a whole.
(272) [Richard] Gabriel understands and powerfully illuminates the role of this purification ritual, and the price of its absence:
"Societies have always recognized that war changes men, that they are not the same after they return. That is why primitive societies often require soldiers to perform purification rites before allowing them to rejoin their communities. These rites often involved washing or other forms of ceremonial cleansing. Psychologically, these rituals provided soldiers with a way of ridding themselves of stress and the terrible guilt that always accompanies the same after war. It was also a way of treating guilt by providing a mechanism through which fighting men could decompress and relive their terror without feeling weak or exposed. Finally, it was a way of telling the soldier that what he did was right and that the community for which he fought was grateful and that, above all, his community of sane and normal men welcomed him back."
(285) In study after study two factors show up again and again as critical to the magnitude of the post-traumatic response. First and most obvious is the intensity of the initial trauma. The second and less obvious but absolutely vital factor is the nature of the social support structure available to the traumatized individual.
NB: It will be our responsibility to make sure that our soldiers, our troops have all the help they need when they come home. If we don't, the human cost of the Bush wars will rise significantly here on home ground. The Republican line that you can't support the troops without supporting the war is, at heart, a dangerous lie that can do incalculable human damage for many years to come and we should let them know it.
(315) There is a direct relationship between realism and degree of violence enabling, and the most realistic of these are games in which great bloody chunks fly off as you fire at the enemy.
NB: I doubt that he's read Riverbend's view of TV violence
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/...
(319) The lesson that the drill sergeant teaches is that physical aggression is the essence of manhood and that violence is an effective and desirable solution for the problems that the soldier will face on the battlefield. But it is very important to understand that the drill sergeant also teaches obedience.
(320) One of the fruits of this new cult of vengeance in American society can be seen in the Oklahoma City bombing...
NB: Unfortunately, I don't believe the author understands or has studied the motivations of Timothy McVeigh and his accomplices. He blames media violence rather than McVeigh's experiences in Gulf War I and quotes Michael Medved on the need for censure if not censorship to reduce the amount of violence in media and "resensitize" the American population.
PS: Ilona and others blog on PTSD. Please keep a look out for their diaries.