On Fri, 2004-05-14 at 14:40 +1000, Ellis, Peter wrote: > Lt Col David Grossman, a Green Beret and US army psychologist, testified to > an inquiry into one of America's too frequent high school massacres, that > desensitising, conditioning and role modeling were what the Army used to > overcome soldiers' natural inhibition to killing.
After sending of my last reply, I got talking to someone else in the office about this and feel the need to respond (again). I was once told about an article the talked about a soldiers willingness to take another persons life. During the Boar War army officials discovered that something like 80% of the soldiers were loading their rifle, but never pulling the trigger. They were stunned by how their soldiers had packed the gunpowder and shot, one load on top of another, until the barrel was filled. What they realized was that the soldiers were going through the motions, but when it came to killing someone, most of them just couldn't do it, even with their own lives on the line. The article then went on to talk about how the army are proud that, after using techniques similar to the "desensitizing, conditioning and role modeling" Lt Col David Grossman talks about, they now had an army where about 80% would actually kill someone. (The figures are rough, but they are about right, sadly I couldn't find the article at short notice.) Sadly, I can't help but see this "desensitizing, conditioning and role modeling" as anything other than brain washing. It's the systematic destruction of the unwillingness of one person to kill another, using the same technique over and over, until the person 'believes' their new reality. If this were the actions of a third world tyrant, our government would label it as despicable, claiming that this is the reason why this tyrant must be stopped. But in Australia we have a Christian man complaining, while is seems he has little problem with the Army training people to kill against their better nature, that any immoral actions taken by a soldier is the fault of society, and not the training he receives from the army. His argument that society is to blame for any atrocities the individual soldier might commit because they failed to impose some sort of absolutes in the person - when the army spends "a year or eighteen months before he is on operations" "desensitizing, conditioning and role modeling" the soldier to kill - lacks any real strength from where I sit. Rodd ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
