Reply #19: While I appreciate your statement of principle, [View All]

I must note that it has been my experience that such behavior is to be expected when military personnel are subjected to prolonged stress, unrelieved deprivation, and extraordinarily ambiguous threats. The latter is particularly important. The military does not deal at all well with ambiguity, either at the leadership or at the grunt level. This should've been a lesson of My Lai. It was not.

Military training, very unlike police training, focuses on maximally effective offensive force postures. There's almost nothing in infantry training (especially at the enlisted level) that focuses on "friend or foe" questions. It's "kill or be killed" and "shoot (or salute?) anything that moves." We're talking about training that deliberately aims to bypass reasoning processes -- where "reasoning" is overtly eschewed and demonized. "Ours but to do or die; ours not to reason why" is the perennial maxim. Military training and indoctrination relies heavily on Maslow's highest need: survival. All other 'needs' are wired into compliance and groupthink.

Perhaps one must experience this to fully appreciate it. It's the amplification of our authoritarian propensities. It's innately inimical to 'free thinking' and democratic principles. There are no Albert Schweitzers in the military.