United States Military – Conditioning Soldiers To Carry Orders

It may seem wholly natural to kill, but entrenched evidence proves otherwise. While aggression is common to the human species, so are charitable impulses born of self-awareness and identification with

The Other. This is why armies from ancient Roman legionnaires to modern-day infantrymen must continuously drill their recruits and continue to condition even lots of their combat veterans in murderous behaviors. As an example, as far back as Roman times it was observed that men had a natural aversion to stabbing, preferring to slash with their swords instead. Stabbing, purposely and intensely thrusting a blade into an opponent, was usually avoided by most novices to war because, we may surmise, people simply have an almost instinctual need not to inflict fatalities at least not at such close ranges. After World War II, to cite another instance, studies conducted by the United States military discovered that less than half of all squadrons actually fired their weapons, even when fired upon themselves. This is the reason why the primary mission of basic training in the military any military, since time immemorial has been conditioning the psychology of recruits to kill on command.

Indeed, such conditioning masks the killing act, the killing behavior, not as killing but as the obeying of a command; psychologically, one no longer kills as such but only replies to orders by pulling a trigger or pushing a button. And the more of an interface there is between assailant and victim the simpler it is to kill. This makes sense, naturally it's much harder to kill somebody face-to-face than to kill him remotely through a videolink.

It is also much more dire for the murderer. And so it is that armies focus their efforts on securing obedience, for military operations involve teamwork and it is the one feeble link that will break the chain.
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