{"id":86,"date":"2008-11-10T16:52:32","date_gmt":"2008-11-10T16:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/?p=86"},"modified":"2010-02-15T15:37:18","modified_gmt":"2010-02-15T22:37:18","slug":"we-ask-them-to-kill-veterans-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/2008\/11\/we-ask-them-to-kill-veterans-day\/","title":{"rendered":"We ask them to kill – VETERAN’S DAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

We ask our military to do the unspeakable, the unthinkable.\u00a0 We ask them to kill fellow human beings.\u00a0 We ask of them what we are unable to ask of ourselves. Moreover, we do not want to see or know what they do.\u00a0 We are appalled when we see a television image of a marine killing an Iraqi who is “faking dead.”\u00a0 We condemn that marine.\u00a0 We must or else we feel we are condoning it.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter that he did nothing wrong.\u00a0 We saw it.\u00a0 We saw him kill that man.\u00a0 We are not supposed to see that happen.\u00a0 How dare he make it real.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How do they kill?\u00a0 Did they join the military because killing is easy for them?\u00a0 Do they have any remorse when they kill?\u00a0 A Special Forces soldier said, “I froze.\u00a0 It was a boy.\u00a0 He turned and looked at me and raised his automatic weapon.\u00a0 I opened up with a 20 round magazine.\u00a0 He just laid there.\u00a0 I dropped my weapon and cried.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, it is difficult to kill a fellow human being, even if they are the enemy.\u00a0 During World War II only 15% to 20% of troops on a battle line fired their weapon because they just could not bring themselves to kill.\u00a0 The aversion to killing another human is tremendous and, at times, insurmountable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe it is easier when they kill someone “who needs to be killed.”\u00a0 A marine remembers killing a Japanese soldier in hand to hand combat during World War II saying, “I whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’ And then I threw up all over myself.”<\/p>\n

Military personnel are just like the rest of us.\u00a0 They do not want war.\u00a0 They do not want to kill.\u00a0 Yet, they accept this unique calling the rest of us cannot hear.\u00a0 How can they do what we cannot?\u00a0 I believe they have a bit more love of country, a bit more loyalty to country, and perhaps a bit more character than the rest of us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Do they pay a price for choosing the military?\u00a0\u00a0 Do they pay a price for being “both victim and executioner,” as described by John Keegan and Richard Holmes in their book, Soldier<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In every war this century, the likelihood of psychological “injury” was higher than the likelihood of being killed.\u00a0 The most traumatic event in war turns out to be looking in the eyes of a fellow human being and watching him die because of your actions.\u00a0 Yes, they pay a price to kill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Studies show that after 60 days of continuous combat, 98% of personnel suffer some psychological injury.\u00a0 It must be the unrelenting fear of death that overwhelms them.\u00a0 But the fear of death haunts much more the soldiers who have not been in combat.\u00a0 The combat soldier’s greatest fear is failing to do his job, failing those who count on him.\u00a0 The fear of death is secondary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Interestingly, medics on the same battlefield as the combat soldier often face greater risks of injury and death but suffer much less psychological injury than the combat soldier.\u00a0 How can that be?\u00a0 Simple; the medic’s primary responsibility is not killing.\u00a0 Rather than killing, he is helping.\u00a0 His psyche can handle that.<\/p>\n

Can our military do anything beyond recognizing and treating these psychological injuries when they occur?\u00a0 Yes, they are “inoculating” soldiers during training to help protect them from the psychological injuries of war.\u00a0 The “inoculation” is harsh, bordering on brutal, using extreme physical and mental exhaustion accompanied by starvation.\u00a0 A “survivor” of Special Forces training said, “We had been physically exhausted and starving for weeks.\u00a0 I had not eaten or slept for five days.\u00a0 Sitting there swallowing live baby frogs seemed perfectly reasonable.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

How does this “inoculate” them from psychological damage?\u00a0 What did the training do?\u00a0 The most important part of the training was not what they did.\u00a0 It was what they learned about themselves; what they could do, what they could tolerate, what they could survive, how they could win.\u00a0\u00a0 They learned that if they “survived” the training, they could keep their calm in horrendously stressful situations.\u00a0 They learned who they were and what they were.\u00a0 An Army Lieutenant Colonel said, “Limits are in the mind and can be overcome.\u00a0 I learned I could keep going despite fear, fatigue, and hunger.”\u00a0 He was inoculated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The car kept coming toward us.\u00a0 We had to shoot.\u00a0 We had no choice.\u00a0 We had no option.\u00a0 The car ignored our warnings.\u00a0 What else could we do?\u00a0 We opened fire.\u00a0 The car stopped.\u00a0 All were dead; mother, father, children.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another scar.\u00a0 Another memory.\u00a0 Another nightmare.\u00a0 Another lifetime.\u00a0 The memories of killing.\u00a0 The scars of war.\u00a0 These are rarely discussed because they never completely heal and are easily re-opened.\u00a0 Yes, they paid a price to kill.<\/p>\n

Thank them.\u00a0 Hug them.\u00a0 Listen well and often, ask little.\u00a0 Let them heal.\u00a0 Let them find peace.\u00a0 They did it for us.<\/p>\n

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We ask our military to do the unspeakable, the unthinkable.\u00a0 We ask them to kill fellow human beings.\u00a0 We ask of them what we are unable to ask of ourselves. Moreover, we do not want to see or know what they do.\u00a0 We are appalled when we see a television image of a marine killing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[98,130],"tags":[594,57,426,45,427,428,593,197,253,429,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigbosley.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}