That's not Stan -- that's Dave Grossman: Cf. <http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0211/0742.html>. I think it's revealing that you have to get constant training to learn to fire your weapon as you are expected; in my view, that's an indication of how difficult for humans to kill other humans. You can learn "a reflexive quick-shoot ability" through training, but you can unlearn it, too, as many soldiers did, after or even during their tours of duty.
At 5:46 PM -0500 12/14/02, Doug Henwood wrote:
>The U.S. military is composed of trained professional killers who
>think they're doing god's work. We're not talking an army of
>reluctant conscripts. So if morale etc. counts, then you may be
>underestimating the U.S. military.
The U.S. military depends upon poverty draft to fulfill much of its manpower needs, counting on poor young men and women who don't look to the military as a lifelong career. It's only a minority -- those who go to West Point and the like, and those who are ambitious enough to kill and die for promotion, perhaps -- who may be characterized as "trained professional killers who think they're doing god's work" (even then, not all of the minority are like that -- some will become Scott Ritters). I've met many men and women who are one way or another related to the U.S. military -- combat veterans, veterans, those enrolled in the ROTC programs, reservists, etc. -- in and out of classrooms. The large majority of them are decent folks; a slim majority may be called populists, and a minority of them (mostly those who are already out of the military) are downright left-wing. That's not surprising, because most of them come from very working-class backgrounds, disproportionately people of color. What if such soldiers, who are no killing machines, get sent into a ground war sliding into a quagmire, with no clear goal and no cause they can believe in, fighting against determined guerrillas who do have a clear goal and faith in their cause, rather than a quick war mostly won by air power? -- Yoshie
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