Killing in war is not a sentimental matter

While the "keyboard commandos" look for new ways to romanticize other people killing and dying in a war to eliminate non-existent "weapons of mass destruction," it's not a bad idea for the rest of us to keep in mind the very real difficulties for the soldiers we send to fight the wars of liberation that the Bush strategists dream up.

This article is a good example: Is anyone ever truly prepared to kill? Christian Science Monitor 09/29/04. 

Much is rightly made of the dedication and sacrifice of those willing to lay down their lives for their country. But what is rarely spoken of, within the military or American society at large, is what it means to kill - to overcome the ingrained resistance most human beings feel to slaying one of their own kind, and the haunting sense of guilt that may accompany such an action. There is a terrible price to be paid by those who go to war, their families, and their communities, say some experts, by ignoring such realities. ...

It may seem strange that a central fact of war for millenniums should become an urgent concern now. But some close to the scene say modified warfare training that makes it easier to kill - and a US cultural response that tends to ignore how killing affects soldiers - have taken an unprecedented emotional and psychological toll. A lengthy conflict in Iraq, they worry, could increase that toll dramatically. [my emphasis]

Society has a moral obligation, some argue, to better prepare those sent to war, to provide assistance in combat, and to help in the transition home.

The rightwing jabber about "taking off the gloves," being merciless, shooting first and asking questions later, is obviously one major factor that lets people at home cheering for Our Side - as they watch the sanitized version of the war presented on Fox News and listen to it on Oxycontin radio - ignore the ugly realities of what they're cheering for.

This is one of the ugly sides of the sentimentalization of soldiers that Wesley Clark talks about.  As he puts it:

The irony, as [Clark] sees it, is that while the relationship between the military and the general public has improved since [the] Vietnam [War], the experience of actually serving in the military has become less common.  The result is a perception of soldiers as the embodiments of ideals - duty, honor, country - reinforced by a sentimentality unsullied by first-hand knowledge of soldiering. 

The Monitor article also makes a critically important point, that the soldier's individual ability to deal with what he or she has had to do depends importantly on whether they feel that what they have done is over the line in terms of what is permissable in war.  And, yes, there are standards of conduct in war.  That's one more of the devastating effects of something like the torture that went on in Abu Ghuraib and is presumably still occurring in other portion of the Bush-and-Rummy gulag.

In "The Code of the Warrior," his course at the Naval Academy, Dr. [Shannon] French focuses on moral distinctions - the historical legacy of the warrior and rules of war, and how to be alert to crossing the boundaries, as occurred at Abu Ghraib prison.

"It has been very well documented that there is a close connection between severe combat stress and the sense of having crossed moral lines," she says. [Yes, the original mixes the gender of Dr. French.]

Telford Taylor, who served as the chief US counsel in the Nuremberg war crimes trial after the Second World War, emphasized this point in his Nuremberg and Vietnam (1970).  He considers the positive effects that the laws of war had during the Second World War in restraining abuse of prisoners-of-war on the Western front in Europe.  (The Eastern front was a different story.)  Then he says:

Another and, to my mind, even more important basis of the laws of war is that they are necessary to diminish the corrosive effect of mortal combat on the participants.  War does not confer a license to kill for personal reasons - to gratify perverse impulses [as in Abu Ghuraib!], or to put out of the way anyone who appears obnoxious, or to whose welfare the soldier is indifferent.  War is not a license at all, but an obligation to kill for reasons of state; it does not countenance the infliction of suffering for its own sake or for revenge.

Unless troops are trained and required to draw the distinction between military and nonmilitary killings, and to retain such respect for the value of life that unnecessary death and destruction will continue to repel them, they may lose the sense for that distinction for the rest of their lives. The consequence would be that many returning soldiers would be potential murderers. [my emphasis]

This is well worth remembering whenever some blowhard fool is sounding off with things like:  "Well I say it’s time we took the gloves off in Iraq and Afghanistan. ... Shoot first and ask questions later."

Also following on the theme of the Monitor article, this is an important passage by Joseph McNamara, who served as a police officer in New York City and as police chief in Kansas City and San Jose, from his book Safe and Sane (1984). The context of which he was speaking was of domestic crime rather than combat, but its relevant:

Few people realize just how difficult it is to shoot a gun.  Having the power to kill someone is not something to take lightly.  When they're put in such a situation, many gun owner hesitate or freeze.  Some pay for such common reactions with their own lives.  I know many cops surely have.

For the most part, gun owners don't think about shooting someone.  They just assume that when they point a gun at someone, the person will do whatever they say. Did you ever notice how many Hollywood crooks look down the barrel of a gun? And whenever Kojak [a fictional TV cop played by Telly Sevalis] orders them to freeze, they immediately put their hands in the air.  Nothing could be further from the real world. When I gave such commands to people on the street, the response often was "[Cheney] you, pig!" Then what do you do? Shoot someone for swearing at you?

In my twenty-seven years in police work, I have never shot at anyone.  That is not to say I didn't have the opportunity.  Once, in New York, I couldn't force myself to shoot a man who came at me with a knife. ...

[He describes the incident, in which a furious assailant was threatening him with a knife and was close enough to stab him.] I would have been completely justified in killing the man, but I couldn't force myself to pull the trigger.  I'm not quite sure why.  Perhaps I never felt I was in real danger, though I was. And I was lucky to escape.

At best, the Iraq War won't be over soon.  It would be better for us all if we don't sentimentalize what war means to the point that we lose sight of the real consequences.