Do Soldiers Fight for a Cause?

[War Hammer]

Heralding S.L.A Marshall and other studies from World War II it seems that the United States Army and Western scholars have concluded that soldiers do not fight for a cause but for their brothers in battle.

Does the statement that soldiers only fight for their brothers in battle really apply to non-Western militiaries? We would be guilty of mirrior imaging if we supposed to this to be true in all cases.

In particular what does our guerrilla enemy fight for? Can we really presume that the lone suicide bomber is fighting for his bro in the foxhole next to him?

Why is that revolutionaries from Maoists to Islamists say that ideological fervor is the most important element in creating a soldier yet we deny this very premise?

Al-Suri, author of The Global Call for Islamic Resistance argues

that ideological training is the number one factor in creating a competenet Islamic soldier.

Brynjar Lia stated:

The decisive factor for successful jihadi training is the moral motivation and the desire to fight, not knowledge in the use of arms, al-Suri asserts. If the ideological program is not fully digested and the mental preparation is absent, weapons training is of no use.

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_...t_news%5D=1001