How soldiers deal with the job of killing

[jmm99]

from JMA
My approach had been from the point of departure of a middle class boy who grew up in a very non-violent environment and assumed that the vast majority would need some conditioning and motivation to kill in combat. I am correct in that but ignored the dangerous minority who need very little if any provocation to kill. So thank you for adding another dimension to my thinking on this.

I'd like the dimension (of Athens-Grossman) to be expanded so as to consider not only the psychopaths, sociopaths and the "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" group, but also the "normal kid" who becomes capable of the same or even higher level of violence than the folks who commit "war crimes" (tying into this post).

In connection with that, Grossman, in "On Combat", has some interesting factual material in Section Three, Chapter One (starting at p.125) "Killing Machines: The Impact of a Handful of True Warriors". He starts with "Commando" Kelly and includes Audie Murphy; but the statistics for Allied and German fighter pilots show much more quantitatively that a relatively small percentage of pilots racked up a very large number of kills.

I'd not be surprised at that result if we were talking about hunting. In any decent sample of hunters, one or more will stand out on a consistent basis for a larger percentage of kills than the others. As to combat, I've no experience to judge. I'd suspect that the "normal kid" (who becomes an "Audie Murphy") has learned somewhere along the line to reject a subordinate role and to achieve a superordinate role by taking on the "playground bully" - reaching at least Athens' third stage in violence development.

Athens gets into that (where the "victim" reacts with dominating violence), to some extent, in Violent Encounters: Violent Engagements, Skirmishes, and Tiffs (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2005) (pdf pp.19-40 spell out Athens' construct).

If so, that "normal kid" could become one of Grossman's "sheepdogs", who has to be able to take on wolves; and is a "killing machine", but for societally-acceptable reasons and within societally-acceptable limits.

Regards

Mike