Moving a Nation to Care by Ilona Meagher

Author:Ilona Meagher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: IG Publishing
Published: 2010-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

While these training techniques make today’s soldiers the most effective killing force in history, they are ineffective in preventing soldiers from the long-term psychological harm that comes with being so good at killing. Former West Point philosophy instructor Army Major Peter Kilner says that, “[c]onditioning soldiers to reflexively engage targets prepares them to deal with the enemy, but it does not prepare them to deal with their own consciences.”10 Kilner was sent to Iraq in 2003, where he found that, unlike in previous wars, most infantrymen had “looked down the barrel and shot at people, and many [had] killed.”11 This increased exposure to killing translates into a higher level of post combat trauma. “Many combat soldiers experience feelings of guilt in the months and years following their wartime actions,” explains Kilner. “[They] killed the enemy when their nation and its leaders have asked them to do so, only to later suffer guilt.”12 Dr. Rachel MacNair, Director of the Institute for Integrated Social Analysis, an organization that performs research on violence-related issues, has studied the effect of killing on Vietnam veterans, and found that soldiers who had killed in combat—or believed they had—suffered higher rates of PTSD.13

To mitigate their feelings of guilt, Kilner believes that troops should be taught from basic training on that they do have a justified reason for killing during wartime: self-defense. “It is morally permissible to kill another person under certain conditions: that another person has consciously decided to threaten your life or liberty, that that person is imminently executing that threat, and that you have no other reasonable way to avoid the threat.” Being a soldier meets all three of these conditions. “Not only is it morally permissible for soldiers to kill enemy soldiers in combat,” Kilner says, “but they are also morally obligated to use the force necessary to defend those who depend on them.” He adds, “Because the moral responsibility for going to war lies with political authorities and because the political authorities’ intentions are often opaque, soldiers should be largely immune from judgments about the just ends of war.”14

However, while the military goes to great lengths to decode the psychology behind our natural aversion to killing, they balk at teaching troops about the moral justifications of combat killing, are not curious about understanding the connection between killing, guilt and PTSD and are not aggressive enough in treating these side effects once the mission is complete. A 2004 New Yorker article entitled “The Price of Valor,” reflected on this willful ignorance: “. . . a number of observers inside and outside the Army worry that the high rate of close-up killing in Iraq has the potential to traumatize a new generation of veterans. Worse, they say, the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs avoid thinking about it.”15 Or, as one Army public affairs officer said in 2002, “On the verge of war, we don’t need to be talking about this upsetting thing.”16 To win wars, it is necessary to turn soldiers, at least for a time, “into reflexive, robotic killers.

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