10 Aug 14

“Warriors” or “worriers?”

“We are undisciplined, like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but no progress”

H Jackson Brown Jr

From a friend and colleague:

“Formally legitimizing organized killing is the psycho-dynamic process our esteemed colleague, Dave Grossman, compasses in ‘Killology.’

Most humans are genetically hardwired to limit violence against conspecific creatures. Thus, the fundamental nature of military training is to condition the breaching of that limit, which it permits only in organized, stylized circumstances, and only under command. Simultaneously, it progressively distances command from emotional components of the ‘lethal stroke.’

One might even say, to the extent that it leads humans to the killing of other humans, on orders, and in a concrete set of ‘rules of engagement,’ that it’s the deliberate creation of controllable, individual killers. And, in the context of warfare, that represents both success, and necessity!

The foregoing ‘works,’ to the extent that it does, only when ‘rules’ are comprehensible, universally observed and adhered to, and lines are clearly drawn. But, the last world history example of that was World War II. Even then, it broke-down quickly and often during events like the Battle of the Bulge in Europe, and the later sages of the Pacific Campaign.

In Korea, certainly in Vietnam, and quite certainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, those lines have been, for all practical purposes, erased, or never existed to begin with! The result is that the ‘Army of One’ has become all too real!

Individual troopers, at all grades, have had to become like legally-armed civilians. The concepts of ‘front lines’ and ‘rear areas’ are now mostly fantasy, that shifts like desert sands on which it plays out. The enemy, to paraphrase Pogo from two generations ago, ‘looks like us.’ Maybe he has swarthy skin, and maybe he doesn’t shave his beard, but that can also be said of most of our assumptive ‘friends.’

Foot soldiers don’t fight ‘for their country.’ They fight for their comrades, for each other. It’s only in harnessing that phenomenon that wars are won. That has not changed during the entire history of warfare.

When politicians and commanders willfully pretend they’re not aware of the foregoing, massacres of innocents, like the one we saw last week, will inevitably continue. This murder surely isn’t the first; it’s only jarring, because one decedent was a high commander. I’ll wager the ‘training academy’ where it happened is foolishly considered a ‘safe area,’ and thus does not enjoy the benefit of perimeter enforcement. Thus, everyone naively strolls around, unarmed!

Can this be prevented?

Silly question!

Of course not, not so long as we have this flawed, ‘politically correct’ leftist millstone handing around our necks!

Not so long as our military is expected to worship, and strictly adhere to, the paranoid anti-gun philosophy of the political left. Heads will have to roll, because self-evidently this assassination is yet another grand example of ‘politically correct’ system/philosophy failure.

But, until we reverse course and start employing killological techniques and philosophy, until we start warrioring and stop worrying, until we finally face the fact that each member of our military, from the lowliest trooper, to platoon leader, and up, especially up, is a potential individual target, with personal responsibility for the maintenance of his own personal security, we fail them, our nation, our civilization, and our future!

That requires an epiphany at the highest levels. To disregard is to continue to lie to our troops, and lie to our citizens, as we’re doing now.

Our entire military establishment needs to re-learn how to ‘live with guns,’ how to ‘go armed,’ no matter where they are, no matter what they’re doing. Of course, not all people with guns are careful, trustworthy, nor even respectable. But, that’s already true, within and without our military establishment. That’s even true within most police departments, but that has never stopped any of us from going armed!

Soldiers’s lives are the currency of warfare. Even when we are content to think that way, and especially when it’s disturbing (as it ought to be), we must at least do everything we can to keep them whole. In our philosophy, they are the ultimate value and the hardest expenditure. The expenditure will have to continue to be made, but at least we ought to husband and cherish every penny of it, as we’re obviously not doing now!

What we are doing is obscene!”

“It will be found unjust and unwise… to deprive any man of his natural liberty, upon the supposition he may abuse it.”

George Washington

/John