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"On
Killing II: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill"
PTSD
and the Price of Conditioning
The
extraordinarily high firing rate resulting from modern conditioning
processes was a key factor in our ability to claim that
we never lost a major engagement in Vietnam. But conditioning
which overrides such a powerful, innate resistance has enormous
potential for psychological backlash. Every warrior society
has a “purification ritual” to help the returning warrior
deal with his “blood guilt” and to reassure him that what
he did in combat was “good.” In primitive tribes this generally
involves ritual bathing, ritual separation (which serves
as a cooling-off and “group therapy” session), and a ceremony
embracing the warrior back into the tribe. Modern Western
rituals traditionally involve long separation while marching
or sailing home, parades, monuments, and the unconditional
acceptance of society and family.
After Vietnam this purification ritual was turned on its
head. The returning American veteran was attacked and condemned
in an unprecedented manner. The traditional horrors of combat
were magnified by modern conditioning techniques, and this
combined with societal condemnation to create a circumstance
which resulted in 0.5 to 1.5 million cases of post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) in Vietnam veterans. This mass incidence
of psychiatric disorders among Vietnam veterans resulted
in the “discovery” of PTSD, a condition which we now know
has always occurred as a result of warfare, but never in
this quantity.
PTSD seldom results in violent criminal acts, and upon returning
to society the recipient of modern military conditioning
is statistically less likely to engage in violent crime
than a non-veteran of the same age. The key safeguard in
this process appears to be the deeply ingrained discipline
which the soldier internalizes with his military training.
(As
an important aside in this area, I should note that I was
called as a consultant, and on standby as an expert witness
for the US government, in the case against Timothy McVeigh
in the Oklahoma City bombing. It appeared that the defense
was going to claim that McVeigh’s military training and
Gulf War experiences were “matters of mitigation” which
could help explain his horrific crime, and I was able to
refute this claim, drawing extensively from US Bureau of
Justice Statistics information that demonstrated that the
returning veteran is a superior member of society who is
less likely to be incarcerated than a non-veteran of the
same age and sex.)
However, with the advent of interactive “point-and-shoot”
arcade and video games there is significant concern that
society is aping military conditioning, but without the
vital safeguard of discipline. There is strong evidence
to indicate that the indiscriminate civilian application
of combat conditioning techniques as entertainment may be
a key factor in worldwide, skyrocketing violent crime rates,
including a sevenfold increase in per capita aggravated
assaults in America since 1956. Thus, the latest chapter
in American military history may be occurring in our streets.
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