On killing Read online

  I changed the standard firing targets to full-size, anatomically correct figures because no Syrian runs around with a big white square on D E S E N S I T I Z A T I O N AND C O N D I T I O N I N G IN V I E T N A M 255

  his chest with numbers on it. I put clothes on these targets and polyurethane heads. I cut up a cabbage and poured catsup into it and put it back together. I said, "When you look through that scope, I want you to see a head blowing up."

  — Dale Dye

  "Chuck Cramer: IDFs Master Sniper"

  This is all common practice in most of the world's best armies.

  Most modern infantry leaders understand that realistic training with immediate feedback to the soldier works, and they know that it is essential for success and survival on the modern battlefield.

  But the military is not, as a rule, a particularly introspective organization, and it has been my experience that those ordering, conducting, and participating in this training do not understand or even wonder (1) what makes it work or (2) what its psychological and sociological side effects might be. It works, and for them that is good enough.

  What makes this training process work is the same thing that made Pavlov's dogs salivate and B. F. Skinner's rats press their ban. What makes it work is the single most powerful and reliable behavior modification process yet discovered by the field of psychology, and now applied to the field of warfare: operant conditioning.

  Denial Defense Mechanisms: Denying the Unthinkable An additional aspect of this process that deserves consideration here is the development of a denial defense mechanism. Denial and defense mechanisms are unconscious methods for dealing with traumatic experiences. Prepackaged denial defense mechanisms are a remarkable contribution from modern U.S. Army training.

  Basically the soldier has rehearsed the process so many times that when he does kill in combat he is able to, at one level, deny to himself that he is actually killing another human being. This careful rehearsal and realistic mimicry of the act of killing permit the soldier to convince himself that he has only "engaged" another 256 K I L L I N G IN V I E T N A M

  target. O n e British veteran of the Falklands, trained in the modern method, told Holmes that he "thought of the enemy as nothing more or less than Figure II [man-shaped] targets." In the same way, an American soldier can convince himself that he is shooting at an E-type silhouette (a man-shaped, olive-drab target), and not a human being.

  Bill Jordan, law-enforcement expert, career U.S. Border Patrol officer, and veteran of many a gunfight, combines this denial process with desensitization in his advice to young law-enforcement officers:

  [There is] a natural disinclination to pull the trigger . . . when your weapon is pointed at a human. Even though their own life was at stake, most officers report having this trouble in their first fight.

  To aid in overcoming this resistance it is helpful if you can will yourself to think of your opponent as a mere target and not as a human being. In this connection you should go further and pick a spot on the target. This will allow better concentration and further remove the human element from your thinking. If this works for you, try to continue this thought in allowing yourself no remorse.

  A man who will resist an officer with weapons has no respect for the rules by which decent people are governed. He is an outlaw who has no place in world society. His removal is completely justified, and should be accomplished dispassionately and without regret.

  Jordan calls this process manufactured contempt, and the combination of denial of, and contempt for, the victim's role in society (desensitization), along with the psychological denial of, and contempt for, the victim's humanity (developing a denial defense mechanism), is a mental process that is tied in and reinforced every time the officer fires a round at a target. And, of course, police, like the military, no longer fire at bull's-eyes; they "practice" on man-shaped silhouettes.

  T h e success of this conditioning and desensitization is obvious and undeniable. It can be seen and recognized both in individuals and in the performance of nations and armies.

  DESENSITIZATION AND CONDITIONING IN VIETNAM 257

  The Effectiveness of the Conditioning

  Bob, a U.S. Army colonel, knew of Marshall's study and accepted that Marshall's World War II firing rates were probably correct.

  He was not sure what mechanism was responsible for increasing the firing rate in Vietnam, but he realized that somehow the rate had been increased. When I suggested the conditioning effects of modern training, he immediately recognized that process in himself. His head snapped up, his eyes widened slightly, and he said,

  "Two shots. Bam-bam. Just like we had been trained in 'quick kill.' When I killed, I did it just like that. Just like I'd been trained.

  Without even thinking."

  Jerry, another veteran who survived six six-month tours in Cambodia as an officer with Special Forces (Green Berets), when asked how he was able to do the things that he did, acknowledged simply that he had been "programmed" to kill, and he accepted it as necessary for his survival and success.

  One interviewee, an ex-CIA agent named Duane, who was then working as a high-level security executive in a major aerospace corporation, had conducted a remarkable number of successful interrogations during his lifetime, and he considered himself to be an expert on the process known popularly as brainwashing. He felt that he had been "to some extent brainwashed" by the CIA and that the soldiers receiving modern combat training were being similarly brainwashed. Like every other veteran whom I have discussed the matter with, he had no objections to this, understanding that psychological conditioning was essential to his survival and an effective method of mission accomplishment. He felt that a very similar and equally powerful process was taking place in the shoot-no shoot program, which federal and local law-enforcement agencies all over the nation conduct. In this program the officer selectively fires blanks at a movie screen depicting various tactical situations, thereby mimicking and rehearsing the process of deciding when and when not to kill.

  The incredible effectiveness of modern training techniques can be seen in the lopsided close-combat kill ratios between the British and Argentinean forces during the Falklands War and the U.S.

  258

  KILLING IN V I E T N A M

  and Panamanian forces during the 1989 Panama Invasion.3 During his interviews with British veterans of the Falklands War, Holmes described Marshall's observations in World War II and asked if they had seen a similar incidence of nonfirers in their own forces.

  Their response was that they had seen no such thing occur with their soldiers, but there was "immediate recognition that it applied to the Argentineans, whose snipers and machine-gunners had been very effective while their individual riflemen had not." Here we see an excellent comparison between the highly effective and competent British riflemen, trained by the most modern methods, and the remarkably ineffective Argentinean riflemen, who had been given old-style, World War II-vintage training.

  Similarly, Rhodesia's army during the 1970s was one of the best trained in the world, going up against a very poorly trained but well-equipped insurgent force. The security forces in Rhodesia maintained an overall kill ratio of about eight-to-one in their favor throughout the guerrilla war. And the highly trained Rhodesian Light Infantry achieved kill ratios ranging from thirty-five-to-one to fifty-to-one.

  One of the best examples in recent American history involved a company of U.S. Army Rangers who were ambushed and trapped while attempting to capture Mohammed Aidid, a Somali warlord sought by the United Nations. In this circumstance no artillery or air strikes were used, and no tanks, armored vehicles, or other heavy weapons were available to the American forces, which makes this an excellent assessment of the relative effectiveness of modern small-arms training techniques. The score? Eighteen U.S. troops killed, against an estimated 364 Somali who died that night.

  And we might remember that American forces were never once defeated in any major engagement in Vietnam. Harry
Summers says that when this was pointed out to a high-ranking North Vietnamese soldier after the war, the answer was "That may be true, but it is also irrelevant." Perhaps so, but it does reflect the individual close-combat superiority of the U.S. soldier in Vietnam.

  Even with allowance for unintentional error and deliberate exaggeration, this superior training and killing ability in Vietnam, Pan-DESENSITIZATION AND CONDITIONING IN VIETNAM 259

  ama, Argentina, and Rhodesia amounts to nothing less than a technological revolution on the battlefield, a revolution that represents total superiority in close combat.

  A Side Effect of the Conditioning

  Duane, the CIA veteran, told of one incident that provides some insight into a side effect of this conditioning or brainwashing. He was guarding a Communist defector in a safe house in West Germany during the mid-1950s. The defector was a very large, strong, and particularly murderous member of the Stalinist regime then in power. By all accounts he was quite insane. Having defected because he had lost favor among his Soviet masters, he was now beginning to have second thoughts about his new masters and was trying to escape.

  Alone for days in a locked and barred house with this man, the young CIA agent assigned to watch him was subject to a series of attacks. The defector would charge at him with a club or a piece of furniture, and each time he would break off the attack at the last minute as Duane pointed his weapon at him. The agent called his superiors over the phone and was ordered to draw an imaginary line on the floor and shoot this unarmed (though very hostile and dangerous) individual if he crossed that line. Duane felt certain that this line was going to be crossed and mustered up all of his conditioning. "He was a dead man. I knew I would kill him.

  Mentally I had killed him, and the physical part was going to be easy." But the defector (apparently not quite as crazy or desperate as he appeared to be) never crossed that line.

  Still, some aspect of the trauma of the kill was there. "In my mind," Duane told me, "I have always felt that I had killed that man." Most Vietnam veterans did not necessarily execute a personal kill in Vietnam. But they had participated in dehumanizing the enemy in training, and the vast majority of them did fire, or knew in their hearts that they were prepared to fire, and the very fact that they were prepared and able to fire ("Mentally I had killed him") denied them an important form of escape from the burden of responsibility that they brought back from that war. Although 260

  KILLING IN V I E T N A M

  they had not killed, they had been taught to think the unthinkable and had thereby been introduced to a part of themselves that under ordinary circumstances only the killer knows. The point is that this program of desensitization, conditioning, and denial defense mechanisms, combined with subsequent participation in a war, may make it possible to share the guilt of killing without ever having killed.

  A Safeguard in the Conditioning

  It is essential to understand that one of the most important aspects of this process is that soldiers are always under authority in combat.

  No army can tolerate undisciplined or indiscriminate firing, and a vital — and easily overlooked — facet of the soldier's conditioning revolves around having him fire only when and where he is told to. The soldier fires only when told to by a higher authority and then only within his designated firing lane. Firing a weapon at the wrong time or in the wrong direction is so heinous an offense that it is almost unthinkable to the average soldier.

  Soldiers are conditioned throughout their training and throughout their time in the military to fire only under authority. A gunshot cannot be easily hidden, and on rifle ranges or during field training any gunshot at inappropriate times (even when firing blank ammunition) must be justified, and if it is not justifiable it will be immediately and firmly punished.

  Similarly, most law-enforcement officers are presented with a variety of targets representing both innocent bystanders and gun-wielding criminals during their training. And they are severely sanctioned for engaging the wrong target. In the FBI's shoot-no shoot program, failure to demonstrate a satisfactory ability to distinguish when an officer can and cannot fire can result in revocation of the officer's right to carry a weapon.

  Numerous studies have demonstrated that there is not any distinguishable threat of violence to society from the veterans returning to the United States from any of the wars of this century. There are Vietnam vets who commit violent crimes, but statistically there is no greater a population of violent criminals among veterans than there is among nonveterans.4 What is a potential threat to society D E S E N S I T I Z A T I O N AND C O N D I T I O N I N G IN VIETNAM 261

  is the unrestrained desensitization, conditioning, and denial defense mechanisms provided by modern interactive video games and violent television and movies, but that is a topic for the last section in this book, "Killing in America: What Are We Doing to O u r Children?"

  Chapter Two

  What Have We Done to Our Soldiers?

  The Rationalization of Killing and

  How It Failed in Vietnam

  The Rationalization and Acceptance of Killing But after the fires and the wrath,

  But after searching and pain,

  His Mercy opens us a path

  To live with ourselves again.

  — Rudyard Kipling

  "The Choice"

  We have previously examined the killing response stages of concern, killing exhilaration, remorse, and rationalization and acceptance. Let us now apply this model to the Vietnam veteran in order to understand how the process of rationalization and acceptance of killing failed in Vietnam.

  The rationalization Process

  Something unique seems to have occurred in the rationalization process available to the Vietnam veteran. Compared with earlier American wars the Vietnam conflict appears to have reversed most

  WHAT HAVE WE D O N E TO O U R SOLDIERS?

  263

  The Killing Response Stages

  of the processes traditionally used to facilitate the rationalization and acceptance of killing experiences. These traditional processes involve:

  • Constant praise and assurance to the soldier from peers and superiors that he "did the right thing" (One of the most important physical manifestations of this affirmation is the awarding of medals and decorations.)

  • The constant presence of mature, older comrades (that is, in their late twenties and thirties) who serve as role models and stabilizing personality factors in the combat environment

  • A careful adherence to such codes and conventions of warfare by both sides (such as the Geneva conventions, first established in 1864), thereby limiting civilian casualties and atrocities

  • Rear lines or clearly defined safe areas where the soldier can go to relax and depressurize during a combat tour

  • The presence of close, trusted friends and confidants who have 264 KILLING IN V I E T N A M

  been present during training and are present throughout the combat experience

  • A cooldown period as the soldier and his comrades sail or march back from the wars

  • Knowledge of the ultimate victory of their side and of the gain and accomplishments made possible by their sacrifices

  • Parades and monuments

  • Reunions and continued communication (via visits, mail, and so on) with the individuals w h o m the soldier bonded with in combat

  • An unconditionally warm and admiring welcome by friends, family, communities, and society, constantly reassuring the soldier that the war and his personal acts were for a necessary, just, and righteous cause

  • T h e proud display of medals

  What Made Vietnam Different

  In the case of the Vietnam veteran all but the first of these rationalization processes were not only mostly absent, but many of them were inverted and became sources of great pain and trauma to the veteran.

  The Teenage War

  It's easier if you catch them young. You can train older men to be soldiers; it's done
in every major war. But you can never get them to believe that they like it, which is the major reason armies try to get their recruits before they are twenty. There are other reasons too, of course, like the physical fitness, lack of dependents, and economic dispensability of teenagers, that make armies prefer them, but the most important qualities teenagers bring to basic training are enthusiasm and naivete. . . .

  The armed forces of every country can take almost any young male civilian and turn him into a soldier with all the right reflexes and attitudes in only a few weeks. Their recruits usually have no more than twenty years' experience of the world, most of it as W H A T HAVE W E D O N E T O O U R SOLDIERS? 265

  children, while the armies have had all of history to practice and perfect their technique.

  — Gwynne Dyer

  War

  T h e combatants of all wars are frightfully young, but the American combatants in Vietnam were significantly younger than in any war in American history. Most were drafted at eighteen and experienced combat during one of the most malleable and vulnerable stages of their lives. This was America's first "teenage war," with the average combatant having not yet seen his twentieth birthday, and these combatants were without the leavening of mature, older soldiers that has always been there in past wars.

  Developmental psychologists have identified this stage in an adolescent's psychological and social development as being a crucial period in which the individual establishes a stable and enduring personality structure and a sense of self.

  In past wars the impact of combat on adolescents has been buffered by the presence of older veterans who can serve as role models and mentors throughout the process. But in Vietnam there were precious few such individuals to turn to. By the end of the war many sergeants were coming out of "Shake 'n Bake" school and had only a few months more training and maturity than their comrades. Even many officers were coming out of O C S (Officer Candidate School) without any college training whatsoever, and they too had little more training and maturity than their soldiers.