It is "a kind of moral lobotomy," ----- Killing the soul is the ultimate aim

http://www.chris-floyd.com/

It is "a kind of moral lobotomy," says Coleman, whose husband killed himself after coming home from the Vietnam War. She puts the bill -- which is being sponsored by Robert Kennedy Jr., among others -- in the historical context of military training:


Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of ways to override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram their human software, overriding those characteristics that are inconvenient in a military context, most particularly the inherent resistance human beings have to killing others of their own species. "Modern combat training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli," says Lt. Col. Peter Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, "and this maximizes soldiers' lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so. If they are unable to justify to themselves the fact that they killed another human being, they will likely -- and understandably -- suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who performed their duty in combat."


II.
Killing the soul is the ultimate aim of those who seek to create tools for empire, instead of recruiting citizens to defend the Republic from attack. I wrote about this in 2004 (Manufacturing Intent:The Army's Cult of Killing Leaves a Generation Gap):


Yet despite the vast tonnage of celluloid and printer's ink devoted to praise

to those individuals that could not rationalize what was happening you just kind of saw their eyes dim a bit and their attitude become more passive. Just getting into the mentality of "do my work, don't make a fuss, it will be over eventually i just have to wait for it"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2660323

It's all in the eyes
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2649273562390177070&q=The+Disappointment%3A+Or%2C+the+Force+of+Credulity.&total=2&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

or the OP?

The Korean War veteran, if you have the time, he'll tell you.

to cope with the dichotomy of his values and what he had to do as a soldier in the jungles of Vietnam.

He shook all the time. His voice trembled always.

Eventually, he turned to the bottle to try to escape his emotional trauma.

In the end, he blew his brains out one night.

He was as much a victim of the Vietnam war and the Military Industrial Complex as any who were killed in combat. Though his wounds were not of the flesh (although the did have physical manifestations), they just took longer to kill him.

from Odyssey of the 8th Fire http://www.8thfire.net/Day_130.html

"We brewed coffee and huddled by the fire. Last night as we sat and talked by this same continuously burning fire, Grandfather Commanda made a point about free will, the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma, and large, regimented groups, such as armies.

He said he felt there had probably been many factors that contributed to the deranged souls of the men who perpetrated the bombing. He speculated that the way many individuals abdicate their free will might have been a factor in the psyches of these men.

He said that, for example, in modern armies men are under orders. They follow without question the dictates of their commanders. In modern armies it is understood that there is a chain of command, and that you will do what you are told by soldiers who outrank you. You surrender your free will to the larger purpose.

"That's not the native way of North America at all, Grandfather said. He explained that as he understood it, the warrior tradition on this continent -- what he speaks of as Turtle Island -- is that each individual is responsible for his own actions in life and in warfare.

He elaborated: “A leader in life or in battle can lead only to the extent that they are an example, or to the extent that they have the power of persuasion.

“No one does anything just because someone else says to do it. That would not be respecting the human attribute of free will. That's just making excuses for abdicating your own authority and responsibility.

“Each individual must make his or her own decisions,” Grandfather said, “and have his or her actions judged on that basis. We native people have always known that you are responsible for your own actions. Therefore, you must exercise free will and decide for yourself what your actions will be. The same in war as in all of life."

As we sat by the fire and talked, we wondered aloud whether the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing might have gone in another more honorable direction in life if they had been raised in a culture where free will was fully respected, and personal responsibility understood and expected. How could they, with any sense of responsibly, have taken so many lives and caused so much suffering?"

(snip)

That's some good reading right there.

Odyssey is a long, true true story about North America, its roots, and the present crisis -- but I find that it is also exceptionally rich in prophetic and spiritual insight...

"You might say, it is one of our republicon OCCULT specialities. Smirk."

- Commander AWOL Bush,
Uber Vacationer, Skull & Boner Occultist Brigade of Republicon Chickenhawks

Geez - are all republicons in deviant sex, and occultism?

Apparently?

What would Jesus do? We he join an occult Skull & Boner darkside cabal, like a republicon ? I don't think so...

...I daresay the applicability of this extends quite beyond military personnel to the citizenry itself.

have desensitized people to aiming guns at human beings and pulling the trigger. Video games began in the 80's, training a whole generation of young people to be primed for these aggressive times. The games (and entertainment in general) progressively became more and more violent and realistic.
I read somewhere that soldiers during WWII had a lower kill rate because their target practice was with a bullseye. When the army changed to a human form the kill rate went up dramatically. Wish I had a link but read this years ago.

Now the nobility of our soldiers and warriors are being twisted and perverted -and then discarded, what a tragedy. Gods help us if they are given desensitizing drugs.

me too. :(

<snip>

And today in occupied Iraq, the brutalizing beat goes on. "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, it's like it pounds in my brain," a U.S. soldier told the Los Angeles Times last week. Another shrugged at the sight of freshly slaughtered bodies. "It doesn't bother me at all," he said. "I'm a warrior. My soldiers, they are all warriors. They have no problems. There's no place in this Army for men who aren't warriors." Said a third: "We talk about killing all the time. I never used to be this way…but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I'll be like when I get home."

...Yet strangely enough, this new model army, imbued with eager "warrior spirit," has not produced the kind of lasting victories won by the reluctant fifteen-percenters of yore. It was stalemated in Korea, defeated in Vietnam, chased out of Lebanon and Somalia, balked in Afghanistan...and is now in bloody quagmire .

Could it be that the systematic degradation of natural morality and common human feeling – especially in the service of dubious ends – is not actually the best way to achieve national greatness?

http://www.chris-floyd.com/
And the term "creation" is not just fanciful rhetoric: some of the research now underway involves actually altering the genetic code of soldiers, modifying bits of DNA to fashion a new type of human specimen, one that functions like a machine, killing tirelessly for days and nights on end. These mutations will "revolutionize the contemporary order of battle" and guarantee "operational dominance across the whole range of potential U.S. military employments," the DARPA wizards enthuse.



Massive Attack-Special Cases

Don’t tell your man what he don’t do right
Nor tell him all the things that make you cry
But check yourself for your own shit
And don’t be making out like it’s all his

Take a look around the world
You see such bad things happening
There are many good men
Ask yourself is he one of them

The deadliest of sin is pride
Make you feel like you’re always right
But they’re always two sides
It takes two to make love, two to make a life

Take a look around the world
You see such mad things happening
There are few good men
Thank your lucky star that he’s one of them

...told me about her father, who had been drafted as a combat infantryman in Europe in WWII. He told her that very often they would be on patrol & spot some of the opposition, or be spotted by them, & both sides would carefully look the other way & step in a different direction, so that everyone could go home alive. Nobody wanted to die, or kill, that evening.

My father-in-law, a nice guy apart from being a mindless, rabid right-winger, is a Korean War veteran who never saw combat. He was an MP on Okinawa. He took my then-troubled adolescent nephew, his grandson, to see "Saving Private Ryan," then convinced him to join the 101st Airborne to go to Afghanistan.

Figuring I might help the kid get his mind through the experience intact, & maybe save a life or two beside, I told my nephew my friend's father's story before he shipped out.

"But, Unk," he said, "I'm a sniper."

Your all-volunteer army at work.




(Edited to add "drafted as")