Half the point of basic training is to break or subvert the part of the brain that questions authority and objects to doing violence. Psychologically, humans are not designed for killing other humans. Taking a life is difficult for a good fucking reason, and bypassing that instinct is dangerous.
Valid point. I do worry, though, without the training you describe - which I went through - is reverting to pre-ww2 training where soldiers would freeze up in combat instead of reverting to their training (hopefully). At the end of the day, soldiers are trained for combat, and I wouldn’t want to put people into those situations without as realistic a training regime as we can devise; you train as you fight so you don’t have to sacrifice soldiers to gain the proficiency to operate in a combat environment.
Yeah, I agree, if you’re actually taking a life. If there’s a Hitler on the loose, then teach the soldiers to kill without remorse. But why exactly is the US spending the same amount of money as the next 9 countries put together in peacetime? Most soldiers won’t take a life, and the ones who do are doing something pointless and evil. Why are we breaking young people’s minds in a time of peace?
And y’all actually do have two pretty good reasons for war right now, those being the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli genocide of Palestine. What’s the point in having all those trained killers if you’re not gonna use them, and if you’re not gonna bother going to war for actual good reasons why bother training all those killers?
There was a good reason to break young people back when they had to go fight the Nazis. What’s the point now??
Valid point. I do worry, though, without the training you describe - which I went through - is reverting to pre-ww2 training where soldiers would freeze up in combat instead of reverting to their training (hopefully). At the end of the day, soldiers are trained for combat, and I wouldn’t want to put people into those situations without as realistic a training regime as we can devise; you train as you fight so you don’t have to sacrifice soldiers to gain the proficiency to operate in a combat environment.
Ideally we’d get rid of war.
Yeah, I agree, if you’re actually taking a life. If there’s a Hitler on the loose, then teach the soldiers to kill without remorse. But why exactly is the US spending the same amount of money as the next 9 countries put together in peacetime? Most soldiers won’t take a life, and the ones who do are doing something pointless and evil. Why are we breaking young people’s minds in a time of peace?
And y’all actually do have two pretty good reasons for war right now, those being the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli genocide of Palestine. What’s the point in having all those trained killers if you’re not gonna use them, and if you’re not gonna bother going to war for actual good reasons why bother training all those killers?
There was a good reason to break young people back when they had to go fight the Nazis. What’s the point now??
Because if there is no military, we can’t bully anyone or they’ll just invade us.
let me check the big book of answers for impossible questions…
uh, you know, it says here: jack shit.
but thanks for turning an attempt at dialogue into whatever this was.