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Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

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Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#21

Post by vasco »

ty6853 wrote: post #14
jmward01 wrote: post #4

Time plays a factor that may not be well controlled for here. As you get older the actions you have taken and the events you have participated in can impact you in new ways.

The risk perhaps not so much moral injury, but that combat and war is almost like a drug. Imagine going back home to a toddler raging about the wrong color cup, a narrow set of civil rules, and flipping burgers after living a life out the back of a pickup truck with nothing but a rifle and your buddies keeping you alive. Fucking boring. But I'm no killer, just a guy who spent a few months in a civil war, and met a lo…

Whenever you have these feelings, go watch actual real life combat footage. A great recent one is a knife fight to the death where one soldier admits defeat and asks the first one to leave him to die https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/tAUwd2MWqT

Watch that and tell me if you think it's still cool and normal life is boring. I find that it snaps me right back out of "Hollywood war" thinking and makes my stomach turn.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#22

Post by ty6853 »

vasco wrote: post #21
ty6853 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk perhaps not so much moral injury, but that combat and war is almost like a drug. Imagine going back home to a toddler raging about the wrong color cup, a narrow set of civil rules, and flipping burgers after living a life out the back of a pickup truck with nothing but a rifle and your buddies keeping you alive. Fucking boring. But I'm no killer, just a guy who spent a few months in a civil war, and met a lo…

Whenever you have these feelings, go watch actual real life combat footage. A great recent one is a knife fight to the death where one soldier admits defeat and asks the first one to leave him to die https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/tAUwd2MWqT Watch that and tell me if you think it's still cool and normal life is boring. I find that it snaps me right back out of "Hollywood war" thinking and makes my stomach t…

A lot of the guys I met in the YPG had seen way more combat than that and still yearned for it. One of them was retired foreign legion that did this as his retirement. When we were getting shot at one of the older guys would get viscerally excited and joyful, and he had seen many dead.

Junky is a good description of what they were. They wanted another taste. I can't imagine after 5+ years of that life how you would detox from that, not easily I imagine.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#23

Post by maoberlehner »

> commonly-held idea that killing is an 'unnatural' act for humans

People killing people is one of the better-documented aspects of human history. If it's really a commonly-held idea, it's a delusional one. I think what they mean is 'unethical' rather than 'unnatural'.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#24

Post by pyeri »

tbrownaw wrote: post #8

> These findings contradict the commonly-held idea that killing is an 'unnatural' act for humans that inevitably inflicts a moral injury on the individual, the researchers write in Armed Forces and Society. > "There is a widespread belief in society that taking the life of another person goes against human nature, and that this will easily create what psychotraumatology refers to as 'moral injuries'," said Nordstrand…

Another common exception is when the collective herd instinct is invoked. When 10-15 folks congregate at a place and unleash their subliminal thought patterns, it becomes much easier to sanction a kill as it's now part of a collective guilt conscious and no one person has to bear any injury, not even a moral one.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#26

Post by foolfoolz »

vasco wrote: post #21
ty6853 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk perhaps not so much moral injury, but that combat and war is almost like a drug. Imagine going back home to a toddler raging about the wrong color cup, a narrow set of civil rules, and flipping burgers after living a life out the back of a pickup truck with nothing but a rifle and your buddies keeping you alive. Fucking boring. But I'm no killer, just a guy who spent a few months in a civil war, and met a lo…

Whenever you have these feelings, go watch actual real life combat footage. A great recent one is a knife fight to the death where one soldier admits defeat and asks the first one to leave him to die https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/tAUwd2MWqT Watch that and tell me if you think it's still cool and normal life is boring. I find that it snaps me right back out of "Hollywood war" thinking and makes my stomach t…

there are vets who return from a deployment and can’t adjust to life at home. and they re-deploy many times over. i’m not going to call one cool and one boring, you’ll have to ask those guys what their motivation is

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#27

Post by bjornsing »

The conclusion sounds reasonable and may well be correct. But I’d still be a bit worried about selection effects. The kind of person who signs up for a tour of duty to Afghanistan is probably a bit different than someone who signs up for a UN peacekeeping mission.

So an alternative conclusion / title could be: “Moral injury more common among those with high moral standards”.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#29

Post by runjake »

vasco wrote: post #21
ty6853 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk perhaps not so much moral injury, but that combat and war is almost like a drug. Imagine going back home to a toddler raging about the wrong color cup, a narrow set of civil rules, and flipping burgers after living a life out the back of a pickup truck with nothing but a rifle and your buddies keeping you alive. Fucking boring. But I'm no killer, just a guy who spent a few months in a civil war, and met a lo…

Whenever you have these feelings, go watch actual real life combat footage. A great recent one is a knife fight to the death where one soldier admits defeat and asks the first one to leave him to die https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/tAUwd2MWqT Watch that and tell me if you think it's still cool and normal life is boring. I find that it snaps me right back out of "Hollywood war" thinking and makes my stomach t…

It’s not about it being cool. It’s about it feeling “normal”.

I’m not even sure this is caused by trauma so much as just living a whole other life in a whole other culture with completely different norms, even with combat aside.

Going back into the civilian world is a pretty uneasy experience for a lot of veterans.

It’s kind of a hard feeling to relay to civilians. A very strong culture shock for even many POGs.

I think your advice is better suited to people who glorify war and play too much Call of Duty.

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