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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

#31

Post by Barrin92 »

maoberlehner wrote: post #23

> 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'.

For individuals killing is incredibly rare. Most people will never take a life, and even historically haven't. It also of course doesn't follow that merely because killing happens it doesn't cause moral injury, it's obviously possible for an event to be both common and traumatic.

It is generally accepted that most people will resist to kill and moral injury is very well documented for example in police who have to use deadly force so the result here is actually surprising. Afghanistan might also be an unusual case by historical standards, because close combat was very rare and the fighting much more impersonal.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#33

Post by closewith »

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 men have seen that video and rather than the repulsion that you feel, they wonder _would I have survived?_.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#34

Post by klntsky »

> if combat soldiers are, as a rule, psychologically unharmed by killing an enemy, does this increase the risk that they may be willing to kill captives or civilians who they have come to class as 'the enemy'?

It's obviously the opposite: the more traumatized one is, the more likely he is to commit a war crime.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#35

Post by defrost »

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…

William George Murray came home from WWI, during that time

  In a letter to his parents, Murray described his participation in the battles at Gallipoli during August 1915.

  Murray wrote about how the advancing Turks were mowed down with machine gun and artillery fire and how it was "great fun and very exciting."
He took up work in the Northern Territory of Australia in stock policing role:

  In April 1919, Murray joined the Northern Territory Police as a constable and was posted to the very remote Ranken River police station on the Barkly Tableland.
Now, mixed race station workers, some white, some aboriginal, camped togther and in a dispute over a woman, an aboriginal man killed a white man over a rape. The rape violated both white and native law, as did the killing in revenge.

There was a single known perpetrator and ways and means to bring them to justice under either of two bodies of law with the cooperation of both groups of people.

Murray got involved ..

  Officially, 31 men, women and children were killed during this police operation, although analysis of the existing documentation and surviving Aboriginal testimonies indicate that somewhere between 100 and 200 people were shot dead.
Coniston massacre (1928): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coniston_massacre

Such was the excess of a shell shocked man with a badge allowed free reign over civilians.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#37

Post by wqaatwt »

bjornsing wrote: post #27

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”.

There is a whole Wikipedia article about UN peacekeepers committing atrocities. Not sure if claiming that on average they have “higher moral” standards than people who sign up for the Norwegian Army is fair (and they at least occasionally face repercussions for their actions unlike the “peacekeepers”)..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_by_UN_peacekeep...

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#38

Post by Extropy_ »

bjornsing wrote: post #27

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”.

A better title would be "Likelihood of moral injury differs among different combat contexts," though that doesn't serve as quite a catchy title as the original.

The problem with "moral injury more common among those with high moral standards" is that "moral standards" is not what is being observed, rather, the study specifically finds "diverging effects of KIC on veterans from combat-oriented and peacekeeping missions-" making no judgement about personal "moral standards."

Your "high moral standards" bit seems to be an assumption about the difference between peacekeeping forces and combat-oriented forces (which sometimes even overlap) rather than something to do with the actual research article at hand.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#39

Post by kstenerud »

bjornsing wrote: post #27

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”.

This was most definitely not the case with my wife. Before Ukraine, she would never have even considered killing another human being. In the war it was very different. Every dead Russian was one step closer to a safe Ukraine.

Re: Soldiers in combat can kill without moral injury

#40

Post by mmooss »

closewith wrote: post #33
vasco wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 men have seen that video and rather than the repulsion that you feel, they wonder _would I have survived?_.

How do you know that? How do you know they don't think both things?
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