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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brian Sullivan who wrote (30619)	5/24/2002 4:22:37 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Brian Sullivan; Re: "Somehow I don't think that "the that fear of killing" (an Israeli or an American soldier) is the reason that the Arab countries have ineffective armies." To answer this well, you'd have to do the same thing that S.L.A. Marshall did with US soldiers -- interview hundreds of them just after battles. But I doubt that you would find significant differences between them and US soldiers. I know that in some quarters it's considered a radical idea to imagine that Arabs have hearts, minds, and consciences, but I think that this is actually a reasonable proposition. First off, note that it is normal for societies to misconstrue their enemies, particularly with regard to those three qualities. The Japanese were mindless. The Germans were heartless. None of our enemies had consciences. This dehumanization is a normal part of how a society makes killing acceptable. And while it's useful for overcoming the innate human resistance to killing, it doesn't make a good place to start a military analysis. The fact is that humans are animals, and animals tend to fight their own kind rarely and usually without fatalities. This is common even among predators, whose behavior against each other is very very different from their behavior towards prey. Humans are the most social large animal on the planet. We think of ourselves as violent, but hell, can you imagine putting 20,000 of any other species in an extremely crowded auditorium, peppered with drugs and alcohol, and listening to extremely loud and compelling violent oriented rock and roll for 4 hours and not have a single fatality? No! There is no successful large animal on the planet's surface that is as naturally peaceful as the humans. This is a good thing, because our technology allows us to be more effective at violence than anything. The alternatives to fighting are (1) running, (2) submission, and (3) threat display. These three tendencies are very much present in every human society, including the Arab ones. (By the way, I'd guess that some Arab states have murder rates below the US average.) During the US invasion (or whatever Clinton called it) of Haiti a not uncommon incident that I recall (from the papers) illustrates this concept well. A squad of US soldiers is walking past a group of Haitians, some of whom have weapons. One of the Haitians raises his gun, and the US soldiers instantly shoot him dead. What is the proper interpretation of this incident? If it were the case that the man intended to shoot Americans he would have hidden himself in a place of concealment. But he was out in the open. So what the hell was he doing? The answer is that pointing your weapon at the other guy (or shooting over his head) comes under the classification of a "threat display". Threat displays are traditional in (pre western) conflict between societies. They are genetically programmed into us. They are ineffective at capturing territory, but they do reduce the level of violence in the society. If everyone in the US who pulled a gun out shot at the person they were threatening our murder rate would be 10~100x higher than it is. US soldiers are taught to not make threat displays, and to respond to them with immediate deadly force. *The difficulty is that shooting someone in wartime, even for an Arab, is almost always a first time.* These people, dirty and alien as they may seem to you, are people. People simply have difficulty killing other people just as animals do, so there is a hesitation. -- Carl P.S. If you really want to see well organized killing in large volumes you have to look at the better organized societies. The Arabs didn't run 12 million people through murder factories.

To: Brian Sullivan who wrote (30619)	5/24/2002 4:51:10 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"the that fear of killing" This is a question that has always interested me. I have read "Slam" Marshall, who wrote on this subject, and I have read about him. When you read books by successful combat leaders, who have commanded right down at the sharp end, they will usually mention that they want a combat unit composed of farm boys who had done a lot of hunting and camping. A polite way of saying that they like to command hillbillies in combat, who have lived "rough". The meaner, the better. On the other end of it, It was a German Colonel, named Piper, I believe, who credited the German loss of momentum at the "Battle of the Bulge" to "those damn engineers"; the American combat engineering battalions who were part of the 5th and 7th corps of the US Army, and fought well. This has been credited to the higher intelligence of the GI's in those units. You had to do well on the test scores to get in them. One of the US Armys' objection to the Paratroop units was the high score needed to get in them, which took men away from regular units who would have made good Officers and NCOs. But, it made for very effective combat units.