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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oral Roberts who wrote (107742)	8/26/2005 11:43:34 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

When someone--I think it was Bill--questioned my use of the word "brainwashing" to describe what recruits go through, I posted two or three different accounts that I believe were all by former U.S. enlistees about what goes on during boot camp and the brainwashing process specifically. It was just a day or two ago. Perhaps you could find them and read them. When the armed forces turn someone into a soldier, their challenge is to take a raw recruit--usually an older teenager, someone who may even have been lazy and rebellious and full of teen spirit and and out of shape, who is certainly used to individual freedoms and his or her own belief system--into a fighting unit. The individuality is stripped away in many ways--by strenuous, forced, exercise, drill sergeants yelling and punishing and breaking people down, marching while chanting tunes in unison, the requirement that recruits speak not in the first person (I have to go to the bathroom), but in the third person (this recruit needs to go the bathroom, sir). People are punished for something another recruit has done wrong. Every bit of familiar personhood is stripped harshly and the group becomes the important thing. On top of this, recruits have to be trained to be ruthless, to kill people, to invade people's homes in the middle of the night, etc. Behavior that is considered very rude or criminal in civilian life are a must in the military. And the recruits have to trust that what their commanders say is true, and think of the group at every turn, not themselves, so they are indoctrinated to do so. So when I say soldiers are brainwashed, I am not being insulting towards individual soldiers. I am talking about the universal practice that makes individuals into a soldiering team. That same brainwashing causes men and women who love their friends and families to choose to reinlist and support the group, because this is what has been reinforced over and over. I have friends whose family members have enlisted, and there is a common experience among them of feeling that the enlistee has changed drastically and is definitely brainwashed. Not the same person exactly at all, under the influence of mind control. I am not writing about this to offend you or our soldiers. Drastic changes in behavior and belief systems. I think it is just a fact of military life. Bad for the individual, necessary for strong fighting units.