On Killing

happened (and possibly prevent such occurrences in the future) by understanding the power of the cumulative factors associated with a soldier ordered to kill by a legitimate, proximate, and respected authority, in the midst of a proximate, respected, legitimate, consenting group, predisposed by desensitization and conditioning during training and recent loss of friends, distanced from his victims by a widely accepted cultural and moral gulf, confronted with an act that would be a relevant loss to an enemy who has denied and frustrated other available strategies.

A veteran quoted by Dyer shows a deep understanding of the tremendous pressures many of these factors place on the “ordinary, basically decent” American soldier:

You put those same kids in the jungle for a while, get them real scared, deprive them of sleep, and let a few incidents change some of their fears to hate. Give them a sergeant who has seen too many of his men killed by booby traps and by lack of distrust, and who feels that Vietnamese are dumb, dirty, and weak, because they are not like him. Add a little mob pressure, and those nice kids who accompany us today would rape like champions. Kill, rape and steal is the name of the game.

Each Man a Firing Squad

In summary, most of the factors that enable killing on the battlefield can be seen in the diffusion of responsibility that exists in an execution by firing squad. Because, in combat, each man is really a member of a huge firing squad. The leader gives the command and provides the demands of authority, but he does not have to actually kill. The firing squad provides conformity and absolution processes. Blindfolding the victim provides psychological distance. And the knowledge of the victim’s guilt provides relevance and rationalization.

The killing-enabling factors provide a powerful set of tools to bypass or overcome the soldier’s resistance to killing. But as we will see in the section “Killing in Vietnam,” the higher the resistance bypassed, the higher the trauma that must be overcome in the subsequent rationalization process. Killing comes with a price, and societies must learn that their soldiers will have to spend the rest of their lives living with what they have done. The research outlined in this book has permitted us to understand that, although the mechanism of the firing squad ensures killing, the psychological toll on the members of a firing squad is tremendous. In the same way, society must now begin to understand the enormity of the price and process of killing in combat. Once they do, killing will never be the same again.

SECTION V Killing and Atrocities: “No Honor Here, No Virtue”

The basic aim of a nation at war is establishing an image of the enemy in order to distinguish as sharply as possible the act of killing from the act of murder.

— Glenn Gray

The Warriors

“Atrocity” can be defined as the killing of a noncombatant, either an erstwhile combatant who is no longer fighting or has given up or a civilian. But modern war, and particularly guerrilla warfare, makes such distinctions blurry.

Atrocity has always been part of war, and in order to understand war we must understand atrocity. Let us begin to understand it by examining the full spectrum of atrocity.

CHAPTER ONE The Full Spectrum of Atrocity

We often think of Nazi atrocities in World War II as all having been committed by psychopaths or sadistic killers, but there is a fortuitous shortage of such individuals in society. In reality, the problem of distinguishing murder from killing in combat is extremely complex. If we examine atrocity as a spectrum of occurrences rather than a precisely defined type of occurrence, then perhaps we can better understand the nature of this phenomenon.

This spectrum is intended to address only individual personal kills and will leave out the indiscriminate killing of civilians caused by bombs and artillery.

Slaying the Noble Enemy

Anchoring one end of the spectrum of atrocity is the act of killing an armed enemy who is trying to kill you. This end of the spectrum is not atrocity at all, but serves as a standard against which other kinds of killing can be measured.

The enemy who fights to a “noble” death validates and affirms the killer’s belief in his own nobility and the glory of his cause. Thus a World War I British officer could speak admiringly to Holmes of German machine gunners who remained faithful unto death: “Topping fellows. Fight until they are killed. They gave us hell.” And T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) immortalized in prose the German units who stood firm against his Arab forces during the rout of the Turkish army in World War I:

I grew proud of the enemy who had killed my brothers. They were two thousand miles from home, without hope and without guides, in conditions bad enough to break the bravest nerves. Yet their sections held together, sheering through the wrack of Turk and Arab like armoured ships, high faced and silent. When attacked they halted, took position, fired to order. There was no haste, no crying, no hesitation. They were glorious.

These are “noble kills,” which place the minimum possible burden on the conscience of the killer. And thus the soldier is able to further rationalize his kill by honoring his fallen foes, thereby gaining stature and peace by virtue of the nobility of those he has slain.

Gray Areas: Ambushes and Guerrilla Warfare

Many kills in modern combat are ambushes and surprise attacks in which the enemy represents no immediate threat to the killer, but is killed anyway, without opportunity to surrender. Steve Banko provides an