The Kill Factor

A radio broadcast on the BBC World Service describes a soldiers dilemma in war - to kill another person.

We have powerful inhibitions against killing our own kind, and these inhibitions remain strong even when we are under direct threat of being killed ourselves. Trauma in war veterans is rooted mainly in feelings of guilt at having killed. Medics and others who though constantly exposed to the danger of death are not required to kill rarely suffer trauma.

Lt Col Kilner lectures at the West Point Military Academy has talked with countless fellow soldiers about their experience of "intimate killing" - taking the life of someone up close, who they can see.

"They don't like to talk about it. In general, if you're a soldier and you've killed in war, you lie and say no. It tends to be the secret we have that we're not proud of. We want to fight bravely, but it's hard to be proud of killing another person. We recruit people to kill. We train people to kill. We make the orders. Yet after the fact, we don't talk about killing. We talk about destroying, engaging, dropping, bagging - you don't hear the word killing."

But what of those who refuse to pull the trigger? Military psychologists debate the issue of non-firers, and some say this is because their psyche is repulsed by the act of killing.

In World War II, SLA Marshall observed that many of his fellow soldiers didn't shoot. He wrote a study called "Men Against Fire" about this reluctance to kill the enemy. "Fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed was the most common cause of battle failure," he wrote. The book's broad conclusion is still accepted: soldiers often simply won't shoot. Marshall's conclusions led the military to change the way soldiers were trained, to bring home the reality of confronting the enemy. For example, shooting practise no longer uses bullseyes, but human-shaped cut-outs.

The Reverend Dr Giles Fraser, who lectures on morality and ethics at the academy of the British Ministry of Defence, says there is a deep human reluctance to kill other people. "Killing in combat for a psychologically normal individual is bearable only if he or she is able to distance themselves from their own actions. SLA Marshall found that only 15-20% of combat infantry were able to fire their weapons on the enemy and there were 80% that were de facto conscientious objectors when it came to the point of firing their weapon."

Is aggression part of our human nature? Are we born killers? Socialists don’t think so. Nor, as it so happens, does Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, a military psychologist who claims to have invented a new science called “killology”. In his book "On Killing", Grossman shows that without special conditioning almost all of us are extremely loath to kill anyone. For the “masters of war” (as Bob Dylan called them) this is a big problem. Brigadier General Marshall found that only 15-20 percent of American foot soldiers in World War II ever fired their rifles.

Marshall found that only 15-20 percent of American foot soldiers in World War II ever fired their rifles (and some of those deliberately missed). Similar results have been obtained for the American Civil War and World War I. The new conditioning methods were effective. The proportion of soldiers who fired their rifles soared to 50 percent in the Korean War and 90 percent or higher in Vietnam. At last soldiers were made to act like efficient killing machines. Of course, they were not really machines. As human beings they paid for their “improved performance” in intensified trauma.

Today’s young people are also being conditioned to kill by watching increasingly violent films and television programming. Most dangerous of all are interactive video games that simulate armed combat. Using the same methods as in military training, they inculcate the practical skills as well as the psychological response mechanisms needed for efficient killing.

The last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War Henry John “Harry” Patch (17 June 1898 – 25 July 2009) – known as ‘the Last Tommy' called war “organised murder, and nothing less.”

The armed forces exist to defend the interests of the ruling class of whichever country they serve. To do this, their members must be prepared to kill, injure, maim and torture, under the orders of their commanding officers. And soldiers don’t just kill: they also die in the interests of a class of parasites. Learning to be a good soldier involves unquestioning acceptance of orders and soul-destroying drills intended to inculcate discipline and obedience. The humanity of soldiers and their victims are both dismembered by war and the training that prepares for war.

See also the Socialist Standard The Making of Killing Machines