Soldiers dealing with the trauma of killing

[tw]

Originally Posted by jane_says

I don't understand what you mean. What's called nuclear war?

You posted

I believe than anyone who has the authority to order us into battle and risk losing our lives has the obligation to be ready to do the same.

When does leadership sit at risk just like everyone else? Its called nuclear war. In the World Wars, leadership sat back and sent cannon fodder into the trenches, into frontal assults, and into other continents to 'die for victory'. Leaders were only at risk if they lost the war - not the battle. Nuclear war changed all that. In a nuclear war, the leadership is again on the front lines with everyone else. Suddenly leadership is more willing to seek a political solution rather than a military one. Suddenly leadership is willing to stand up to those extremists who would solve everything using the Tim Allen concept of "more power".

What is the purpose of war? To put the conflict back on a negotiation table. It can be accomplished two ways. First is to fight the war until one emotion is replaced by another. Second is to scare the leadership on both sides with the consequences of that war. But the bottom line remains same. The leadership eventually must be forced back to the negotiation table. The only difference is how much the cannon fodder suffers.

Unfortunately we cannon fodder types are slow to demand courage of our leaders. For example, it was becoming obvious to 1966 and 1967 American leaders that the war in VietNam was completely wrong. But American leaders did not have the balls - could not rise up and end it. In the meantime, we potential cannon fodder types really never bothered to learn how stupid our leaders were for 5 more years. Cannon fodder is typically that slow to learn when their leaders are liars. In that 5 year period, the number of dead more than doubled.

Its easier to send cannon fodder to death than it is to have balls. Leaders sometimes must be at personal risk before they will act as responsible leaders. ie Japan after two nuclear bombs. One example of couragious leadership was the Cuban Missile Crisis - when leadership on both sides was smart enough to use intelligence and experience to understand inconclusive and misleading intelligence and to challenge the extremists. Therefore leadership did not kill us all. And yes, virtually none of us would be here today had Kennedy, McNamara, and Krushchev not put those extremists war mongers back in the bottle.

It takes major courage to not go to war until the smoking gun actually exists. When a leader is on the front line, then sometimes the emotion called fear can provide that courage. Courage to do what the logical mind always knew was necessary.