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Operant Conditioning and Murder:
August 26, 2002:
ABC Evening News, August 22, 2002:
Peter Jennings reported that the army is trying to figure out
if there are any common links to understanding the wife murders
at Fort Bragg. Of course, they deliberately blind themselves to
the obvious. Then they can pretend they don't understand. They
understand very well. There is no secret here. Those men were
select by the army for special forces exactly because of their
penchant to macho violent behavior. Then they trained them in
a way which reenforced that tendency.
The army training does not change what a person is. It simply accents it. A macho abusive man will become a more effective macho abusive man in the army. That is why these men were put in special forces to begin with. The army deliberately conditioned these men to be what they are.
The macho-man is naturally abusive, be he just a useless redneck, in army special forces, or in the Marines. The only ex-marine I ever met who was not that way finally committed suicide. He should never have been a marine. He got in through a fluke because the marines needed musicians for their band. Every other ex-marine I ever met was an abusive bully. The same logic applies to special forces people.
The macho-man has the most fragile of fragile egos. In his innermost self he knows he has erected a house of cards. He cannot stand to have that challenged. He cannot stand argument. He cannot abide disagreement or contradiction. He cannot accept being wrong or mistaken. He must be on top and in charge at any cost. In fact, he cannot tolerate democracy. The very values he is pledged to defend are alien to him.
There is little doubt that these men abused their wives. All four of them were in the process of divorce. Divorce challenges macho-man's core ego. It says very clearly, you are wrong. You are not a hero. You are not acceptable. He knows only one response to any kind of challenge. His response will be abusive behavior including, if necessary, murder. What do we expect? He is merely behaving in a very predictable way. Macho-man is guaranteed to be abusive. He is also guaranteed to commit murder if he is totally frustrated.
This has nothing to do with operations in Afghanistan or Iraq or any other place. It has completely to do with operant conditioning in its crudest form. Read Skinner for goodness sake. The army knew what it was doing when it conditioned these men. They wanted killing machines and they got them.
Debriefing or counseling guys who return from foreign operations will not cure that. Once you condition a person to behave in a given way, it will take an even larger investment of time to undo that conditioning. It is not something you can fix with a few hours of kindly counseling.
I was in the United States Army many years ago. (73rd. Tank Battalion attached to the Seventh Infantry Division.) I served in Korea during the so called Korean Conflict. From where I saw it, it was no conflict. It was a war. People got killed. I believe the army had special forces back then, but I was not one of them. I do know that, even then, the army sought out a special kind of personality for special jobs, including non-commissioned leadership. The profile of the man they sought out is macho-man personified.
The guys I was with were mostly draftees with a few career men. We were just regular people, who were there to do a very distasteful job. None of us liked it. Everyone I knew looked forward to going home and getting on with life. When I came back that is exactly what I did. I found employment, found a dandy woman, got married, bought a home, and all of that great American dream stuff.
I did not look for or expect special treatment of consideration for serving my country. I did take advantage of the GI bill, but I did not lobby for nor help create it. It was there, so I took it. The education had the effect of making me a more productive and useful citizen. So, the GI bill turned out to be an investment in American productivity.
One thing I did not need after my service was any special counseling or therapy to become a regular citizen again. I just got back to my life where I left off. I think the difference is I was a trained to be a citizen soldier. I was not conditioned to be a killing machine and I was never very macho anyway. Although, I will confess, I can be a bully when I find it necessary. It is not necessarily wrong to be a bully in some situations. It is, of course, wrong to be an unrelenting bully in all situations. That is what macho-man must be.
If it were my choice, I would not have any special forces. I would have a larger citizen army with a cadre of professional soldiers and leadership. These are ordinary folks who go to war because they must. They do not like it, but they do what is necessary. Then they come home and join the civilian population. For the most part, they do not need therapy. To be sure, war changes us, but it need not destroy us as human beings. We can do what is necessary and still hold onto our precious human values.
Without special forces, we would have to go to war head on,
with force, the way we did it in 1941 to 45. It takes more forces,
but the result will be longer lasting. The truth is, special forces
are not and never have been very effective. By their nature they
are hit and run. They are too small to take and hold territory.
For goodness sake, the American Indians proved that strategy is
ineffective many years ago. A large regular army is more effective.
Ulysses S. Grant proved that.
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