[QUOTE="mattisgod01"]
People seem to be very deluded when it comes to the reality of war. Just because they are singing or saying "Nice" doesn't mean anything. The Idea is to distance yourself from the act of killing, If you become to attached and too aware of what you are doing it will make them ineffective at their job and far more vulnerable to psychological trauma which is disproportionately high among members of the military who have served in combat zones. It's easy for people whose only vision of war is from behind a computer or TV to be shocked and disgusted when their unrealistic idea of what their soldiers are like, Some idea of noble knights in shinning armour who protect the weak and uphold justice. The truth is they are just people, mostly very young, Who are sent to seriously screwed up places and forced to witness things most other people couldn't imagine and do things that they would otherwise believe unthinkable, while everyone else is living in their nice safe bubble which is the first world.
Believe it or not but killing doesn't come easy to most people, Right back to the American civil war and likely well before that Generals were aware of the difficulty in not just training their soldiers to be efficient at killing the enemy but conditioning them to do it when another human being was at the other end of a barrel and not just an inanimate target on a range. It was not rare after a battle to find rifles stacked with bullets that were not fired, a dozen rounds that were loaded but not discharged. Soldiers were trained to go through the motions but when it came to pulling the trigger and killing someone they did not know, Far more then most people know did not have the will to do it, so they just go through the motions of loading powder and bullet, shouldering the rifle and not firing, loading powder and bullet, shouldering the rifle and not firing. Until the battle was over or they died. they managed to solve this problem fairly well by the Bohr war and leading into WW1 by dehumanizing the enemy, That allowed soldiers some degree of distance between the reality of what they where doing but even then bayonet charges brought the reality right back again but by then the fear and survival instinct tended to kick in when you were 2 feet from the man who would kill you.
When soldiers appear to be passive when it comes to killing it's not because they don't care or do not understand what they are doing, It is because at the end of the day they are the ones forced to kill and they don't have the luxury of putting their actions and what they witness to the back of their mind and forget about it the next day like everyone else who criticizes them can. They can't afford to be too emotionally involved in the work because they are not that different from everyone else, Good people forced to do bad things and live with their actions.
Netherscourge
You're wrong.
PTSD is a direct result of becomming desensitized to violent, dramatic and/or disturbing situaitons. If you're singing happy tunes while killing people, regardless of the situation, you're probably not going to end up well once you leave the battlefield and return to a peacful environment.
He doesn't have to FEEL passive while killing insurgents - however, he does need to maintain a composure of professionalism.
If he has to sing to deal with this situaiton he's in, he's already in trouble mentally.
NOTE - I'm not saying he should be PUNISHED - I'm saying he needs some help
PTSD is not the direct result of anything specific, It varies from person to person and situation to situation, Ultimately it is the result of stress overwhelming someone psychologically, By simply viewing so much death people will naturally become desensitized to it, That goes for pretty much anything someone is exposed to enough of. Being desensitized to something that would normally be shocking is not necessarily healthy or a good sign, As we still don't know the methods the brain uses to achieve it and what degree those methods affect the persons greater psychology. Shell shock in WW1 was first widely viewed as mere weakness and cowardice in the people who displayed the symptoms but we now know it to be a case of PTSD. While they appeared to become desensitized to what was going on around them they became desensitized to just about everything and lost not just the will to fight but the will to get up and do anything.
I'm not disagreeing that their passive attitude may be a sign of mental stress, i'm not qualified to make that assessment. Apaches are not built to provide food and medical supplies, They are built to destroy the enemy and they are extremely effective at doing it, The men and women who pilot them are under no illusions of what they are expected to do and they know they will likely have to do it many times. Professionalism in their line of work means doing their job time and time again to the best of their ability and within the parameters they are assigned with. If they choose to sing and compliment each other while doing it then so be it, I'm not going to criticize them for that. But they know exactly what they are doing, Better then anyone else.
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