american marine

Steve Helber / AP Photo

"U.S. Navy Gunners Mate, Steven Joyce, puts his head in the lap of his wife, Damara, as he says good bye as his ship the USS Carr prepares to depart Naval Station Norfolk en route to the Persian Gulf. The ship is part of the group leaving with the floating special operations base ship USS Ponce for deployment to the Persian Gulf."

Everyone thinks that the men serving in our military are all brave, tough and willing to kill and die for this country right? More often than not, as the picture above shows, that isn't the case.  Especially when it comes to their women. Observing her body language and the look on her face, I guarantee that as soon as the ship leaves the harbor, she's going to be in her favorite bar DTF.

Everyone seems to be under the impression that our military men are lean, mean fighting machines but studies have shown otherwise. From Hope on the Battlefield, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman:

"During World War II, U.S. Army Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall asked average soldiers how they conducted themselves in battle. Before that, it had always been assumed that the average soldier would kill in combat simply because his country and his leaders had told him to do so, and because it might be essential to defend his own life and the lives of his friends. Marshall's singularly unexpected discovery was that, of every hundred men along the line of fire during the combat period, an average of only 15 to 20 "would take any part with their weapons."…

Only 15 to 20 percent "would take any part with their weapons". That's a pretty low percentage if you ask me. And this was during WWII, which was supposed to be the "good war". What might explain this phenomenon of soldiers refusing to kill enemy soldiers? From the same article, Grossman explains:

"As a historian, psychologist, and soldier, I examined this question and studied the process of killing in combat. I have realized that there was one major factor missing from the common understanding of this process, a factor that answers this question and more: the simple and demonstrable fact that there is, within most men and women, an intense resistance to killing other people. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it."

This reluctance is extremely problematic to the military. Not many people know about this statistic and if they did, it might cause a little bit of thought about how they view their military "heroes". The military has come up with a strategy to counteract the strong resistance to killing other humans among the soldiers:

"Since World War II, a new era has quietly dawned in modern warfare: an era of psychological warfare, conducted not upon the enemy, but upon one's own troops. The triad of methods used to enable men to overcome their innate resistance to killing includes desensitization, classical and operant conditioning, and denial defense mechanisms."

So they started using psychological tactics on the soldiers as a whole to get the shooter rate up. Did it work? It sure did:

"…a number of training measures were instituted as a result of Marshall's suggestions. According to studies by the U.S. military, these changes resulted in a firing rate of 55 percent in Korea and 90 to 95 percent in Vietnam. Some modern soldiers use the disparity between the firing rates of World War II and Vietnam to claim that S.L.A. Marshall had to be wrong, for the average military leader has a hard time believing that any significant body of his soldiers will not do its job in combat. But these doubters don't give sufficient credit to the revolutionary corrective measures and training methods introduced over the past half century."  

There are huge consequences for the men that these methods are used on:

"Yet this understanding has also propelled armies to develop sophisticated methods for overcoming our innate aversion to killing, and, as a result, we have seen a sharp increase in the magnitude and frequency of post-traumatic response among combat veterans."

I have no doubt that these training methods and techniques for inducing desensitization are also responsible for the skyrocketing suicide rate among current and returning veterans. More vets have committed suicide since the so-called "war on terror" began than have been killed in combat. Humans are by nature extremely reluctant to kill another of their own species so much so that the psychological effects of the training they undergo along with what they witness and do on the battlefield, is often more than they can deal with. Thus the drug and alcohol abuse and increased rates of suicide.

There's another factor that's often overlooked. I work around military personnel on a regular basis and have found that even though they are often ideologically misguided, they really do believe in "God, country and family". This idealism leaves them susceptible to the brainwashing that is essentially what their training is and they are prone to marry young and have children early. With the long deployments that are part and parcel of this ongoing "war on terror" often the young serviceman, under the stressful conditions that exist, starts to have an even more idealized mental visual of his wife and kids. But let me tell you something about the wives of these deployed soldiers. In my estimation, at least 75 percent of them cheat on their husbands when they're deployed (the percentage is probably higher). Just go to the bars around a military base after a large number of service personnel are deployed. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, the closest thing in the sexual marketplace to a sure thing.

Look back at the picture at the top of this article. Gunners Mate Joyce is obviously devastated to be leaving his wife. She looks like she can't wait to get him out of the picture at least for the length of his deployment. Women who marry soldiers think they have the best of both worlds; they are supported financially and have the freedom from having their husbands around for long stretches so that they can ride the carousel to their heart's content. All they have to do is be discreet about their dalliances and good little wives when their husbands are home and no one is the wiser. Look out for when the serviceman gets out of the service however or finds out about her infidelities, divorce is soon to follow in a majority of cases increasing the stress on an already psychologically vulnerable man.

I don't recommend anyone join any branch of the military. It is essentially selling yourself into slavery for four or more years. But if you absolutely want or have to, take this advice:

Don't get married or if you are, absolutely demand a paternity test for all children she says are yours. And have your female friends or family members keep an eye on her when you're deployed. You'll thank me later.