The title of this should almost be called “On Not Killing”. An examination of something I suspect most people never seriously contemplate. Yet it’s an act carried out by soldiers and police officers, and do we consider what it does to them? They commit acts on our behalf that we may consider legally justified, and yet it is often something that causes life long damage to the person who has to live with the consequences of their actions. Delves into the eye opening reality that many soldiers on a battlefield have a very difficult time killing another human.
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Have you seen this,way good book.
ReplyDelete"Lucifers Hammer" by Larry Niven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer%27s_Hammer
I’ve heard a bunch of people recommend it now. I’m going to swing by my local libraries website right now and see if they have it. And they do! On hold.
ReplyDeleteGrossmans' book is a travesty. It is based on some rather poorly done studies and extrapolates from there. There are numerous sources on the web that take issue with its conclusions. And why it has received such a warm welcome from so many people in the military and law-enforcement community, I will never understand. Grossman is a badly disguised ultra-liberal hack, who effectively paints military personnel who have killed in the line of duty and not had a nervous breakdown as dangerous sociopaths. It falls into the same line as the people that claim that violence isn't natural to human beings and that we should all look to the Bonobos as the model for peaceful co-existence. In other words, complete horsepuckey.
ReplyDeleteI found Grossman’s book intriguing, but was left scratching my head at the same time. I'm not in the business of killing people, so my perspective is merely as a curious outsider. I can see that during the 2 world wars, that some Americans, given the huge numbers of its citizens who are of Germanic origin might have qualms about shooting someone who might be their distant cousin. Or during a civil war, when that connection might be even more certain. But I had to wonder how much if any moral compunction there has been throughout history by various tribes, nations, races, religions, ethnic groups, etc. against killing members of other tribes, nations, races, religions, ethnic groups, etc. Somehow I doubt a member of the Taliban feels too much guilt about killing a western soldier. Like I said, I really can't offer any erudite opinion on the matter. I guess the book is interesting as perhaps the first scholarly study on that (sadly) most human of activities, killing other human beings. And it certainly seems that there are cops and soldiers who don't have an easy time of precessing what they had to do in the course of performing their duty. I guess trying to figure out how to cope with that, is certainly worthy of merit. If they've done something that we as a society/nation have asked them to do, giving them the help they need to cope with the after-effects is the least we can do. Maybe Grossman's book is flawed, but if he gets the ball rolling for other people to study the subject and figure out some answers how to heal guys damaged by what they had to do, it's not all bad.
ReplyDeleteFor some other, dissenting opinions on Lt Col Grossman's work:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.journal.dnd.ca/vo9/no2/16-engen-eng.asp
http://www.theppsc.org/Grossman/Main-R.htm
http://www.theppsc.org/Grossman/SLA_Marshall/Main.htm