On Killing by LtCol Dave Grossman, 2009, Excerpts
There is a profound resistance to
killing one’s fellow man. That the average man will not kill even at the risk
of all he holds dear has been largely ignored by those who attempt to
understand the psychological and sociological pressures of the battlefield. The
soldier in combat resists the powerful obligation and coercion to engage in
aggressive and assertive actions on the battlefield, and he dreads facing the
irrational aggression and hostility embodied in the enemy. Looking another
human in the eye, making an independent decision to kill him, and watching as
he dies due to your action, combine to form the most basic, important, primal,
and traumatic occurrences of war.
The soldier in combat is trapped
within this tragic Catch-22. If he overcomes his resistance to killing and
kills an enemy soldier in close combat, he will be forever burdened with blood
guilt, and if he elects not to kill, then the blood guilt of his fallen
comrades and the shame of his profession, nation, and cause lie upon him. He is
damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t.
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