If I may ask a question.

Has there been an instance when someone has qualified, but when the time came, they could not pull the trigger, not due to fear, due to conscience? Or does selection weed them out so effectively that it has never come up?

I can't answer your question directly as asked, but when I jumped into Panama (3/75th), we had a guy in my platoon that was "injured" during the jump (I think he got a d-bag across his face, I only saw some scratches on his face) that feigned as if he was extremely injured and couldn't fight. Obviously, Ranger Batt was physical and at that time there was no psych eval to go through and RIP was not like SFAS and the Q.

He was gone by end of D+1, Black Chinook with the Headless Loadmaster came and disappeared him.

Was it fear or did he object, or both? Either way, it is the same result. BTW, this person was a big shit talker about how bad azz he was.

I know of an SF'er that could not face the battlefield. He was sent to the B-team and left SF shortly afterwards. He was no shit talker, very quiet guy.

Love it.

I'm going to ask the Army psych I know well about that one and see where the conversation goes.

Too bad this thread isn't a week or so older and I could have asked her straight away.

And I can't seem to find the article I just read that roughly equated to" "a bit of sociopathy can be a good thing".

LOL!
 

Take care.

I don't like the OP title....
Killing, to me, is killing an unarmed person...
Fighting, as we fight, is against an armed foe...each has a chance to win/lose.
Why should one agonize over a fight like that, or have an issue with it.

Not the way I saw it during Desert Storm. We afforded them a chance to surrender and told them they had no chance to win.....;) The smart ones surrendered.

I like the like in General Patton's speech, We make them "die for their country and their cause."

Yeah, but you get my point....when you 'uniform up' the game is on and you know it.
The term Killing has a connotation of more than that.
Kids ask "Have you ever killed anyone?"
I respond 'No, but I've whacked a guy trying to whack me".

Grossman is a piece of work. His books have been shown to be stolen ideas, opinions and ideas he makes alot of assumptions with biased research he has begged, borrowed and stolen from others with made up data. Not a fan of his generalizations and his simple psychological conclusions. His implications are we all kill because of the conditioning without real discretion. Are there or were there a lot of cold blooded killers in SF during GWOT I have no doubt. Are there those who seem to avoid this and are not killers in that sense...I have no doubt. Understand like all soldiers there are killers and then there is a murderer and IMO there is a difference. A lot of soldiers get bloodlust in battle and sometimes during the entire tour. I personally am not put off by the act of killing but I am not a murderer I have a strong Christian belief as to why I fight.

There are quite a few soldiers who would tell anyone out of their inner circle about how much they enjoy killing. These same guys will say it to anyone about how much of a killer they were and can't wait to kill again there next deployment. This is either a psychotic person or B.S., who cannot quit talking about killing or their desire to kill again there fascination with the act of killing is abnormal. I don't put much stock in story tellers who see to focus on the act more like they were traumatized by the image. Then there are the matters of fact guys in the Army who don't engage in 1 ups man ship with others they simply talk about a mission and only mention killing as PART of the mission but no real detail. As in " So my squad entered the courtyard and I went left around the corner and shot two guys and then we cleared the house and found the cache of bomb building material and shut down a terrorist MSS.". No stories of the pink mist or death throws or blood or any other gory details they have seen in Hollywood dramas that type is IMHO a sociopath. No craving to kill or any other stupidity you hear some talk about and if they talk about going back overseas to kill terrorists it is to eliminate bad guys NOT kill people there is a difference.

Does SF have more than its share of sociopaths who are willing to kill.....perhaps, I am sure that there is a perception about us, it seems implied that those types would be drawn to us. But understand that the goal of SF is not killing it is to topple a government or regime and killing is part of that. In our job our guys can’t get hung up on the act of killing enemy we have to analyze and assess the expected outcomes of everything we do so that we can anticipate the psychological effects on the campaign. I would say the kinetic units within SOF may have a higher percentage give their mission and purpose.

The exact conversation had to do with one of the psych's interns doing the target graphs for SF psych evals. The intern after completing one freaked out as she saw the pattern of a sociopath. He told her yes, but we look at this part over here that shows what we are looking for (some other part of the graph).

My understanding was that other part of the graph, was what made us different that the "average sociopath", the morals part.

I look at killing much like Warrior Diplomat. I look at it through 2 lenses. 1. do what ever it takes to bring my team mates home and 2. As long as that fits into my moral obligation to my God and Savior. Killing is not murder. Killing is what you do when you are protecting your home, your property, your team mates from someone trying to do you harm, armed with a gun or an IED, or even talking on a radio planning my demise.

Murder is what you do when someone doesn't have the means to further harm you and you consciously, through anger, malice, jealousy, envy, revenge, politics, peer pressure, or power (I'm sure there are other reasons) end their life.

I talked to a guy once that told me he would help bury bodies in the impact area for a team mate if asked. I thought that went a bit far for me. I never looked at him the same again. I'm sorry but if a team mate or friend murdered someone, I couldn't stand by or help in that. I would more so convince them to come clean. Or if given the chance try to talk them out of the act to begin with.

It comes down to this for me: Do what you think your soul can handle.

I was doing some studying a few weeks ago. A scholar opined that the King James Bible mistranslated a line of the Ten Commandments. According to the scholar, "Thou shalt not kill" should have translated to "Thou shall not murder", but the two words had little to any distinction in old English at the time of the King James translation. The gulf between the words today is rather large.

Couldn't agree more...

Ask any Rabbi, and they're not confused.

Murder = Ratsach (Hebrew)
Kill = Harag (Hebrew)

Exodus 20:13 = Thou shall not "Ratsach"

The KJV got it wrong because there was still some vagueness on ancient Hebrew meaning, until the Dead See Scrolls where discovered in the decade following WWII.

...just saying ;)

S

Streck,

IMO, you are asking great questions.

However, in your haste, you may be reducing the complex diagnostic criteria of anti social personality disorder as offered in DSM-V to a single sub criterion and also forgetting that the disorder may exist as a continuum <<LINK>>.

Does anyone perceive any of the the QPs on this forum to be sociopaths or killers?

And yet you never know what the people you meet are thinking or capable of.

Even the ones that seem perfectly normal.

TR

Be Polite, be Professional, be Prepared.