This is a comment by pwlsax on the post “A War is a War is a War. Or is it?“
“Training is a sacred cow in all discussions of this kind, because it saves soldiers’ lives and allows them to do a job most of us could not stand to do. (Necessary or not, I won’t go into.) But to do that training, conscientiously and well, you have to crush a little bit of your humanity. And it may not grow back, or grow back in the right places.
“Whether one sees combat or not, just being military can change a person in ways they may or may not be able to cope with. It’s a side of our wars no one feels they can acknowledge.”
Photo credit: Flickr / 136th ESC
Well undergoing mental conditioning for killing humans may well make you look at the world differently.
Or at least in my case it did.