What definition of brainwashing are we using again? I wasn’t aware that being brainwashed excluded the ability to make decisions, so long as you don’t disobey the orders from your ‘master’.
I believe the intent of basic is to tear you down so they can build you up again.
I remember a line in a book I read about Ancient Rome. The general told his centurions to “Drill them until they drop, then drill them until they don’t drop.” I think that’s pretty true today.
Back in the very early 1980s, I attended a speech given by a very senior commissioned officer in the US Air Force. He reminded us all that there are four categories of officer in the US Armed Forces:
[ul][li]Commissioned Officer[/li][li]Warrant Officer[/li][li]Non-commissioned Officer[/li][li]Petty Officer[/ul][/li]
Each type of officer is required to exercise leadership. Not only that, but it is quite possible to reach Commissioned Officer or Warrant Officer status without attending a Federal Service Academy or OCS.
Just out of curiousity, do you have any first hand experience with basic training, Gonzomax, or are you just going by what you think you’ve read or heard? (that wasn’t a snark, either, I’m curious)
Because the people here that have been or are in the military are saying the opposite.
I was going to ask if he had any experience beyond watching certain movies, myself.
Never said that. I do think all military forces should be disbanded, but that’s just a dream. I don’t have to think they’re evil to think them unnecessary in a better world.
Sure I am - so what? Are you saying that a desegregated military is incapable of being used for evil? Because you know what I’d say to that, don’t you?
When Ivylad was in the Navy, he said it was not unheard of for Chief Petty Officers (highest enlisted rank, I believe) to be listened to ahead of ensigns and 2nd lieutenants. In fact, he saw CPOs get in the faces of ensigns to tell them they were flat out wrong, and when the ensigns complained, they were laughed at.
Rank has its privileges, but experiences is valued as well.
Which is true in the army as well. When I worked in the Pentagon a 2nd Leuitenant asked me to go with him to make a proposal to our colonel because as he put it “You’ll get more respect from him than I will as an NCO.”.
Well, he certainly doesn’t have any first hand experience with any of the US military branches I’ve seen.
In the interests of fighting ignorance…
I was a US Army Stinger missile gunner/teamchief. We worked in 2 man teams, usually one was a PFC or spec4 and one lower rank. The teamchief made the decision to fire or not. He answered to the section sargent, who answered to the platoon sargent, who answered to the Lt. Decisions were mostly made by NCO’s. I became teamcheif a little over 1 year out of basic. Leadership training starts in AIT, immediately after basic.
That’s what Ivylad told my son, who’s getting into ROTC for college…the smart officers listen to the higher enlisted guys.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/13/INGKFKDJHC1.DTL It has been difficult finding a treatise on the theory behind basic training. This one indicates that the point is very much to break down the natural suppressions people have toward killing another human being.
Of course this does not always work. It does indicate what the aims are however.
I’m not surprised. This is neither a topic the military wants civilian eggheads prying into, nor one that generally liberal academia really cares to confront.
8 weeks of Army basic training isn’t going to turn anyone into a killing machine. Its only common sense though that a soldier is going to be trained to fire a weapon in BCT. You’d be crazy to join the military and think you weren’t going to recieve some instruction on weapons. It would sure suck to get deployed to a combat zone and not know what to do when the bullets start whizzing at you. But unless you have a job that specifically entails combat like infantry, or like masterofnone, after the 8 weeks are up you go to Advanced Individual Training and learn whatever skill you picked.
I hope that the government itself doesn’t consider BCT “brainwashing” because its the weakest brainwashing in the history of brainwashing if they were trying to churn out cold blooded terminator killers.
I dunno about that:
Not sure I understand what you meant by that, but when I was in the Army, everyone went through Basic + AIT.
I got caught up in the hijack when I posted yesterday, but to answer the OP:
The stress of basic training is designed to train you to be able to handle the stress of combat, so that you can make rational decisions and stay alive. I never saw any of the ego destruction that you describe, sure they called us worthless scum, etc, but if you’re so thin skinned that this will destroy your ego, you will not make it through basic training. The only dependancy I saw was a positive thing - you were trained to depend on your fellow soldiers, and to be dependable. Indoctrination obviously takes place, so what? Graduation is just a ceremony. All I was thinking about was the leave I had coming.
The suicidal killing machine gonzomax describes is worse than worthlesss to the Army. Survivability is stressed in training, as is the responsibility to know when to follow orders and when not to.
The simple fact is that, while we can argue about how central it is, you are being taught to kill on command during basic training. Part of that training requires both dehumanizing of your enemy and subduing intelligent thought. Yes, there is a rule book you are expected to follow. That doesn’t mean you can’t be ordered to shoot someone in the back while he’s on patrol defending his own country/farm. Doing stuff like that requires you to believe someone smarter/more legally endowed than you made a good decision.
Yes, the military needs leaders but that sure isn’t what Basic Training is about. I also don’t think military leadership courses generally try to soften the “follow orders” indoctrination. More on “best means” type thinking.
This is just not true, guys. I’ve been in the Army for 6 years and at no time was I ever taught to kill. There is no “dehumanizing” of the enemy at all. In fact, there isn’t any psychological training that I know of. Except for a few rogue religious types who expected every soldier to be a bible-toting evengelical, there has never been anyone who expected me to think or feel anything in particular.
I was taught to shoot, to dig fighting positions, to use and maintain military weapons, to move under fire. These are tactical skills, not psychological. I think the Army just assumes that if they put you in the situation where people are shooting at you and killing your buddies, you will fall back on your training and return fire. That’s not learning how to kill; that’s learning how not to die while accomplishing the mission.
Do killers fold their underwear into precise loaves? If that’s true, then I Am Become Death, baby.
My brother, I can assure you, is not a Ruthless Killing Machine.
He drives a truck. He’s been in the Army, and the Guard, and now the Army again, for going on 8 years, all told.
He’s currently on his 3rd deployment to Iraq, and has yet to kill anyone. In fact, unless he’s not telling me (and he might not…), he’s never fired his weapon outside of training.
Does he know how? Of course. Kinda pointless not to teach somone the basics of their job. If you become a manger for a McDonalds, they make sure you know how to work on the line too.
He says that Basic was basically to break you down enough so that your individuality is a little more flexible, and so that you learn to work with others. This is not a skill that is stressed in our current culture of “rugged individualism”.
He also states that someone who just follows orders, like a robot, is useless. Things change so fast on the field, the military wants someone who can think for themselves to get the job done (be it drive a truck, fix a tank, or defend a position) under all circumstances.
Example: My brother is one of those star-toting Super Pagans. He is practically Anti-Christian. The Army made him learn to deal with all that, and still get the job done. If his gunner (or his driver, if he’s gunning, as he can do both) were Billy Graham, he would shut up and do his job. That’s what the army has taught him to do, rather than scream at him about the “Burning Times OMG!” and storm off.
All I meant, Masterofnone, was that your MOS is more combat related than say, a multimedia technician or an X-ray technician. Infantry guys go on to AIT and learn more infantry stuff (shoot, move, communicate etc, ), while a linguist would go on to AIT and learn another language. I probably worded it badly, I apologize.
I suppose it doesn’t matter…people who believe basic training is molded to turn you into a stone cold killer that will murder on command or fire on a farmer in the back on command aren’t going to change their minds it seems…even when multiple people here that are or were in the military have already said thats not what happens. I’m still on active duty and I’ve never blindly followed an order in the last 17 years. I left basic traning with my individuality intact. Maybe I didn’t get the borg drill sergeant.