"What makes soldiers kill--or not--animates this intriguing survey by a psychologist and former U.S. Army officer. Col. Grossman reveals that only a fraction of soldiers kill during warfare (and feel revulsion when they do); the rest (about 85 percent in World War II) resist by missing the target or refusing to fire."

I have had so much going through my head lately, that I have sincerely neglected any substantial outlets (like this one) until I could begin to organize my thoughts, and then share them with good people. I plan to take all this slow, both literally and symbolically.

So, for those of us who have seen Terence Malick's "The Thin Red Line" - remember how most of us did not like it the first time we saw it - and how we had to be prodded to watch it again, in order to discover its beauty and subjective purpose? Remember that one of the initial critiques of the film, was that it was a war film, with little to no action/fighting scenes - it was boring, right?

Well, based on the research presented, in the above text - even the fighting and violence in Malick's version of WWII, was exaggerated. Meaning, "The Thin Red Line" should have been even more "boring" than it actually was. Are you fucking kidding me?

Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman is a very intriguing person to me - and very appropriate to be presenting this knowledge. This /research/text could easy be chalked up to be some left-wing conspiracy hippie bullshit. but check out this dude's resume:

"Col. Grossman retired from the military as Professor of Military Science at Arkansas State University. His career includes service in the US Army as a sergeant in the US 82nd Airborne Division, a platoon leader in the 9th (High Tech Test Bed) Division, a general staff officer, a company commander in the 7th (Light) Infantry Division as well as a parachute infantryman, a US Army Ranger and a teacher of psychology at West Point."

Wikipedia barely scratches the surface, above - and I am too lazy to type out the rest.

so, he has no slant - just evidence and experience.

How do you explain that 75 (or more) out of every 100 soldiers in WWII and previous wars never fired their weapons - or fired, but purposely missed? Thoughts?

Then I cautiously raised the upper half of my body into the tunnel, until I was lying flat on my stomach. When I felt comfortable, I placed my Smith Wesson .38-cahber snub-nose (sent to me by my father for tunnel work) beside the flashlight and switched on the light, illuminating the tunnel. There, not more than 15 feet away, sat a Viet Cong eating a handful of rice from a pouch on his lap. We looked at each other for what seemed to be an eternity, but in fact was probably only a few seconds.

Maybe it was the surprise of actually finding someone else there, or maybe it was just the absolute innocence of the situation, but neither one of us reacted. After a moment, he put his pouch of rice on the floor of the tunnel beside him, turned his back to me and slowly started crawling away. I, in turn, switched off my flashlight, before slipping back into the lower tunnel and making my way back to the entrance. About 20 minutes later, we received word that another squad had killed a VC emerging from a tunnel 500 meters away.

I never doubted who that VC was. To this day, I firmly believe that grunt and I could have ended the war sooner over a beer in Saigon than Henry Kissinger ever could by attending the peace talks. — Michael Kathman "Triangle Tunnel Rat"