Chickens come home to roost

We have all heard phrases like “the chickens come home to roost” or “what goes around comes around”; yet when it comes to learning from the lesson that what we sow is what we reap we are slow to learn.

When you have “letter to the editor” published in our local newspaper you are supposed to wait for two months before submitting another one. Yesterday I felt so strongly about an issue of public concern, the second shooting at Ft. Hood that I wrote a letter to the editor asking for an exception. To keep the letter around 200 words I did not say that the type of teaching reflexive killing, killing without conscience was happening at our own local Catholic Jesuit University, Marquette University.

I know it is a message people do not want to hear and the letter probably will not get printed but I felt compelled to express it. Here it is:

Dear Editor,
In investigating the tragedy at Food Hood and the rate of suicides with soldiers and veterans, reportedly 22 per day since 2008, the media or government is not looking into how military training has changed.

After World War II the military discovered that only one of four soldiers fired their weapons at the enemy. So the military developed a way of training which drills soldiers how to fire their weapons without making the conscious decision to do so. In 2000 CPT Pete Kilner, an instructor at the U.S. Military Academy, presented a paper to command stating the danger of this type of training. “Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so….The problem, however, is that soldiers who kill reflexively in combat will likely one day reconsider their actions reflectively… This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who performed their duty in combat. (“Military Leaders’ Obligation to Justify Killing in War”) Today over 95% of soldiers fire their weapons at the enemy.

The military knows the grave dangers of teaching reflexive killing, yet continues to do so.

Bob Graf

“What goes around comes around!”

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