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Originally Posted by sapiens
I don't disagree regarding what is explicitly taught during training. However, it is possible that soldiers learn things during training and service that are not explicitly taught. You mentioned that the military spends a lot of effort teaching "cultural awareness" now (Certainly a good thing). Is it possible that the nature of the training and service results in "dehumanizing of the other" independent of the explicit goals of the training and service?
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Absolutely.
I mentioned earlier that dehumanizing is a natural reaction to combat. There's really no way to train around this, as it's just the way your mind overcomes that natural aversion to killing another human being. This same thing happens when someone is put into a dehumanizing situation, like a prison, and also can't be trained around (at least not IMO). Given enough time and control over another person, the guard can stop looking at the prisoner as a person at all. The key to preventing this is good leadership at all levels, which the Abu Ghraib guards had none of. The Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 really shows what happens when good people are put into certain situations.
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The effort now expended on ""cultural awareness" suggests to me that "dehumanization of the other" might be an unintended side effect that the military is trying to treat. (Again, I don't know if this "dehumanizing the other" is a side effect or if it is, whether or not it is pervasive).
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Hmm. An interesting thought.
Definitely something worth talking about for the military planners.