One more round to go. As I said before, it's a busy time for everyone. Don't worry about post order. If you have time to make a post do what you can. Everyone who came to class in the first 2 rounds will get promotion credit at the very least.
If that didn't wake them up from their stupor, then nothing would. The questions came pouring in like a freshly undammed river of misgiving and delayed realization that yes, the students were stuck becoming soldiers, and there was nothing they could do about it.
"I'll field your question first," Bii-Ryu said to the older-seeming student with glasses and an already well-defined jawline. Probably an avid reader, given the premature degradation of his eyesight. "And I'm glad you asked, because I'm about to cover the issue you raise in more detail in this class. Suffice it to say, however, I personally believe and have observed that there is
no inherent contradiction between the actions of attempting to save one human being on the battlefield, while also attempting to kill another.
"You might then ask me: 'How can you say this, as a medical professional? As a doctor? Did you not take an oath to do no harm first and foremost?' In this case, the important thing is
context. On the field of battle, I am first and foremost a shinobi, and a soldier of Cloud. Although my primary role is to support and assist my fellow fighters, I am also a part of our overall defense and, if need be, offense. If an enemy fighter is attempting to kill me, it is my duty to kill him before he is successful. If I am dead or incapacitated, I am unable to help my comrades and fulfill my primary mission objective. This also means I don't blindly rush into enemy fire in attempts to save my comrades' lives, as some of you may imagine battlefield medics do. As part of a team, I will make sure the scene is safe before I devote any attention to treatment. Contrast this to my 'regular' job treating patients at the village hospital. There, I do not carry arms and the last thing on my mind is violence. But that is all because of context.
"As far as your second question, I think this is a good opportunity to define exactly what Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
is. According to the DSM, there are several criteria that must be met for PTSD to be a valid diagnosis. First and most important, there must be exposure to a traumatic event, and further, this MUST have involved BOTH a loss of physical integrity or definitive risk of death or severe injury, AND a response to that event that involved intense fear, horror, or helplessness. This is actually a change from the previously held criteria that only specified exposure to an event that would cause 'significant symptoms of distress in almost anyone.' Second, the victim must persistently re-experience the event or emotions of the event in some fashion. Third, the victim must experience persistent avoidance behaviors for stimuli or contexts related to the event, coupled with emotional numbing or depressive symptoms. Fourth, the victim must experience persistent symptoms of increased arousal: I don't mean sexual arousal, but rather physiological issues such as difficulty sleeping, hyper vigilance, or an increased startle response. Fifth, the symptoms must have been present for more than a month. And finally, all of this must lead to significant impairment of daily life and function.
"Current studies estimate that for the recent Lightning Civil War, the point prevalence of PTSD ranges between two to seventeen percent of returning Lightning Military veterans. That's a wide range, and it's mainly because of differences in methodology for various papers and studies, varying reporting criteria, and also the inherent variability of population-based studies using standard-error sampling as their main statistical method. What we do know, however, is that the absolute numbers of new diagnoses are skyrocketing. Why this is, we're not exactly sure. There are a number of possible risk factors for this, including a hereditary component of PTSD susceptibility, as well as the various known environmental contributors. These include things like early experience of chronic adversity or deprivation, foster care, military service, sexual assault or harassment, and alcohol and drug dependence. I hypothesize that as we become an increasingly violent society, we will see this become a far more common diagnosis."
Next, Bii-Ryu turned to the two other boys who'd spoken up. One of them was being persistently ignored by the two stylish girls, but then again, the girls might have fallen asleep.
"Both of you are essentially asking the same thing: 'how do you get someone to overcome his or her natural aversion to killing?' After all, this is essential in our line of work, and
especially if someone is going for a post within the ANBU, for example. You simply cannot have an ANBU who will not kill or fire his weapon, but at the same time, very few of these individuals are what I would consider true psychopaths. How can you get a bunch of non-psychopaths to perform actions that a psychopath will do without hesitation, without turning them into actual psychopaths? I'll cover this next, when I talk about what it actually feels like to kill someone, and how our military trains us to do this much more often than before.
"Unfortunately, this is still a very poorly-studied field, and exact statistics as you ask for, are very far and few between. Even General Marusha's methodology wouldn't pass modern scientific peer-review muster today, so there is always some doubt over whether ninety percent of soldiers truly did not fire their weapons. However, the vast majority of circumstantial evidence seems to support his original conclusion. Like anything else in this world, take it with a grain of salt, and experience things for yourself.
"So, moving on. About thirty years ago, a mednin psychiatrist published some famous research on death which revealed that when people are dying they often go through a series of emotional stages, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. From my interviews with veterans over the last two decades as well as from many historical narratives I have read, I have found a similar series of emotional response stages to killing in combat.
“The basic stages are: 1) concern about killing 2) the actual kill 3) exhilaration 4) remorse, and 5) rationalization and acceptance. These stages are generally sequential but not necessarily universal. Some individuals may skip certain stages or blend them, or pass through them so fleetingly that they do not even acknowledge their presence. Many veteran soldiers actually tell me that this process is similar to, but much more powerful than that experienced by first-time hunters.
“One of the soldier’s first emotional responses to killing is a concern as to, whether at the moment of truth, he will be able to kill the enemy or will ‘freeze up’ and ‘let his buddies down.’ All of my interviews and research verify that these are deep and sincere concerns that exist on the part of most soldiers, and it must be remembered that only 15 to 20 percent of Lightning Country Imperial Army soldiers went beyond the first stage.
“As far as the actual killing stage, it is usually completed in the heat of the moment, and for the modern, properly conditioned shinobi soldier, killing in such a circumstance is most often completed reflexively, without conscious thought. It is as though a human being is a weapon. As an ANBU operator named Asazaki Enma wrote, ‘Two shots. Bam Bam. Just like we had been trained in the Academy. When I killed, I did it just like that. Just like I’d been trained. Without even thinking.’
“It is not unusual for soldiers to immediately feel some sense of exhilaration or euphoria, even after a kill in close combat. In fact, combat adrenaline and the pleasure and satisfaction gained from dropping a target can make deadly combat actually quite an enjoyable experience. When the Raikage Aion fought in the Waterfall Wars against Wind Country tribesmen in the western theater he shot and killed a charging enemy on the first day of the campaign. ‘I suppose it is brutal,’ he wrote, ‘but I had a feeling of the most intense satisfaction as the wretched Turk went spinning down.’ Aion the Dawnbringer’s words are echoed by many combat veterans, who tell me again and again that fighting brings ‘satisfaction.’
“There are a few individuals who fixate on the exhilaration stage and seek more experiences in combat, and more kills. However, for the vast majority of soldiers in combat, everyone associated with killing in combat eventually reaps a bitter harvest of guilt. The media and propagandists’ depiction of violence tries to tell us that men can easily throw off the moral inhibitions of a lifetime – and whatever other instinctive restraint exists – and kill casually and guiltlessly in combat. However, the men and women who have killed, and who will talk about it, tell a different tale:
”Killing is the worst thing that one man can do to another man. It’s the last thing that should happen anywhere.”
-Royal Marine Lieutenant.
“I reproached myself as a destroyer. An indescribable uneasiness came over me. I felt almost like a criminal.”
-Waterfall-era Rain Country genin.
“This was the first time I had killed anybody and when things quieted down I went and looked at a Kaminarijin I knew I had shot. I remember thinking that he looked old enough to have a family and I felt very sorry.”
-Kagoshiman insurgent after his first kill.
“It didn’t hit me all that much then, but when I think of it now – I slaughtered those people. I murdered them.”
-Lightning Imperial Army veteran.
“And I froze, ‘cause it was a boy, I would say between the ages of twelve and fourteen. When he turned and looked, all of a sudden he turned his whole body and pointed his autobolter at me, and I just opened up, fired the whole twenty rounds right at the kid, and he just laid there. I dropped my weapon and cried.”
-Cloud ANBU Captain.
“Finally, the next stage in a soldier’s emotional response to killing is a lifelong process in which the killer attempts to rationalize and accept what he has done. In some cases, this process may never truly be completed. The killer never completely leaves all remorse and guilt behind, but he can usually come to accept that what he has done was necessary and right. A stunning example of this can actually be seen in the collected journal entries of one of Cloud’s most famous rogue shinobi, Yukimura Enishi. Here he writes about his first deployment to suppress a rebellion in one of the Lightning Colonies in the sea of Kirigakure:
As I approached the building the sound of moaning, punctuated by deep laughs, was clearly audible. The rear of the church contained two small dirty windows at eye level, through which I looked. Although the interior of the church was dark by comparison with the blazing outdoors sunlight, I could pick out the forms of two naked islanders torturing a young Tenouzan woman whom I assumed to be a nun or a teacher. She had been stripped naked and was stretched out in the aisle of the church, arms pulled tightly over her head by the rebels, while the other knelt on her stomach and repeatedly touched her nipples with a burning cigarette. She had burn marks on her face and neck as well. Uniforms of the Katangese Gendarmerie were thrown over the back of a pew, and female garments were scattered near the door. A bolter lay in the aisle beside the young woman. Another bolter had been left leaning against the wall near the uniforms. There appeared to be no one else present in the church.
On my signal we burst into the cathedral, our bolters on full-auto.
“Stand still,” I bellowed. “Kumogakure ANBU; you’re under arrest.” I didn’t want to do it that way, but damn it, I was still a shinobi, and subject to the Raikage’s Regulations and Orders.
The rebels bounded to their feet to face us, eyes staring wildly. I carried a Santaru-Taji 15, which I leveled at the two naked men. We were no more than four meters apart.
The one who had been holding the nun’s arms was visibly shaking with fear, his eyes flying uncontrollably about the room. In a second they rested on the bolter lying in the aisle. The nun had rolled onto her stomach, clutching her breasts and rocking from side to side, moaning in pain.
“Don’t be a fool, man,” I cautioned. But he did it anyway.
In a burst of panic he emitted a loud, piercing wail and dove for the bolter. Landing on his knees he grabbed the weapon, and turning his terrified face to mine, attempting to bring his weapon to bear. My first burst caught him in the face, the second full in the chest. He was dead before he fell over, a body missing most of its head.
The second terrorist began to wave his arms frantically up and down, like a featherless black bird attempting to take flight. His eyes kept flitting back and forth between the muzzle of the ST-15 and his own weapon, which was leaning against the wall a good ten feet away.
“Don’t do it, don’t do it,” I ordered. But he emitted a loud “Yaaaa…,” and scrambled for the bolter. I warned him again but he grabbed the weapon, worked the action to place a bolt in the chamber, and began to swing his muzzle toward me.
“KILL HIM, GODDAMIT,” screamed Cpl Hinata, who had now entered the church behind us. “KILL HIM, NOW!”
The rebel terrorist was now fully facing me, desperately attempting to swing the long-barrel of the bolter across his body to align it with my chest. His eyes locked on mine – wild, frantic eyes surrounded by fields of white. They never left mine, not even when the powerful bolter rounds tore into his stomach, walked up his chest, and cut the carotid artery on the left side of his neck. His body hit the floor with a thud, blown apart by the blast of the ST-15, and still the eyes remained riveted to mine. Then his body relaxed and eyes dilated, blind in death.
Prior to Okonda, I had not killed a human being. That is, I did not know for sure that I had killed. When one is firing at moving, shadowy figures in the confusion of battle one cannot be certain of the results. At Bridge 19 I had killed many men when I detonated the charges, blowing an enemy convoy to kingdom come, but somehow the incident was not psychologically close. They were a long way off, and the cover of night hid their shapes and movement, their very humanity. But here at Okonda it was different. The two men I killed were practically within arms’ reach, I could see their facial expressions clearly, even hear their breathing, see their fear, and smell their body odor. And the funny thing was that I didn’t feel a damn thing!
There had been two nuns at Okonda: the young one we saved, and the older one we didn’t. When I first entered the church I was standing slightly behind the altar, and off to the left side. From that position I couldn’t see the front of the altar, a rather large affair made of rough-hewn wood with a cross towering above it. Perhaps it was a good thing I could not, for the rebels had used the altar to butcher the old nun.
They had stripped her naked, but had not assaulted her sexually, probably because she was elderly and obese. Instead, they sat her upright with her back to the altar, and nailed her hands to it in an apparent mimicry of a crucifixion. Then they cut off her breasts with a bayonet, and, in a final act of savagery, drove the bayonet through her mouth into the altar behind, impaling her in an upright position. Evidence of a struggle showed that she had not died instantly from the bayonet wound, but had probably succumbed to the loss of blood from the wounds on her chest. She had a Tenouzan man’s penis and testicles showed partially in her vagina. Her severed breasts were not present.
We found the owner of the male genitalia tied spread-eagle in the middle of the village compound, with the nun’s breasts attached to his chest with sharpened sticks.
Before we departed Okonda the young nun asked to meet with the soldier who had saved her life. She was clothed now, and had cleaned up a little bit with the help of our mednin. I was surprised how young she was – early 20s or younger. She required a number of sutures in her vagina, and would need burn treatments as well. I didn’t admire her decision to remain in enemy territory when she was given ample opportunity to leave, but I did admire her spunk. When we met she looked me in the eye and said, “Thank God you came.” She had been badly beaten, but not defeated.
As for me, I had turned 14 only two days previous, and still suffered from the native upbringing of a good Raiden-worshipping family. I lost a lot of that upbringing at Okonda. There was no honor here, no virtue. The standards of behavior taught in the homes, churches, and schools of Lightning Country had no place in battle. They were mythical concepts good only for raising of children, to be cast aside forever from this moment on. No, I didn’t feel guilt, shame, or remorse at killing my fellow man. I felt pride!
-Yukimura Enishi
“Yukimura was able to overcome and rationalize his experience, and it formed the basis for much of his view on killing and fighting for the rest of his career in Kumogakure. For many others, it is not as easy, and a common, recurring trouble that many shinobi tell me about is that their dreams are full of people they have killed,” he said, sipping the cooling coffee.
“So with all of this resistance toward killing, and knowing the emotions and costs associated with it, you’d think that no one would ever be killed in war, or that two percent of all soldiers and shinobi actually perform a hundred percent of the killing. But as I have told you, there are ways in which the resistance to killing can be overcome, and all military organizations exploit these processes in order to gain a tactical edge over their enemies. So what are they?
“First, numerous studies have concluded that men in combat are usually motivated to fight not by ideology or hate or fear, but by group pressures and processes involving 1) regard for their comrades, 2) respect for their leaders 3) concern for their own reputation with both and 4) an urge to contribute toward the success of the group.
“Repeatedly, we see combat veterans describe the powerful bonds that men forge in combat as stronger than those of husband and wife. Tagiushi Moro, current Regent Commander of the ANBU, described it this way:
This is going to sound really strange, but there’s a love relationship that is nurtured in combat because the shinobi next to you – you’re depending on him for the most important thing you have, you life, and if he lets you down you’re either maimed or killed. If you make a mistake the same thing happens to him, so the bond of trust has to be extremely close, and I’d say this bond is stronger than almost anything, with the exception of parent and child. It’s a hell of a lot stronger than man and wife – your life is in his hands, you trust that person with the most valuable thing you have.
“This bonding is so intense that it is fear of failing these comrades that preoccupies most combatants. Countless sociological and psychological studies, the personal narrative of numerous veterans, and the interviews I have conducted clearly indicate the strength of a soldier’s concern for failing his or her buddies. The guilt and trauma associated with failing to fully support men and women who are bonded with friendship and camaraderie on this magnitude is profoundly intense. Yet every soldier and every leader feels this guilt to one degree or another. For those who know they have not fired while their friends died around them, the guilty can be traumatic.
“In turn, the responsibilities of a combat leader represent a remarkable paradox. To be truly good at what he does, he must love his men and be bonded to them with powerful links of mutual responsibility and affection. And then he must ultimately be willing to give orders that may kill them.
“To a significant degree, the social barrier between officer and enlisted man, and between sergeant and private, or in our case, Sennin and Jounin, and Chuunin and Genin, exists to enable the superior officer to send his men into mortal danger and to shield him from the inevitable guilt associated with their deaths. Even the best leaders make some mistakes that will weigh forever on their consciences. Every good combat leader thinks, at some level, that if he had just done something different, that perhaps the men under his command might not have died. However, this is a deadly, dangerous line of thought for leaders, and the honors and decorations that are traditionally heaped on military leaders at all levels are vitally important for their mental health in the years that follow. These decorations, medals, mentions in dispatches, and other forms of recognition represent a powerful affirmation from society, telling him that he did well, he did the right thing, and that no one blames him for the lives lost in doing his duty.”
Bii-Ryu sipped from his cooling coffee once more, as he paced around the room.
“Besides the expectations and dynamics of the group, another extremely important factor in enabling killing is simple distance.
“The link between distance and ease of aggression is not a new discovery. It has long been understood that there is a direct relationship between the empathetic and physical proximity of the victim, and the resultant difficulty and trauma of the kill. This concept has fascinated and concerned soldiers, poets, philosophers, anthropologists, and psychologists alike.
“At the far end of the spectrum are artillery and long-range jutsu, which are often used to illustrate the relative ease of long-range killing. As we draw to the near end of the spectrum, we begin to realize that the resistance to killing becomes increasingly more intense. This process culminates at the close end of the spectrum, when the resistance to bayoneting or stabbing becomes tremendously intense, and killing with bare hands through common jutsu such as crushing the throat with a blow or gouging a thumb through the eye and into brain become almost unthinkable.
The shinobi could now kill his collective enemy, which included women and children, without ever seeing them. The cries of the wounded and dying went unheard by those who inflicted the pain. A man might slay hundreds and never see their blood flow.
Less than a century after the Waterfall Wars ended, a single A-rank jutsu, cast kilometers away from its target, could take the lives of an entire city, almost all civilians. The moral distance between this event and the tribal warrior facing a single opponent is far greater than even the thousands of years and transformations of culture that separate them.
-Takagi Masao, Imperial Historian.
“Throughout the recent Lightning Civil War, arbalestillery crews and shinobi killed thousands of people at maximum range. Women, children, and elderly people, no different from their own wives, children, and parents. These individuals were able to bring themselves to kill these civilians primarily through the mental leverage provided to them by the application of distance. Intellectually, they understood the horror of what they were doing. Emotionally, the distance involved allowed them to deny it. From a distance, you don’t look like a friend. From a distance, I can deny your humanity.
“Indeed, many an arbalestillery man who has destroyed large numbers of terrified noncombatants has never felt any need for repentance or regret. And numerous historians note that there has never been any difficulty in getting arbalestillery men or Imperial Navy men to kill. It is the intervention of distance and machinery between them and the enemy. They can pretend they are not killing human beings.
“The next level of distance is ‘long range,’ which is defined at the range at which the average soldier may be able to see the enemy, but is unable to kill him without some form of special weaponry – sniper weapons, anti-armor jutsu, or bombardment from war-wagons. Takagi Masao tells of a Kagoshiman Conflict Lightning sniper recalling how, after shooting a Kagoshiman insurgent, ‘ a queer thrill shot through me, it was a different feeling to that which I had when I shot my first wolf as a boy. For an instant I felt sick and faint, but the feeling soon passed.’
“Note that here we begin to see some disturbance at the act of killing, but snipers doctrinally operate as teams, and like maximum-range killers they are protected by the same potent combination of group absolution, mechanical distance (the sniper scope), and physical distance. Their observations and the accounts of their kills are strangely depersonalized and different from those we will see at closer ranges.
“Next, we will call ‘midrange’ that range at which the soldier can see and engage the enemy with bolter fire or intermediate-range jutsu while still unable to perceive the extent of the wounds inflicted or the sounds and facial expressions of the victim when he is hit. In fact, at this range a soldier can still deny that it was he who killed the enemy. When asked about his experiences, one Waterfall War veteran told me that ‘there were so many guys firing, you can never be sure it was you. You shoot, you see a guy fall, and anyone could have been the one that hit him.’
“Most of the above applies to to grenade or explosive note range, which can be anywhere from a few meters to as many as thirty or forty meters. Again, the main factor is that killers do not have to see their victims as they die – in fact, if you are within visual range of an explosive note, you may become a victim of it. However, if soldiers proceed to look at their victims of either bolter or mid-range jutsu fire, then they risk incurring a significant amount of psychiatric trauma. Especially for the aftermath of grenade use.
“At close range, which is less than a few meters, the euphoria stage we discussed earlier still appears to be experienced in some form by most soldiers. Most combat veterans I have interviewed will admit to having experiences a brief feeling of elation upon succeeding in killing the enemy. Usually, however, this euphoria stage is almost instantly overwhelmed by the guilt stage as the soldier is faced with the undeniable evidence of what he has done, and the guilt stage is often so strong as to result in physical revulsion or vomiting.
“A soldier killing at close range is by its very nature an intensely vivid and personal matter. Saito Akira, a former ANBU Sennin and veteran of the October Rebellion, vividly described his own psychological response to a close-range kill.
I was utterly terrified – petrified – but I knew there had to be a sniper in the small fishing shack near the shore. He was firing in the other direction at ANBU in another battalion, but I knew as soon as he picked off the people there, that he would start picking us off. And there was nobody else to go…and so I ran toward the shack and broke in and found myself in an empty room. There was a door which meant that there was another room and the sniper was in that – and I just broke it down. I was just absolutely gripped by the fear that this man would expect me and would shoot me. But as it turned out he was in a sniper harness and he couldn’t turn around fast enough. He was entangled in the harness so I shot him with a .45 and I felt remorse and shame. I can remember whispering foolishly, “I’m sorry” and then just throwing up…I threw up all over myself. It was a betrayal of what I’d been taught since a child.
“Often times, the death inflicted on the enemy during a close-range kill is not instant, and the killer finds himself in the position of comforting his victim in his last moments. During the Demon Invasion of Cloud, there were a significant number of human adversaries from the ranks of the Cabal, who also attempted to invade Cloud during the Hitokage’s campaign. Masashiku Tama, a Cloud ANBU at the time, tells of a remarkable incident that happened during a raid.
All of a sudden there was a guy firing a pistol bolter right at us. It looked as big as a 175 [mm arbalest] just then. The first round hit the chuunin on my left in the chest. The second round hit me in the right arm, although I didn’t know it. The third round hit the genin on my right in the gut. By this time I had bounced off the wall to my left.
I charged the [Cabalist], firing my ST-15. He fell at my feet. He was still alive but would soon die. I reached down and took the pistol bolter from his hand. I can still see those eyes, looking at me in hate…
Later, I walked over to take another look at the Cultist I had shot. He was still alive and looking at me with those eyes. The flies were beginning to get all over him. I put a blanket over him and rubbed water from my canteen onto his lips. That hard stare started to leave his eyes. He wanted to talk but was too far gone. I lit a cigarette, took a few puffs, and put it to his lips. He could barely puff. We each had a few drags and that hard look had left his eyes before he died.
“A Jounin commando who was a veteran of the Civil War once put it this way when describing combat to me: ‘When you get up close and personal,’ he drawled while chewing a cud of tobacco in his cheek, ‘where you can hear ‘em scream and see ‘em die,’ and here he spit the tobacco for emphasis, ‘it’s a bitch.’
“Finally, as we bring the physical distance spectrum to its culmination point, we must realize that killing with a knife is significantly more difficult than killing with a spear, sword, or bayonet attached to a bolter. Many knife kills are performed from behind, and are less traumatic than a kill performed from the front, since the face and all its messages and contortions are not seen. But what is felt at the bucking and shuddering of a victim’s body and the warm sticky blood gushing out, and what is heard is the final breath hissing out.
“We in Cloud, along with armies in other nations, train our shinobi to execute a knife kill from the rear by plunging the knife through the lower back and into the kidney. Such a blow is so remarkably painful that its effect is to completely paralyse the victim as he quickly dies, resulting in a silent kill.
“This kidney strike is contrary to the natural inclination of most soldiers, who – if they have thought about the matter at all – would prefer to slit the throat while holding a hand over the victim’s mouth. This option, although psychologically and culturally more desirable (it is a slashing rather than thrusting blow), has far less potential for silence, since an improperly slit throat is capable of making considerable noise and holding a hand over someone’s mouth is not always an easy thing to do. The victim has a capacity to bite, and many experienced shinobi had told me of accidentally cutting their own hands while trying to cut an enemy’s throat in the dark.
“So far, however, we have been talking about only mechanical distance. There are in actuality many more types if distance that are utilized by militaries to further enable killing, even from close physical distance. These include:
“Cultural distance, such as racial and ethnic differences, which permit the killer to dehumanize the victim; Moral distance, which takes into consideration the kind of intense belief in moral superiority and vengeful/vigilante actions associated with many civil wars; and finally Social distance, which considers the impact of a lifetime of practice in thinking of a particular class as less than human in a socially stratified environment.
Bii-Ryu did not even bother with the coffee anymore. It had cooled beyond recognition.
“In addition to distance, another key factor in overcoming resistance to killing is the presence and demands of authority. Medical Sennin Taji Yuki’s experiments in a controlled laboratory environment cound that more than 65 percent of her subjects could be manipulated into inflicting a seemingly lethal electric charge on a total stranger. Subjects sincerely believed that they were causing great physical pain, but despite their victim’s pitiful pleas for them to stop, 65 percent continued to obey orders, increase the voltage, and inflict the shocks until long after the screams stopped and there could be little doubt the victim was dead. Prior to her experiment, Taji asked a group of mednin and psychologists to predict how many of her subjects would use the maximum voltage on the victim. They estimated that a fraction of 1 percent would do so. They, like most people, really didn’t have a clue.
“Many underestimate the influence of authority and leadership in enabling killing on the battlefield, but those who have been there know better. A study by Isaki Kushin investigated the factors that would make a soldier fire. He found that the individuals who had no combat experience assumed that ‘being fired upon’ would be the critical factor in making them fire. However, veterans listed ‘being told to fire’ as the most critical factor.
“A tremendous volume of research also indicates that another primary factor that motivates a soldier to do the things that no sane person wants to do in combat (that is, killing and dying), is not the force of self-preservation, but a powerful sense of accountability to his comrades on the battlefield. Among soldiers who are bonded together so intensely, there is a powerful process of peer pressure in which the individual cares so deeply about his comrades and what they think of him that he would rather die than let them down.
“In addition to creating a sense of accountability, groups also enable killing through developing in their members a sense of anonymity that contributes to further violence. In some circumstances, this process of group anonymity seems to facilitate a kind of atavistic killing hysteria as can be seen in the horrendous mass-murders that took place in Water Country. This can also be seen in the animal kingdom. Kaguya Daisuke’s research describes scenes from the animal kingdom that show that senseless and wanton killing does occur. These include the slaughter of gazelles by hyenas, in quantities way beyond their need or capacity to eat, or the destruction of gulls that could not fly in a stormy night and thus were ‘sitting ducks’ for foxes that proceeded to kill them beyond any possible need for food. He points out that ‘such senseless violence in the animal kingdom is shown by groups rather than by individuals.’
“A profound diffusion of responsibility can be caused by the anonymity created in a crowd. It has been demonstrated by dozens of studies that bystanders will be less likely to interfere in a situation in direct relationship to the numbers who are witnessing the circumstance. Thus, in large crowds, horrendous crimes can occur but the likelihood of a bystander interfering is quite low. However, the bystander is alone and is faced with a circumstance in which there is no one else to diffuse the responsibility to, then the probability of intervention is very high. In the same way, groups provide a diffusion of responsibility that will enable individuals in mobs and soldiers in military units to commit acts that they would never dream of doing as individuals. Acts such as lynching someone because of the color of his skin or shooting someone because of the color of his uniform.
“Now, of course, these are the mechanisms by which the vast majority of humans are enabled to kill. Armies have spent centuries developing and reinforcing these mechanisms. However, Takagi and Nakamura’s study of the Waterfall Wars noted the existence of 2 percent of combat soldiers who are predisposed to be ‘aggressive psychopaths’ and apparently do not experience the normal resistance to killing and the resultant psychiatric casualties associated with extended periods of combat. However, the negative connotations associated with the term ‘psychopath’ are inappropriate here, since this behavior is a generally desirable one for soldiers in combat.
“There is strong evidence that there exists a genetic predisposition for aggression. In all species the best hunter, the best fighter, the most aggressive male, survives to pass his biological predispositions on to his descendants. There are also environmental processes that can fully develop this predisposition toward aggression; when we combine this genetic predisposition with environmental development we get a killer. But there is another factor: the presence or absence of empathy for others. Again, there may be biological or environmental causes for this empathic process, but whatever its origin, there is undoubtedly a division in humanity between those who can feel and understand the pain and suffering of others, and those who cannot. The presence of aggression, combined with the absence of empathy, results in sociopathy. The presence of aggression, combined with the presence of empathy, results in a completely different kind of individual from the sociopath.
“A veteran shinobi I interviewed told me that he thought of most of the world as sheep: gentle, decent, kindly creatures who are essentially incapable of true aggression. In this veteran’s mind there is another human subspecies (of which he is a member) that is kind of a dog: faithful, vigilant creatures who are very much capable of aggression when circumstances require. But, according to his model, there are wolves (sociopaths) and packs of wild dogs (gangs and aggressive armies) abroad in the land, and the sheepdogs (the soldiers and policemen of the world) are environmentally and biologically predisposed to be the ones who confront these predators.
“Some experts in the psychiatric community think that these men are simply sociopaths and that the above view of killers is a romanticization – at worst, it can cause needless deaths in peaceful society when those who view themselves as ‘sheepdogs’ attempt to enthusiastically and violently intervene in a situation when a more restrained approach would have sufficed.
“Personally, I believe that there are individuals out there, specifically prominent shinobi such as the Raikage Hayata, who are armed and vigilant, but would not misuse or misdirect their aggression any more than a sheepdog would turn on his flock. But in their hearts, many of them yearn for a righteous battle, a wolf upon whom to legitimately and lawfully turn their skills. Historian Nakamura Akihiko speaks of this yearning:
This urgent calling of nature longs to be tested, seeks to be challenged beyond itself. The warrior within us beseeches Raijin, the god of war, to deliver us to that crucial battlefield that will redeem us into the terrifying immediacy of the moment. We want to face our Hitokage so that we may be reminded that the warrior Ryuuto is alive, in us. We pray to the war gods to guide us to the walls of Kumogakure so we may dare the steadfastness and strength of our trumpet call. We aspire to be defeated in battles by powers so much greater than ourselves, that the defeat itself will have made us larger than when we arrived. We long for the encounter that will ultimately empower us with dignity and honor… Be not mistaken: the longing is there and it’s loving and terrible and beautiful and tragic.
“As far as whether this viewpoint represents a gallant desire to protect others or is merely a disguise for childish thuggery, I leave it up to you to interpret,” Bii-Ryu said.
“Before I launch into the last segment of class, I’d like to briefly touch on two things – first, murder and atrocity in warfare, and second, how the village of Kumogakure teaches you personally how to kill, and what you should take from it.
“As Takagi Masao says in the introduction to
Modern Shinobi Warfare, ‘The basic aim of a nation at war is establishing an image of the enemy in order to distinguish as sharply as possible the act of killing from the act of murder.’ However, the problem of distinguishing murder from killing in combat is extremely complex, and it is one of the things that most plagues new shinobi who have been forced to kill, often for the first time in their lives, and especially when it is not an obviously defined enemy solder firing back at them. They often tell me that ‘I never signed up for this shit. I never thought I’d be one of those evil bastards committing atrocities I’d only read about in books about the Waterfall Wars or something.’
“First, we usually define ‘atrocity’ as the killing of a noncombatant, either an erstwhile combatant who is no longer fighting or has given up, or a civilian. But modern war, especially guerilla warfare, makes such distinctions blurry. In order to help tackle this issue, I think we should examine atrocity as a spectrum of occurrences rather than a precisely defined type of occurrence.
“Anchoring one end of the spectrum of atrocity is the act of killing an armed enemy who is trying to kill you. While this is not actually atrocity, it serves as a standard against which other kinds of killing can be measured. The enemy who fights to a ‘noble’ death validates and affirms the killer’s belief in his own nobility and glory of his cause. Thus, a Waterfall Wars Lightning Officer could speak admiringly of the Fire Country soldiers who remained faithful unto death: ‘Topping fellows. Fight until they are killed. They gave us hell.’ And Raikage Shinbatsu immortalized in prose the Demon infantry who stood firm against his forces during the rout of the Hitokage’s forces during the invasion: ‘I grew proud of the enemy who had killed my brothers. They were leagues from home, without hope and without guides, in conditions bad enough to break the bravest nerves. Yet their sections held together, sheering through the wrack of Cloud shinobi like armored ships, high-faced and silent. When attacked they halted, took position, fired to order. There was no haste, no crying, no hesitation. They were glorious.’
“When it comes to ambushes and guerilla warfare, this is a gray area. The enemy represents no immediate threat to the killer, but is killed anyway, without opportunity to surrender. Tagiushi Moro provides an excellent example of such a kill: ‘They didn’t know I existed, but I sure as hell saw them. This is one fucked-up way to die, I thought as I squeezed softly on the trigger.’ Such a kill is by no means considered an atrocity, but it is distinctly different from a noble kill and potentially harder for the killer to rationalize and deal with. Ambush kills are rare in combat, and many civilizations partially protected themselves and their consciences by declaring such forms of warfare dishonorable. But this is the primary means by which we shinobi are doctrinally taught to fight.
“Next in the spectrum, we have the close-range murder of prisoners and civilians during war. Although it is a demonstrably counterproductive action (executing enemy prisoners stiffens the will of the enemy and makes him less likely to surrender), it often does happen in the heat of battle. Among the ANBU, the usual policy in combat is to ‘never take prisoners’, even when intercepting a runner at the gate. And for the other branches, when it is impractical to take prisoners during operations behind enemy lines, there is an unspoken agreement that prisoners have to be ‘taken care of.’ But in the heat of battle, it is not really that simple. In order to fight at close range, one must deny the humanity of one’s enemy. Surrender requires the opposite – that one recognize and take pity on the humanity of the enemy. A surrender in the heat of battle requires a complete, and very difficult emotional turnaround by both parties. The enemy who opts to posture or fight and then dies in battle becomes a noble enemy. But if at the last minute he tries to surrender he runs a great risk of being killed immediately. Takagi writes at length on this process:
Surrendering during battle is difficult. Aion the Dawnbringer suggested, ‘No soldier can claim the right to quarter if he fights to the extremity.’ Santaru Ryuuto saw several Cabalist arbalesters shot during the Demon Invasion. ‘They were defenseless, but they have chosen to make themselves so. We did not ask them to abandon their weapons. They only did so when they saw that those who were not mown down were getting closer to them and the boot was now on the other foot.’
Santaru Rin agreed that the defender had no moral right to surrender in these circumstances: ‘the defending force, after driving their bolts into the attacking one at five paces distance, must take the consequences. A woman cannot change her feelings again during the last rush with a veil of blood before her eyes. She does not want to take prisoners but to kill.’
During the cavalry action at Chipyong-Ni, Akira Saito saw how difficult it was to restrain excited men. ‘There was a bit of a melee, horses neighing and a lot of shouting and yelling. I remember seeing Corporal Ouja run his lance right through a dismounted Marsh who had his hands up and thinking it was a rather bad thing to do.’
Kawakita Ryo, a mednin on the Western Front, read a letter written by a young soldier to his mother. ‘When we jumped into their trench, mother, they all held up their hands and shouted ‘Camerad, Camerad’ and that means ‘I give in’ in their language. But they had to have it, mother. I think that is all from your loving Takao.’
In short, no soldier who fights until his enemy is at close small-arms range, in any war, has more than perhaps a fifty-fifty chance of being granted quarter. If he stands up to surrender he risks being shot with the time-honored comment, ‘Too late, chum.’ If he lies low, he will fall victim to the grenades of the mopping-up party, in no mood to take chances.
“Yet Takagi concludes that the consistently remarkable thing in such circumstances is not how many soldiers are killed while trying to surrender, but how few. Even under this kind of provocation, the general resistance to killing runs true. Surrender-executions are clearly wrong and counterproductive to a force that has dedicated itself to fighting in a fashion that the nation and the soldiers can live with after battle. They are, however, completed in the heat of battle and are rarely prosecuted. It is only the individual soldier who must hold himself accountable for his actions most of the time. Executions cold blood, however, are another matter entirely.
“We define ‘execution’ as the close-range killing of a noncombatant, civilian or POW, who represents no significant or immediate personal threat to the killer. The effect of such killed on the killer is intensely traumatic, since the killer has limited internal motivation to kill the victim and kills almost entirely out of external motivations. The close range of the kill severely hampers the killer in his attempt to deny the humanity of the victim and severely hampers the denial of personal responsibility for the kill. This story was told to me by a veteran of the Cloud deathwatch:
We had attacked the group trying to leave and took a woman prisoner. I’d already told my men we took no prisoners, but I’d never killed a woman. “She must die quickly, we must leave!” my sergeant said. Oh god, I was sweating. She was magnificent.
“What’s the matter, chuunin?” she asked. “You’re sweatin’”
“Not for you,” I said. “It’s just a malaria recurrence.” I gave my bolter to my sergeant, but he just shook his head. None of them would do it, and if I didn’t I’d never be able to control that unit again.
“You’re sweatin’, chuunin,” she said again.
“Not for you,” I said. Then…I blew her fuckin’ head off.
My platoon all gathered round and smiled.
Bii-Ryu set his notes down and peered at the class.
“The close-range murder of the innocent and helpless is the most repulsive aspect of war, and that which resides within man and permits him to perform these acts is the most repulsive aspect of mankind. Altohugh we must not permit ourselves to be attracted to it, nor can we, in our revulsion, ignore it. I hope that by giving you a look at this ugliest aspect of war, you might be able to know it, name it, and confront it.”
He picked the notes back up, and continued.
“Compared to soldiers of the Imperial Army or Navy, what do you think the nonfiring rate of Cloud shinobi is? Fifty percent? Forty? Try five percent. And every day in the Academy, your sensei strive to bring that rate down to zero. A firing rate of 15 to 20 percent among soldiers is like having a literacy rate of 15 to 20 percent among proofreaders. Once those in authority recognized the existence and magnitude of this problem, they set about to solve it.
“Since the end of the Waterfall Wars, Cloud and a few other armed forces have conducted an intense campaign of psychological warfare, not on the enemy, but on us – you. When S. L. A. Marusha was sent to the Water Country conflicts to make an investigation into firing rates like he had done in the Waterfall Wars, he found that as a result of new training techniques initiated as a result of his prior work, 55 percent of infantrymen were now firing their weapons, and in certain circumstances, almost everyone was. These training techniques were further improved, and by the time of the Civil War in Lightning, the firing rate was around 90 to 95 percent. The triad of methods used to achieve this remarkable increase in killing are: desensitization, conditioning, and denial defense mechanisms.
We’d run PT [physical training] in the morning and every time your left foot hit the deck you’d have to chant “kill, kill, kill, kill.” It was drilled into your mind so much that it seemed like when it actually came down to it, it didn’t bother you, you know? Of course the first one always does, but it seems to get easier – not easier, because it still bothers you with every one that, you know, that you actually kill and you know you’ve killed.
-Kogami Ayumu, ANBU Vice Commander
“Our modern training programs, with the deification of killing, were almost unheard of prior to the Waterfall Wars, uncommon in the Water Country Conflict era, increasingly present during the Bear-Marsh Wars, and now they are thoroughly institutionalized. As Fujinami Souseiki, former Main Branch Sennin and Academy Headmaster told me:
Most of the language used in the Aurora to describe the joys of killing people is bloodthirsty but meaningless hyperbole, and the students realize that even as they enjoy it. Nevertheless, it does help to desensitize them to the suffering of an “enemy,” and at the same time they are being indoctrinated in the most explicit fashion (as previous generations were not) with the notion that their purpose is not just to be brave or to fight well; it is to kill people.
“But desensitization by itself is not enough to overcome the average individual’s deep-seated resistance to killing. Indeed, this desensitization process is almost a smoke screen for the most important aspect of modern training, which is classical and sometimes operant conditioning. In short, behavioral engineering.
“The method used to train today’s Cloud shinobi as well as elite units of the Imperial Army and Navy, are nothing more than applications of conditioning techniques to develop a reflexive ‘quick-shoot’ ability. It is entirely possible that no one intentionally sat down to use operant conditioning or behavior modification techniques to train soldiers in this area, but from the standpoint of a psychologist who is also a historian and career soldier, it has become increasingly obvious to me that this is exactly what has been achieved.
“So, instead of lying prone in a grassy field calmly shooting or casting jutsu at a bull’s eye target, the modern Academy Student spends many hours standing in a foxhole or crouching behind cover, will full combat equipment draped about his or her body, looking over an area of lightly-wooded rolling terrain. At periodic intervals, one or two olive-drab, man-shaped targets at varying ranges will pop up in front of him for a brief time, and the student must instantly aim and shoot at the targets. When he hits a target it provides immediate feedback by instantly and very satisfyingly dropping backward – just as a living target would. Students are highly rewarded and recognized for success in this skill and suffer punishment (in the form of retraining, peer pressure, and failure to graduate) for failure to quickly and accurately ‘engage’ the targets – a standard euphemism for ‘kill.’
“In addition to traditional marksmanship, what is being taught in this environment is the ability to shoot reflexively and instantly and a precise mimicry of the act of killing on the modern battlefield. In behavioral terms, the man shape popping up on the field of fire is the ‘conditioned stimulus,’ and the immediate engagement of the targets is the ‘target behavior.’ ‘Positive reinforcement’ is given in the form of immediate feedback when the target drops if it is hit. In the form of ‘token economy’ these hits are then exchanged for marksmanship badges that usually have some form of privilege or reward (praise, public recognition, three-day passes, and so on) associated with them.
“Every aspect of killing on the battlefield is rehearsed, visualized, and conditioned. On special occasions even more realistic or complex targets are used. Balloon-filled uniforms moving across the kill zone (pop the balloon and the target falls to the ground), red-paint-filled milk jugs, and many other ingenious devices are used. These make the training more interesting, the conditioned stimuli more realistic, and the conditioned response more assured under a variety of different circumstances.
I changed the standard firing targets to full-sized, anatomically correct figures because no missing-nin runs around with a big white square on his chest with numbers on it. I put clothes on these targets and polyurethane heads. I cut up a cabbage and poured catsup into it and put it back together. I said, “When you look through that scope, I want you to see a head blowing up.”
-Morishima Haruka, ANBU Captain
“An additional aspect of this process that deserves consideration here is the development of a denial defense mechanism. Denial and defense mechanisms are unconscious methods for dealing with traumatic experiences. Prepackaged denial defense mechanisms are a remarkable contribution from modern Academy training.
"Basically, the shinobi has rehearsed the process so many times that when he actually does kill in combat he is able to, at some level, deny to himself that he is actually killing another human being. This careful rehearsal and realistic mimicry of the act of killing permit the shinobi to convince himself that he has only ‘engaged’ another target. One veteran of the Bear-Marsh war told me that he ‘thought of the enemy as nothing more or less than Figure II [man-shaped] targets.’ The former Main Branch Sennin, Takaki Masao, a veteran of many fights, combined this denial process with desensitization in his advice to young Deathwatch members:
You have a natural disinclination to pull the trigger or make the handseals when your weapon is pointed at another human. Even though their own life was at stake, most shinobi report having this trouble in their first fight. To aid in overcoming this resistance it is helpful if you can will yourself to think of your opponent as a mere target and not as a human being. In this connection you should go further and pick a spot on your target. This will allow better concentration and further remove the human element from your thinking. If this works for you, try to continue this thought in allowing yourself no remorse. A shinobi who will go missing and resist you with weapons has no respect for the rules by which decent people are governed. He is an outlaw who has no place in our society. His removal is completely justified, and should be accomplished dispassionately and without regret.
“It is essential to understand that one of the most important aspects of this process is that soldiers and shinobi are always under authority in combat. No army can tolerate undisciplined or indiscriminate firing, and a vital – and easily overlooked – facet of the soldier’s conditioning revolves around having him fire only when and where he is told to do so. All shinobi are conditioned throughout training and throughout their careers to fire only under authority. A boltershot or even worse, jutsu, cannot be easily hidden, and on the range during field training any shot at inappropriate times must be justified, and if it is not justifiable it will be immediately and firmly punished. This is one of the reasons that those of you with shinobi parents who are retired or otherwise returned to society within or without the village, are less likely to commit violent crimes than a non-shinobi of the same age or sex.
"Questions before the last round?"
Quite frankly, Tesshou didn't see the point in another combat lesson. He had been raised on combat lessons for a majority of his childhood, and nothing at the academy seemed to hold a candle to that prior training. What caught his attention was that this particular class was not restricted to Academy Students. As perceptive as he was, the notion that ANBU in-training and even Medics could use the lecture's information meant it was surely worth more than another superficial "Intro to Breaking Legs" course. So he decided to give it a shot.
