On Killing by LtCol Dave Grossman, 2009, Excerpts
Atrocity has always been part of
war, and in order to understand war we must understand atrocity. Atrocity –
this 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. The killing is always traumatic.
But when you have to kill women and children, or when you have to kill men in
their houses, in front of their wives and children, and when you have to do it
not from twenty thousand feet up, the horror transcends description or
understanding.
The shock and horror of seeing
unprovoked violent death meted out creates a deep atavistic fear in human
beings. Through atrocity the oppressed population can be numbed into a learned
helplessness state of submission and compliance. The effect on the
atrocity-committing soldiers appears to be very similar. Human life is
profoundly cheapened by these acts, and the soldier realizes that one of the
lives that has been cheapened is his own.
Dragon Seed by Pearl Buck, 1942, Excerpts
When the enemy did come it was with
such madness, such cruelty, so fiercely and savagely, that all were dazed and
put out of their minds. Into this great city the enemy had come like wild
beasts, killed the men and took the women. Whether a woman was old or young was
nothing. Young were taken first and then old.
“My sister’s baby cried,” one girl
said, whose eyes were swollen nearly closed from weeping, “he was but five
months old, and he was so hearty and strong and cried so loud. They snatched
him from her breast, and then the enemy who had hold of her was angry and
strangled the little thing. She lay bound and not able to even to cry out, and
when he and thirty others were done with her she was dead, too.”
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