Yes, let's cultivate an enhanced ability to handle combat stress and slip back into life at home

back on 18 august, i posted on an nyt article that was evidently talking about the same thing (see Let's make our troops into cyborgs that can shake off that annoying malaise after killing people)... now time magazine is writing about the same thing...

is this how we want to condition our troops...? do we really want them to be able to kill and then just shrug it off...? is it just me or is this some really creepy shit...?

Samurai Mind Training for Modern American Warriors

[...]

Think military and you think macho, not meditation, but that's about to change now that the Army intends to train its 1.1 million soldiers in the art of mental toughness. The Defense Department hopes that giving soldiers tools to fend off mental stress will toughen its troops at war and at home. It's the first time mental combat is being mandated on a large scale, but a few thousand soldiers who have participated in a voluntary program called Warrior Mind Training have already gotten a taste of how strengthening the mind is way different - dare we say harder? - than pounding out the push-ups.

Warrior Mind Training is the brainchild of Ernst and two friends, who were teaching meditation and mind-training in California. In 2005, a Marine attended a class in San Diego and suggested expanding onto military bases. Ernst and her colleagues researched the military mindset, consulting with veterans who had practiced meditation on the battlefield and back home. She also delved into the science behind mind training to analyze how meditation tactics could help treat - and maybe even help prevent - post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rooted in the ancient Samurai code of self-discipline, Warrior Mind Training draws on the image of the mythic Japanese fighter, an elite swordsman who honed his battle skills along with his mental precision. The premise? Razor-sharp attention plus razor-sharp marksmanship equals fearsome warrior.

[...]

The benefits of Warrior Mind Training, students have told instructors, are impressive: better aim on the shooting range, higher test scores, enhanced ability to handle combat stress and slip back into life at home. No comprehensive studies have been done, though a poll of 25 participants showed 70% said they felt better able to handle stressful situations and 65% had improved self-control.

i'm all for meditation... i've been practicing it on and off since the late 80s, it's taken me in some very positive directions and, quite honestly, has helped lead me to a place in my life more positive and satisfying than i would have ever thought possible... but the aim of this effort creeps me out...

personally, i don't WANT to blow somebody to bloody bits and come away unaffected... in fact, the very LAST thing in this world i could ever imagine doing is blowing someone to bloody bits... i managed to spend 18 months in vietnam without firing a weapon and four - soon to be five - visits to afghanistan without witnessing death (not that i'm not highly aware that it's been all around me), and have found even those experiences to be profoundly disturbing... i simply can't imagine how i would be impacted by the immediate, visceral reality of death and destruction right in my face...

the other thing about this article that really disturbs me is the whole concept of "warrior"... i've posted several times previously on this and i think it's worth repeating one of them here...

from 14 january 2008

i've posted previously (here and here) on the increasing and deeply disturbing prevalence of the term "warrior" to describe those we send off to fight and die protecting the "interests" of our nation monied elites... here's another, equally disturbing one that just caught my attention...

from a lockheed martin press release...

“Lockheed Martin continues to focus on providing our Warfighters with new and innovative technologies that will make their jobs easier,” said Lionel Liebman, manager of Program Development – Applied Research at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.

also interesting that "warfighter" is capitalized...

what the increasing visibility of these terms suggests to me is that we are continuing to be slowly inculcated to seeing war as an integral part of our society... yes, it's true, that serving our country via military service has, at least in the past, been seen as an honorable calling, whether it's just for one hitch or for a career... these people have always been known variously as "members of the military," "career military," "soldiers," "sailors," "airmen," "marines," or, simply, "our troops"... all of those sobriquets implied government service, love of country, defense of freedom, etc., etc...

but what is implied by "warrior" and "warfighter"...? to me, for one thing, they do NOT imply any of those other things... "warrior," for instance, for me, calls to mind warrior nations like sparta, where the entire society was devoted to conquest, or to descriptions of the marauding huns, usually characterized as a "warlike" people... the only "service" implied is service to death and destruction... "warfighter" is even more chilling... to me, that word implies a weapon of advanced technology, an implement, if you will, of accomplishing that death and destruction...

words are powerful and the words we choose to use convey a great deal about our beliefs and views of the world... "warrior" and "warfighter" make my skin crawl...

my skin is still crawling...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Let's make our troops into cyborgs that can shake off that annoying malaise after killing people

ya know, sometimes i read stuff that just makes my head explode...

The Army plans to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in emotional resiliency, military officials say.

The training, the first of its kind in the military, is meant to improve performance in combat and head off the mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, that plague about one-fifth of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

didja ever think that maybe mental health problems, depression, ptsd and suicide are nature's way of telling us that maybe we shouldn't engage in destruction, war and socially sanctioned mass slaughter...?

oh, and what the hell does "emotional resilience" mean anyway...? being able to take in the sight of a child's body dismembered by a bomb blast and then have a heart-warming conversation with the wife and kids back home that evening...? witnessing physical and emotional carnage for 15 months and going back to the states and coaching the little league baseball team...?

i think what we're trying for here are cyborgs not human beings...

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism (i.e., an organism that has both artificial and natural systems).

[...]

Real (as opposed to fictional) cyborgs are more frequently people who use cybernetic technology to repair or overcome the physical and mental constraints of their bodies.

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Primum non nocere is a Latin phrase that means "First, do no harm."

uh, hello...? while it may not be the exact wording from the hippocratic oath...

The origin of the phrase is uncertain. The Hippocratic Oath includes the promise "to abstain from doing harm" ... but not the precise phrase. Perhaps the closest approximation in the Hippocratic Corpus is in Epidemics: "The physician must...have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm"

regardless, it's a fundamental principle of health care providers, a principle that seems to have been summarily tossed aside by these two characters...

from raw story...

There's an article in today's New York Times about Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, two military retirees and psychologists with no expertise on al-Qaeda, no foreign language skills, no experience in real interrogations, and with no relevant degrees ("...their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy").

Nevertheless, these two seemingly managed to cash in on America's "global war on terror."

With little more than their psychology credentials and "an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists," the pair, known as "Doc Mitchell" and "Doc Jessen" built "a thriving business that made millions of dollars selling interrogation and training services to the CIA," per the Times piece.

The article details the torture and interrogation of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah, described at the time as al-Qaeda's No. 3, by Doc Mitchell and Doc Jessen:

In late July 2002, Dr. Jessen joined [Dr. Mitchell] in Thailand. On Aug. 1, the Justice Department completed a formal legal opinion authorizing the SERE methods, and the psychologists turned up the pressure. Over about two weeks, Mr. Zubaydah was confined in a box, slammed into the wall and waterboarded 83 times.

The brutal treatment stopped only after Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen themselves decided that Mr. Zubaydah had no more information to give up. Higher-ups from headquarters arrived and watched one more waterboarding before agreeing that the treatment could stop, according to a Justice Department legal opinion.

while we're engaged as a nation in the great debate over the future of our health care, it would be wise to keep in mind just how steeped in venality some of our health care providers have become...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Make sure the ones you're depriving have no means to fight back

from today's la times...

Gov. seeks to cut mental services for homeless
Schwarzenegger says ending the acclaimed program would save $55 million annually toward $3-billion budget gap.

A nationally lauded program that has helped thousands of mentally ill homeless men and women break the cycle of psychiatric hospitalization, jail time and street life is now on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's list of budget cuts.

The governor has proposed eliminating Integrated Services for Homeless Adults With Serious Mental Illness, which receives $55 million annually, as part of his attempt to close a budget gap estimated at more than $3 billion.

why, it all makes perfectly good sense... the homeless mentally ill have no lobbyists... as a source of campaign contributions, they're practically worthless... they don't have access to the media... they don't own property or stock... they're not affiliated with an ethnic group, religious organization or political party... they don't speak out on issues... they probably don't even vote... hell, when they talk at all, they don't even make sense half the time... what a perfect opportunity for a budget cut...

p.s. $55M is 1.9% of $3B...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments