According to Dr. Richard A. Gabriel in his fascinating book, No More Heroes, the sociopathic personality can keep his or her psyche intact even under extremely pathological conditions, while the sane will eventually break down under guilt, fear, or normal human repulsion.
Chemical Soldiers
Richard A. Gabriel (military historian, retired U.S. army officer and former professor at the U.S. Army War College) describes socio/psychopaths as people without conscience, intellectually aware of what harm they might do to another living being, but unable to experience corresponding emotions.
This realization, Gabriel claims, has led the military establishments of the world to discover a drug banishing fear and emotion in the soldier by controlling his brain chemistry. In order for soldiers to ideally function in modern war he should first be reconstructed to become what could be defined as mentally ill.
“We may be rushing headlong into a long, dark chemical night from which there will be no return,” warns Gabriel.
If these efforts succeed (as it appears they can) a chemically induced zombie would be born, a psychopathic-type being who would function (at least temporarily) without any human compassion and whose moral conscience would not exist to take responsibility for his actions.
“Man’s nature would be altered forever,” he adds, “and it would cost him his soul.”
As incredible and futuristic as that sounds, the creation of such a drug is apparently already well underway in the world’s military research labs; Gabriel reports such research centers already exist in the United States, Russia, and Israel.
Since all emotions are based in anxiety, it appears the eradication of it (perhaps through a variant of the anti-anxiety medication Busbirone) may create soldiers who become more efficient killing machines.
Futuristic Warfare
Gabriel writes further about the possible nightmarish future of modern warfare:
“The standards of normal sane men will be eroded, and soldiers will no longer die for anything understandable or meaningful in human terms. They will simply die, and even their own comrades will be incapable of mourning their deaths […] The battlefields of the future will witness a clash of truly ignorant armies, armies ignorant of their own emotions and even of the reasons for which they fight.” (Operation Enduring Valor, Richard A. Gabriel)
This would strip a person of his core identity and all of his humanity. Whether or not the soldier would knowingly take part in this experience is unknown, but during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, one could almost easily imagine that this conscience-killing pill had already been swallowed.
Psychopathic Behavior During War
During the 1991 Iraq war a pilot interviewed on European television callously remarked ambushing Iraqis was “like waiting for the cockroaches to come out so we could kill them." Other U.S. pilots compared killing human beings to “shooting turkey” or like “attacking a farm after someone had opened a sheep stall.”
This same lack of empathy can be seen in Iraq’s Abu Graib prison scandal (2004) where U.S. soldiers were shown seemingly to enjoy torture, as well as more recent photos of military men posing with dead Afghans (first published in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine); more gruesome photos were later published in Rolling Stone before the U.S. Army censored all the remaining damning material from public view.
No More Heroes warns that modern warfare will become increasingly difficult for sane men to endure. The combat punch of man’s weapons has increased over 600% since World War II. These weapons are highly technical. High Explosive Plastic Tracers (HEP-T) send fragments of metal through enemy tanks and into humans at speeds faster than the speed of sound. The Starlight Scope is able to differentiate between males and females by computing differences in body heat given off by pelvic areas. The Beehive artillery ammunition (filled with three-inch long nail-like steel needles) is capable of pinning victims to trees. The world has a nightmare arsenal of terrible weapons advanced beyond the evolution of our morality.
According to renowned psychologist, Robert Hare, one out of every twenty-five persons is a psychopath (most are undetected by society). Many of these unnoticed pathological people obtain unique positions of leadership and power, so is it surprising warfare remains so frequently occurring and grim?
Looked at it this way, Gabriel’s “psychopath pill” may not even be needed in warfare, because normal human beings are easily influenced, hypnotized, and swayed by the power of psychopaths who are already among us.
Sources:
Voices from our Conscience (out-of-print), P. Mari, Archangel & White Feather Press, 1995
No More Heroes; Madness and Psychiatry in War, Richard A. Gabriel, New York: Hill and Wang, 1987
Operation Enduring Valor, Dr. Richard A. Gabriel
Perfect Killer, Lewis Perdue, 2005, Virtual Tour
Richard A. Gabriel, Potomac Books Inc.
ABC News, US Army Says Sorry for Afghan Corpse Photos, Sally Sara, updated March 22, 2011
The Raw Story,Rolling Stone Publishes Graphic Photos and Videos from Notorious Afghan 'Kill Team, David Edwards, 3/28/2011
'Death Squad': Full Horror Emerges of how Rogue U.S. Brigade Murdered and Mutilated Innocent Afghan Civilians - and Kept their Body Parts as Trophies, Danial Bates and Mark Duell, updated March 29, 2011
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Paula Marie Deubel - Published author/writer/journalist/poet I've always written under the pen name "P. Mari," an abbreviation of my full name. I have ...
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