You’re referring to studies by S.L.A. Marshall’s “Men Against Fire,” and the claims made therein are not without substantial controversy. It appears that Marshall’s source data wasn’t nearly as good as he would have liked to claim.
LTC (ret) Grossman’s work “On Killing” is more substantial, and claims that, yes, most people are who not experienced for de-sensitized prior to events show reluctance to fire.
Americans, as a rule, are less sensitive in these issues than other cultures. Americans are, on the whole, more violent and aggressive than many, many other cultures around the world. So while we Americans are wondering “WTF?” in the reluctance for anyone with arms and opportunity to engage the terrorists, remember that other cultures are not like American culture. We have a unique culture which, quite frankly, scares the crap out of many other cultures around the world in our propensity for all levels of violence - including just being the crap out of someone with fists and anything else close at hand.
And I’m not talking about our hardened combat veterans - of which we have many more than the rest of the world. I’m talking about our common “Joe American” in the street — has the capability to scare the crap out of people from the rest of the world for just being himself. That we have so many combat vets who are not, as the media portrays them to the rest of the world, shambolic psychos wandering around the halls of state pysch wards, but well-adjusted pillars of their communities - and who are big fuzzy teddy bears with barely concealed claws - scares many non-Americans to death.
I’ve seen this over and over and over again in Silicon Valley, where we’d have people from all over the world show up to work. When they’d travel outside the little enclave of the Bay Area in California, they were genuinely scared of Americans - until they got to know them.
Furriners just don’t ‘get’ us - at all. If an American were in that situation and had arms and started shooting back, you can bet your hangie-down parts that the world pretty would be having a cow right about now.
Yes.
Marshall has, sort of, been well hammered. But you have to give him credit for, for that time, going down to the units and in a very primitive and narrative way, getting some quantitative idea of what was going on.
He just didn’t have the education, which even then in manufacturing was only just getting a hold.
Now a days, of course, the military is always sending Ph.D’s around to get , as much as possible, grip on what is going on.
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I remember talking to a Delta guy and he said he, with others, was made to talk to so many eggheads it was making him think there was something wrong with him.
A lot of this stuff is touchy feely and makes the more rigid uncomfortable, but it goes back in disguise, and ‘common sense’, as far as recorded history.
Every leader is interested in getting his expensive troops to expend maximum effort. Soldiers, and cops, are human, and have all the foibles and faults of their culture and our species