Talk:Military personnel

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Bias against militaries

It seems clear to me that this article demonstrates a significant degree of bias against the existence of militaries in general. I can't put my finger on exactly where or in what way, though. For instance, the line "In order to ensure that recruits will kill if ordered to do so, they are taught to objectify (dehumanize) their opponent as an ‘enemy target’ to ‘be engaged’, which will ‘fall when hit'". This seems to suffer from a lack of a wider understanding about why militaries exist, and how they work. For instance, the statement "to ensure recruits will kill if ordered to do so," ignores the fact that recruits do not go to war, trained soldiers do (one hopes), and that they are never (to my knowledge) explicitly told to kill anyone. More usually they would be directed to attack a "position" - any killing is incidental in the taking of the position. Equally, the laws of war refer to "incapacitation" rather than killing. It also ignores the fact that though all recruits go through the same basic training, only a small proportion of them will join the infantry, where these sorts of "killing" questions are more prevalent. Of those who join the infantry only a small proportion will ever shoot at an enemy in anger.

Any suggestions on how the above could guide a correction or change of the article would be well-received. Axtract (talk) 11:45, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]