A quick note before I start; I well understand that many consider American Servicemen (and Policemen) to be in the Thug category by default. It is your right to hold that opinion, and to share it on your own blog. For THIS post, and THIS day, I will not tolerate that opinion on this specific post - you will be flagged and muted for expressing that opinion here and now. Tomorrow, and on a different post, I do not censor. I have asked for courtesy, not obedience, and I will be discourteous to the best of my power to those that will not grant me that courtesy I have asked for in advance. I am a veteran, so understand why I would take offense. Thank You.

Who fights? Why do they fight?

Most men are not killers, or even fighters, by nature. Col. Dave Grossman, who has made a study of violence in both military and civilian environments, estimates that only about 3% of men are willing to kill by nature; how a culture "trains" a man can raise that percentage (pre WWII examples being Japan and Germany), but not to lower it.

How does that stack up to what we know historically? And how does that apply to how men fight...and kill.

Let's look at three basic outlooks; the Soldier, the Warrior, and the Thug.

Since this typology is a simplification, there can be some overlap depending on individual and circumstance, but looking at how a culture defines how wars are fought can answer some of these questions.

The Soldier - The Soldier is fighting more for an idea than for anything else.

Patriotism, nationalism, communism, and liberty are just a few ideas that soldiers fight for. The Soldier fights in organized systems and legality plays a major part in the way he fights more than morality does, although most cultures base their legal systems on their moral systems. You could also say that the Soldier fights for a government, and be right 90+% of the time...even guerilla fighters tend to fight for shadow governments. However, governments are usually organized around ideas...at least on the surface.

The idea can also be based on tribal affiliation, which is almost a crossover with The Warrior , who we will discuss in the next section.

The Soldier is motivated by the success of his idea. Between this and his specialization (in modern war) he may never even see the face of his enemy. Any mode of war that is legally permissible under his system will be used...and on the battlefield itself, any tactic he thinks he can get way with will be used to protect his own life and that of his comrades (of course, that is the behavior of us all in extremis).

Soldiers are specialized in function; the organization of their armies are based upon that. The Romans are the Classical example of this. The Romans based their patria, their government, on moral ideas derived from their tribal identity. Later on, they changed their State to allow other to join their tribe as fellow Romans.

Roman organization of tactics...

and and specialization in arms...

...are just some examples of their overall organization in service to the aims of State (Chain of command, communications and battlefield direction, etc, are other items we could look at)

We can look at Zulus and Mongols as on the definitive line between Soldier and Warrior. Both the Zulus and Mongols were highly organized and had advanced concepts of tactics...

The Mongols even used Psychological warfare and deception...

While the Zulu command and control model...

led to their conquest of the greater part of Southern Africa

However, both Mongols and Zulu retained more of a tribal oriented focus than a State. The Zulu WERE organizing into a tribal-based State as the Romans had done, but their eventual loss to the British ended the transition.

The Warrior - The motive of The Warrior is honor, as defined by his culture.

This is usually tribal in nature. Don't think that The Soldier does not concern himself with his honor, but depending on his personality and his culture, getting the mission done is a higher moral/honor priority than beating the enemy in a fact-to-face fight. OTOH, US Marines charged a jihadist position with bayonets, too. There is going to be a bit of Warrior in almost every combat-oriented Soldier!

For an excellent discussion of honor, see McKay's "Honor" series at the Art of Manliness or buy his book on Amazon.

Glory plays a large part in the motivation of The Warrior, as well.

The purpose of the Scalp Dance, for example, was so a warrior could display his victories to the tribe. Each victory was a service to the tribe. The Warrior proves his honor, and gains in societal stature, with success in battle. This leads to a tendency for Warriors to consider personal prowess and individual (honorable) fighting as their end goal in military preparation.

This leads to a fatal flaw in confrontations with Soldier based military systems:

From HBO's Rome

Organization beats individual prowess on a one to one basis. Warriors can overwhelm Soldiers if there are the numbers to do it, and a brilliant Warrior leader can beat an incompetent Soldier General, but these eat up men in Warrior cultures that don't outnumber Soldier societies.

The Thug - At the start of this article, I noted that only about 3% of men were naturally prepared to kill; that does not mean they want to kill.

From 2-3% of the general population are pyschopaths or sociopaths. This is not the same portion as the "natural born killers". But, outliers can overlap. In ANY military system, there will be those who use opportunities to satisfy their own bloodlust.

One might assume that these men would make good soldiers; one would be wrong:

many sociopaths are unable to overcome their more troublesome psychological tendencies long enough to excel in a military environment. Indeed, the failure to form emotional connections with peers or tolerate superiors makes sociopaths difficult to train, especially in an environment where each soldier's life literally depends on his or her teammates.
Do Sociopaths Make Better Soldiers?

But what about societal systems that encourage such behavior?

Let's look at ISIS. Due to the ideological nature and the total war mode of their system, we could classify them as Soldiers; due to the cultural military history of the Arabs, we could call them Warriors...

From my perspective, torturing folks to death publicly to instill terror, intentionally targeting civilians, and using children as weapons of war go past the bounds of civilized behavior. I would argue that Islam as a politico-religious ideology permits such behavior. Since there have been no fatwahs against the behavior altogether (there have been Islamic rulings against ISIS...but not against the policy ISIS is using), I have no problem believing my argument.

And when systems break down?

In 1968, American soldiers committed the same kind of atrocities at My Lai/Son My that ISIS commits now. Without going into excuse mode for the reasons that drove the men to do such a thing, we will look at a weak command structure that was (IMHO) the prime reason.

Every command in the general operation was vague, and as the orders were transmitted to lower levels of command, the orders became increasingly more targeted at civilian infrastructure. This may have been a case of junior officers complying with implied higher command, but the point is that no junior officer questioned or refused commands that had no military purpose. By the time orders were given at the line level, the soldiers believed they were

to destroy everything in the village that was "walking, crawling or growing"
/from the Wiki link

Even the soldiers who did not participate in the atrocity did nothing to stop it (two exceptions to this).

To make matters worse, the NCO's were inexperienced and a respected NCO who had the experience to know the massacre was wrong had been killed the previous week. The weak command structure further proved itself as such by covering up the murders.

While the United States military had set up a Soldier's system, complete with standards of war and a chain of command, the system was weak - the chain of command evaded responsibility, the soldiers were not fully trained in acceptable behavior, no one paid any attention to the state of mid of the troops. While there can be written books on the failure of the United States military to uphold it's duty to understand it's role and to effectively fight the Vietnam War, it is obvious that the system failed and created Thugs in some areas.

Conclusion

I don't want to give credence to the propaganda that Vietnam vets are thugs. In fact, those soldiers who served in civilian assistance programs (RF/PF, CAP, etc etc) often fell in love with Vietnam and it's people. Most Vietnam vets did honorable service, but it is the Thugs that make the front page.

• Thugs are going to exist in any military system
  The Warrior Culture controls Thugs by rewarding honorable behavior (culturally defined)
  The Soldier's system controls Thugs by legality.
  Some cultures reward Thug activities.

• It is a combination of individual personality, societal structure, military system, and sometimes a culture within a military, that can determine how any one man looks upon his part in the profession of arms; most men will go with the dominant culture, as they would with any nonmilitary aspect of the society.

Resources

Grossman, D. (2014). On Killing (Revised edition). Open Road Media.