This is an update to last year's post, with some integration of some comments and some additional remarks on my part. Last year's post can be found here, and the comments that I didn't include in this update are worth reading.

Another difference is that I won't be censoring this post; not that I had to last year, but I had put up an introduction asking for some of the all soldiers are thugs comments to be held off from...I'll ask for that this time around, but I will not censor this year.

On to the show...

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 will 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. I just did a post on tribal concepts and honor in relation to government, Etho-nationalism Versus Civic Nationalism, so that is a good resource for looking at tribal concepts.

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 chief/king can beat an incompetent Soldier general, but these eat up men in Warrior cultures that don't outnumber Soldier societies.

In the Rome clip, we can see the diversity of personality. The battle is a great example of organization against bravery...until the Warrior in Pullo breaks free of the formation and goes charging into the Gauls...out warrioring the Warriors, until he himself is beat down. The Soldiers then pulls Pullo's fat out of the fire ;>

Digression - Pullo and Vorenus are historical figures recorded in Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico
Source

You see, Pullo is a Warrior in the Soldier system...with a bit of Thug thrown in for good measure

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 psychopaths 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 or power urges.

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, for the role that ISIS has claimed for itself in Islamic law...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 (for the most part, there were 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 mind of the troops. While books can be written (and have) 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.

I have to re-state this here: Thugs will be found in all armies; a certain percentage of men will act this way whether under arms or not; some systems do not punish it, and some systems reward it.

Outsiders' Perspectives

@contentking made a good point on last year's version of this post:

I think that the public often vilifies soldiers when a war is not popular.

This affects soldiers (generic, not type) much more under Soldier cultures. Men who serve in republics or democracies are typically going to want the public's approval; when that approval isn't there for real or whether fakenews says it's not there, it affects the morale and behavior of those men.

And yet the military is often a target of derision under democratic societies.
See Kipling's Tommy

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap.
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an` Tommy, 'ow's yer soul? "
But it's " Thin red line of 'eroes " when the drums begin to roll
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's " Thin red line of 'eroes, " when the drums begin to roll.

And yet, when Soldier systems fail to punish, or even worse, protect the behavior of Thugs, then there are justifications for contempt...the problem is understanding when Thug behavior is an outlier or is the norm, combined with politically motivated fakenews in these cases.

There are stupid dangerous orders that Soldiers must obey b/c they don't know their role on the battlefield...
There are stupid , dangerous orders no Soldier should obey (killing civilians unless you know for damn sure they are franc tireurs)

@coincentrado made this point last year

humanity has no place in these kind of exchanges. We should do everything in our power to disassociate the idea of honor from war.

This view also contributes to @contentking's observation.

My answer to this is that it reflects a cognitive bias called projection bias, in which we assume that most people think just like us. The people holding that view are often caring and nice people, but they assume that everybody is like that. As noted above, there are a certain percentage of people that are born as Thugs; military and police structures, whether tribal or not, are the only practical counters to that...so far...and they can come with their own problems.

In Warrior societies, the reasons to fight are very personal, so this problem isn't encountered...unless you are talking about subjected people living under tribal rule where the tribal code encourages Thug activity against...outsiders.

Which brings me back to the section title...many veterans or active duty can look back at their society as outsiders. I certainly do. In Soldier systems, military service is often a tribal experience, which provides a shared experience that civilians don't understand. Likewise, combat veterans have a different view than other vets/service-members... a circle within a circle.

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.