The primary method used by the military is to de-humanize their opponents. It is why you hear the members of the armed forces use "ragheads" to refer to the people of Iraq & Afghanistan. Other pejoratives were used in other wars.txinvestigator wrote:From the military perspective, a 15 percent firing rate among riflemen is like a 15 percent literacy rate among librarians. And fix it the military did. By the Korean War, around 55 percent of the soldiers were willing to fire to kill. And by Vietnam, the rate rose to over 90 percent.[/b]
This method is also what leads to some of the more brutal things we hear about in the news. The fact is that if you want 90%+ to be able to shoot the opposition, then you have to condition your troops to not view them as human beings, which unfortunately leads to transference of that viewpoint to the civillian population of the area. Similar methods were employed in WWII with lesser success, and with gradually increasing success through Korea, Viet Nam and finally Desert Storm & the occupation of Afghanistan & Iraq.
The major problem yet to be faced is "how do we de-program these kids?" Look at the level of violence between the returning vets and their families, and you will see what I mean.
BTW, I don't oppose the method used. It allows us to have a more effective military with fewer people in it. We can have a military that has roughly 1/6th the soldiers and be as effective as a traditional force. It's cost effective. The problem with thie method is we haven't figured out how to undo what we've done. How do we make our soldiers be civilians again? The military spent decades and millions of dollars figuring out how to make a better soldier, but not how to unmake them when the military is done with them.