To Kill or Not to Kill.

• Author: Boudreau, Tyler E.
• Position: Viewpoint essay

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U.S. ARMY LIEUTENANT COLONEL John Nagl was an unlikely guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. One of the authors of the 2006 Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual , Nagl said: "If I could sum up the book in just a few words, it would be: Be polite, be professional, be prepared to kill." In that single sentence, he put his finger on a crucial discrepancy. In Iraq, I witnessed this discrepancy. I felt it. I knew from the moment I picked up the Counterinsurgency Field Manual what was missing.

On April 11, 2004, I did something that I'd never before done. I shot a man ... at least, I shot at him. (Amidst the chaos of the moment, it was difficult to say whether or not he was hit.) It was Iraq. I was a Marine. And we were under heavy attack. It seemed like the thing to do.

Though I'd been in the infantry for more than a decade, I would not exactly describe the moment as perfunctory--automatic perhaps, but not quite perfunctory. Exactly what does it take to level the sights of a weapon and fire it at another human being? Under the circumstances, you wouldn't think it would take much. And honestly, for me it didn't.

But it would be precarious to assume that it didn't take much because of circumstances alone. For some people, circumstances weigh very little in the decision to shoot or not to shoot. In a counterinsurgency operation, military doctrine not only demands of its soldiers a willingness to kill, but a willingness not to kill as well. Training for the Iraq War has slighted the second part. So today, we have a different kind of force, a different kind of warrior. I know. I was one of them.

There was a well-known study--well known within the military, anyway--done directly after World War II by retired Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, author of Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War . He discovered that even in the thickest of fire fights, the vast majority of soldiers did not fire their weapons. (Based on interviews with the soldiers themselves, Marshall estimated that within the average unit under fire, only 15 percent of men actually pulled their triggers. Even within the most disciplined units, he found that average rose to not more than 25 percent.) Marshall discovered that it was not fear that prevented these men from engaging their enemies, but humanity. All of them reported a keen reluctance to kill.

You can just imagine the military's dismay upon getting this news. Beneath all the rigid tomes on military tactics lies the fundamental principle of conventional...