Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 77

ETHICS IN COMBAT

One study shows that most people favor self-interest over principled reasoning.20 This supports Abraham
Maslow’s famous psychological theory of a hierarchy of
needs, whereby a deficiency in physical safety turns the
need to survive into the prime impulse.21 Some soldiers will do whatever is necessary to survive, even if it
means violating their conscience. Moreover, human beings may feel that as long as they are alive, they can seek
forgiveness. When a person dies, all is finished. Biblical
scripture conveys the idea that where there is life, there
is hope: “Even a live dog is better off than a dead lion.”22
Basic instincts of survival and victory are material
expressions of human existence. Their vision tends to
be limited to the here and now, and it precludes a transcendental existence after death. These drives, however,
can be overridden by powerful emotions appealing to
an even more primal response.

Revenge Over Honor
Emotions such as revenge can trigger an overpowering rage in combatants who see life violently ripped
away in front of their eyes. Morality and concepts of
rules in war slip to the back of the mind—disengaged—
and become reluctant witnesses to atrocity. Once the
passion of vengeance dissipates, the conscience will
fight its way back and begin a separate battle for peace
within the individual. Often, dominating vengeful emotions focus on the enemy, but in later psychoses, they
may push an individual to attack innocents.
In his book Achilles in Vietnam, Jonathan Shay
postulates that revenge in war is often linked to the
deep psychological and cultural need to resurrect fallen
comrades. Shay quotes a veteran who recalls revenge
killings: “Every [expletive] one that died, I say, ‘____,
here’s one for you, baby. I’ll take this mother[expletive] out and I’m going to cut his [expletive] heart
out for you.”’23 The soldier was talking to his comrade
as if he were alive and present. This illustrates that
not only are the dead brought back to life through
this sacrificial act of bloodletting but also feelings of
helplessness and fear are banished. Keeping faith with
friends’ ghosts who haunt the battlefield in the survivor’s mind affirms a sense of justice in the insanity of
war, even if it is vengeance.
Americans should not fall into the delusion that
their soldiers have any spe 6