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Australian SASR already had a major scandal. There's been open reporting in the past about some bad actors over the years in USSOCOM. It'd be interesting for
by psunavy03 1y ago
Australian SASR already had a major scandal. There's been open reporting in the past about some bad actors over the years in USSOCOM. It'd be interesting for someone to do some serious psych research on how many of these people were psychopaths who slipped through the cracks as opposed to people who broke bad after several combat deployments.
The general public never payed much attention to GWOT as it was, but one of the consequences of it was that the special operations forces as a community were "rode hard and put away wet" as they say for 20+ years. Take someone, put them through a grueling selection process to become "the best of the best," which can cultivate a corresponding ego. Then pound the hell out of them over a full career with combat deployment after combat deployment, raid after raid.
It doesn't excuse what happened by any means, but is there legitimately a limit that needs to be known about how much violence someone can take before they give in to the beast within? Military aviators have crew rest limitations because it was discovered that beyond a certain level of fatigue, you are literally killing people. The experience of Vietnam POWs forced changes to military training for being taken captive, because they found out that if you torture anyone enough, they will eventually break.
So is the solution here that the SOF communities are attracting too many psychopaths and screening needs to be changed, or is it that people were being broken by war, which is a totally different problem?