Well, there's a little brainwashing involved in military service. Oh, not the blatant kind where you're strapped down and injected with drugs and such. But you are taught to follow orders, don't question your superiors, don't humanize the enemy in any way, and so on. Mostly, there are good reasons for the mild brainwashing.
For example, if you humanize the enemy, you might hesitate to shoot, which could be fatal. I humanized the enemy, inadvertently, in Grenada. I hijacked an abandoned Cuban wall locker for my own personal use. Inside it was a Christmas card, and written in it in Spanish was, "Merry Christmas, Dad, I miss you very much" in a child's writing, in crayon. That made me realize, aw shit, these aren't evil assholes, they're just dudes, with families. So when I had an opportunity to shoot a Cuban sniper on a hill in the back, I hesitated. He died anyway -- one of our helicopters roared by and blew him into a multitude of bloody pieces with rockets.
If you question or disobey orders, even if they're immoral or illegal orders, you could cause loss of morale, and either way you must be punished to set an example for the other soldiers. That happened to me in Turkey. I got entrapped by a Turkish girl, barely underage. Anyway, my superior *ordered* me to be at my wedding. (The choice was marriage or Turkish prison.) I thought, what the fuck, the Army doesn't have any right to order me to show up at my own wedding. So I metaphorically flipped them the bird and went to the beach instead, a protest of sorts against Army intrusion into my personal life.
Well, the disciplinary officer in Turkey was a lieutenant colonel. He actually agreed with me, said I should not have been given that order, but he had to maintain discipline, so he'd have to give me an article 15, or I could choose to escalate it to a court martial and take my chances. I took the 15, and because of his rank, it was automatically a field grade article 15 and automatically resulted in a loss of one rank. And then they ordered me to be at my wedding *again* (after the date had been reset.) Again, I flipped them the bird and hit the beach, just couldn't force myself to marry this chick against my will. Once again, back to the lieutenant colonel. It went smoother the second time, since we both knew the deal, and again, he expressed his regret over it all.
So, there are reasons for the mild brainwashing they do. It *is* important to maintain discipline. I didn't get all weepy over the two article 15's. I was a bit pissed that they kept ordering me to be at my own wedding, but I wasn't all that pissed about the article 15's.
(If you're curious as to whether I chose forced marriage or Turkish prison, well, I thought outside the box a bit and came up with a Plan C. I had a Turkish friend go to the chick's family and tell them that, okay, if I'm forced to, I'd marry her. And I'd take her back to the States and pimp her out for $5 a fuck to anyone on the street who'd want her for 10 minutes. Or...I could give them some money, and they could call it all off. They settled on $3,000, which they said would pay for a hymenoplasty. Yes, that's a real word, and a real surgical procedure, to restore the hymen. BUT, they insisted that we have the wedding, and she would say 'no' to marrying me, thus preserving the family honor. So, that's what we did. Ironic, that the only wedding of my own that I've ever been involved in, was one in which I *cheered* when the woman said no. Usually, that's not a happy event.)
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