War

In his book, "On Killing" (1996), Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has re-written military history to highlight what other histories hide: The fact that military science is less about strategy and technology than about overcoming the instinctive human reluctance to kill members of our own species. The true "Revolution in Military Affairs" was not Donald Rumsfeld’s move to high-tech in 2001, but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall’s discovery in the 1940s that only 15-20 percent of World War II soldiers along the line of fire would use their weapons: "Those (80-85 percent) who did not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges" (Grossman, p. 4).