The Artifice Of War

" If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?" -Joan Baez

"The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war." - Norman Schwarzkopf

I present these two quotes to suggest an obvious friction in our American society, as well as to introduce the story of Chelsea Cheatham and Cory Gafton. Mister Gafton has been charged with the murder of Ms. Cheatham after a year-long investigation. This story relates to the quotes above because Mister Gafton is a soldier, most recently deployed at Fort Hood in Texas. And if you feel as if you have heard this story before, it could be that you have heard similar tales of homicide about soldiers at Fort Hood Texas over the past year. 

You may recall that Private First Class Vanessa Guillen was killed by Specialist Aaron David Robinson back in April. Initially reported as a missing person, Private Guillen was found, or rather her remains were uncovered, so she was no longer missing. Specialist Robinson committed suicide shortly after that and his accomplice, Cecily Aguilar, was arrested on charges of evidence tampering. Apparently cleanup after killing someone with a hammer requires assistance. Ms. Aguilar is a former Fort Hood soldier.

Which doesn't mean that all soldiers are evil, but it does raise some questions about our best and brightest. We are training young men and women to kill, but hopefully they will show more discretion about how to use this power than someone who has been less conditioned. Unless the people we are training to kill already have a certain proclivity or predisposition to such things. Twenty year olds indoctrinated into the science of killing in a world that already leans on desperate measures to solve problems makes me wonder if we are doing everything we can to recruit stable individuals capable of making life and death decisions. It makes me wonder why it took a year to figure out how death might have come to Chelsea Cheatham after her body was found at a Days Inn six minutes away from Fort Hood. 

It makes me wonder what we are teaching our enlisted men and women at Fort Hood. So I leave you with this quote from Sun Tzu: "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."