Basic Training

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During the American war in Vietnam, there was an understanding of acts that individual soldiers engaged in as moral transgressions. The US military creating standard operating procedures that inevitably led to atrocities and war crimes. This is a very different image of basic training than the one we see in say full metal jacket. When the psychiatrist and psychologist talk about basic training, they certainly don't go into the side of it that's very brutalizing.

Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. How the civil-military divide makes troops into super citizens and what it means that agents of state violence are turning to the grammar of identity politics—and more. The second in a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to New Left Review newleftreview.org/subscriptions/new Buy My Country is the World: Staughton Lynd’s Writings, Speeches, and Statements Against the Vietnam War haymarketbooks.org/books/1956-my-country-is-the-world