I have watched Restrepo on Netflix and found one thing interesting, that biggest thing soldiers have missed in their civilian lives is the adrenaline/joy rush of a shoot-out, no matter how dangerous it is. Paradoxically most of the interviewees are clearly suffering from some levels of PTSD, because probably you cannot be trained for when you see your friend's body/face to be blown apart.
It would be interesting to hear from someone in the military or someone with military psychology training knowledge, how this works. Seems that soldiers are fine with killing "the enemy", but seeing death of your friends gives you (understandably) PTSD.
It’s as bleak and distressing as you can imagine. Here’s a couple to get you started:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/life-as-a-dron...
https://dronecenter.bard.edu/burdens-war-crews-drone-aircraf...
> but military training is mostly about obeying orders
Not at all. The military wants individuals to think for themselves. Strictly obeying orders would never get the job done. In fact, the large majority of military training is industrial/trade depending on the branch. When people see bootcamp, and orders being thrown around that's less of learning to obey and more of making people into a cohesive team (breakdown, then buildup). Think about how tight a startup team is after going through hell to get a product launched. Very similar but even tighter.
> that biggest thing soldiers have missed in their civilian lives is the adrenaline/joy rush of a shoot-out, no matter how dangerous it is
A very small percentage of the military ever gets in a firefight, again depending on branch. Of course there is an adrenaline rush that comes out of being in danger (just shooting guns in general is a rush). Every time I paddle out into big surf or when I have sky dived, the chance I may die is part of the 'fun'. I've never been in a shoot-out, but from what I've read it's those experiences X 100 or more. Finally, these are the exact type of people we want fighting. The best way to survive and win is to go all in 100%. When someone is there, on the ground being shot at, the time for them to debate is over.
> Seems that soldiers are fine with killing "the enemy"
Keep in mind that the US has strict rules of engagement (mistakes are sometimes made as reports have shown). By the time a soldier is killing the enemy they are also going to be receiving fire. Effectively if they do not kill this person, this person will kill them. Seeing friends die is obviously hard because they are your friends, and because of the way teams are built people end up very close.
With all that said, the military is the execution arm of politicians. A soldier on the ground has about as much power to decide to be in or out of war as you or I. People join for a lot of reasons. Financial is a common one. But, a lot of people also join out of a duty and a draw to be of service to a country they love regardless of who is POTUS at any given time.
Even being in a conventional aircraft you are largely removed from the situation because you are thousands (or tens of thousands) of feet above your target and any individual is an unrecognizable speck that your weapon system strikes after you're already well past your target.
This is a problem, for society, with modern warfare. You can sit a mile away and 'paint' a target with IR for someone else to fire a missile with, or you can call in on your radio coordinates and have artillery take out your target from even farther away, or you can effectively emulate a video game and drop a bomb on a few pixels in Afghanistan while sitting in an air conditioned trailer in Nevada. You can wage war without ever having to see the face of the enemy, you strip the enemy of their humanity making it easier to kill.
I imagine some drone operators struggle with severe depression but I imagine it's generally less than an infantrymen that was in CQB firefights in Ramadi or Fallujah or a trench in WWI.
Modern warfare allows us to be cold and calculating, it allows us to pause our humanity. It's good for a military but it's bad for civilization.
I think this is what concerns people so much about the drone strikes. Clearly drone strikes are one sided fire fights. And even by the government's own statistics their signal to noise kill ratio is abysmal. This is categorically different than a soldier on the ground returning fire even if we might disagree with the soldier having been sent there in the first place.
This is not a new problem though. Cruise missiles did this for years before drones. Drones are just more prolific now, and we are more likely to see the aftermath.