The Marines literally make you say "kill" during combat training.

The phrase for firing a machine gun is "die mother fucker die mother fucker die mother fucker release" (release the trigger to prevent over heating of the barrel)

Every time we went on a platoon run the diddies are about murdering our enemies.

I honestly don't believe you were in the military, or you seem to have forgotten what it was really like. Or maybe you were in the air Force, but definitely not the Marine corps.

Source: I got out after 2 deployments in the Marine corps as a Sergeant.

What's more interesting is that this is not always known to people inside the group; that they believe it to be the standard (people from other military occupations are likewise often surprised when they witness a group of people team-chanting about killing people, having believed their own approach to be standard, and in my experience some European military find it a little disturbing, as they tend to be even further removed from this approach). Everyone takes their own experience and generalises it across the board; the US marines are an extremum in the field of mentally preparing (or indoctrinating) people to kill.

Horses for courses; it only becomes a problem in the field when you put people heavily indoctrinated in killing into a deployment where not shooting people is really what's needed, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, that's where it has fallen down over the last decade or so.

Yes, I was in the U.S. military 25 years ago. I will leave it at that and not try to demean your opinions with an unnecessary personal attack. It's just the Internet, after all, and 'winning' an Internet argument ain't worth it ;-).

I met this fellow musician at a jam session in St. Paul. Somehow the conversation got around to the military, and he proudly said he was the 3rd generation of men in his family who had signed up for the Marines. He bragged that it was the way the men in his family got to kill people. As in, they enjoyed it, and that was the legal and moral way to do it. It's not like the family was poor and had to do it, either. He was a...fellow who could cause consternation. However, he was quite likable in a way as well.

I'm glad that such people exist and manage to lead law abiding, productive lives.

I strongly suspect there are exceptions to this rule. At the very least we know there exist people in prisons today who enjoy murder. Arguably that's very different since (I assume) 'enjoying killing' and 'enjoying getting shot back at' are worlds apart. But, would it surprise you if there was a small minority of drone operators who genuinely enjoyed their work?

Then again I suppose (hope) the modern military system might select against that kind of mindset.

I don't mean any offense by this, I'm trying to say it delicately, but I think "anybody who brags about killing in combat is lying" is something of 'white lie', probably earnestly believed by most who repeat it, meant to preserve the reputation of combat veterans as a whole by discrediting any veteran who would be so tactless as to brag about killing. I believe it's basically a way of credibly stating "this person who's making the rest of us look bad by association does not represent us."

There's another musician I know in that scene (but in a different part of the US) who was in Vietnam. No one could ever get him to talk about his combat experience. There was one time that we succeeded on steering him onto the topic, and we very soon changed the subject and stopped bringing it up. (He was also one of the nicest guys I ever met, unless he was being blunt about music. He also could play Santa Claus without a disguise!)

Do you think Timothy McVeigh ever fabricated enjoying killing? There are accounts from his fellow soldiers that he quite enjoyed shooting at enemies. My estimation, from life experience, is that there are definitely sociopaths and psychopaths out there. 99%+ of people aren't like that, but you will definitely meet them all the same.

We shouldn't simplify reality just to paint pretty pictures for ideological reasons. Life is messy and there is a nasty side to reality. Hopefully, we won't have to deal with it that often.

Murdering, or killing? I ask because murder refers to a specific sort of unlawful killing, but it's not clear if you're using the term precisely. Most would probably say there's substantial difference between laughing about killing somebody who was trying to kill you (not murder) and laughing about killing a civilian in cold blood (murder).

Also, I didn't say he used the term "badly", I wondered if he was using it precisely. Maybe you think linguistic imprecision is bad, but my intent was to suss out his meaning, not criticize how he uses language. I'm more interested in the meaning behind the words.

I think most would say context matters.

Are you sure they weren't just trying to fuck with the naive newbie?

Valuing human life for it's own sake is an incredibly recent phenomena, and the jury is still out on whether or not it's a good idea, since we make trade-offs everyday, we just pretend otherwise. (Speed limit on vehicles being the most popular example of this, we could decrease the speed limit and save lives, but it'd inconvenience many people, so we don't.)