[Raellus]

It's an upsetting read, but I recommend Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy. It's about a rogue SEAL team chief accused of war crimes. It exposes a "pirate" sub-culture in the SEAL teams- a group of operators who value killing just for killing's sake, pretty much above all else. It also highlights the institutional cultures of "brotherhood" and "loyalty" that allows said pirates to literally get away with murder, and the Navy's attempts to restore genuine honor to the teams.

It doesn't seek to excuse such behavior, but the book does posit that America's never-ending War on Terror- in which SOF troops are deployed again and again, and are exposed to violence (both as witnesses and direct participants), and trauma (physical, like TBI, and psychological)- often creates callous killers who are no longer of capable from differentiating between right and wrong (or just don't care to).

I'd never thought about it before, but the book made the point that SOF often attracts people who, quite simply put, want to kill. In a warrior, this isn't necessarily a bad trait, but when said individual is more interested in killing than rules, law, and morality, it's a problem.

I think it's a valuable book because it illustrates how "marauders" are usually made more often than born, and how easily they could appear in any national army, not just the forces of the bad guys, in a T2k scenario.

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