Essay On Moral Disengagement

567 Words3 Pages

How have you observed or experienced moral disengagement in your career? I did not experience moral disengagement, but one I observed and a hot topic when I crossed over from being a drill sergeant was passing Soldiers on the APFT when they clearly could not pass the test. The APFT is one the oldest set of rule/standard we have in the Army. For basic training, some drill sergeants will pass Soldiers that were close on APFT because they did not want to have holdovers and to boost the platoon stats. Our platoon never did it, but others rationalized it by they would get better in AIT. For me personally, any Soldier close, we would do extra PT and other things to make them stronger for the next one. If they did not achieve the standard, then …show more content…

Our country has been at war for over 13 years now, and in my opinion, it is not really slowing down as far as the terrorist threat is concerned. The terrorists are getting bolder, deadlier, and adapting to our tactics. For these factors, I think moral disengagement will rear its head among our ranks. The rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention are not protecting our troops from the enemy and causes Soldiers to go against what they no to be right, and go for what is best for them to survive and come home. The example in the reading was about LTC West. His actions were not by the rules, but he did it to save lives. The ultimate goal of any leader or Soldier is to bring them home safely with little or no incident. I believe Soldiers feel they need to compete with the current threat by being more creative in the way they deal with terrorist, their tactics, and our laws. This is many cases, causes moral disengagement by having Soldiers either reinterpret conduct through framing, reinterpret conduct using indirect language, reinterpret conduct through advantageous comparison, obscuring responsibility via displacement, obscuring responsibility via diffusion, distortion, and