what are Army's methods of "training" that are also tried-and-true methods of brainwashing?

Question

and is it moral or safe to have brainwashed and armed troops?

To those answerers who may try to avoid the question, please just answer the question. Rants will be ignored.

(No, I'm not asking to futher an agenda.
No I'm not trying to create a discussion, (yet).
No, I don't know.)

Answer 1

Some specific methods would be sleep deprivation, psychological harassment (including dehumanizing of individuals), inculcation of guilt, exploiting group social pressure and maybe most importantly tight control of the information available to the individual.

But when I look at your question, I think you already knew this. Are you trying to promote your opinion here, or are you trying to create some discussion about those following questions? In either case, I don't think this is the right forum (don't take this as a rant, but as an advice. You should be able to rise discussion better at some discussion forum, and if you want to promote your opinions, write an article somewhere).

But anyways, about those two other questions: Is it safe to have brainwashed and armed troops? Well, yes, it should be safer than having same number of individuals with firearms just doing whatever they please. It's a requirement for an armed force (substantially large in numbers) to have this certain lack of individualism for the sake of ability to follow orders and function as a single, cohesive force.

Is it moral? Is it moral to have armed troops in the first place? Or is the moral depending on the motives and morals of the true commanders of this army (that would be the residents of the country when we're talking about the military, right?)? I don't think it's the "brainwashing" of troops that makes things immoral here, we should be talking about the bigger picture.

Answer 2

Brainwashed? What the hell are you talking about?

These troops are lot more smarter then the average resident of USA. Or "Americans"...

The army doesn't brainwash you, it makes you into a man by trying to motivate you... They will keep calling you a worthless crap and that will make you shove it in their face by trying harder and harder, and they hand out very few compliments...

They'll hand out punishments when you do something wrong or disrespect some one, they will punish you as a TEAM... Which forms discipline and a brotherhood among the troops, along with team work...

It's moral because they enlisted them selves and it doesn't "brainwash" them, it makes them into a man, a gentlemen... It will boost you confidence by a lot, and I hear some people actually pay to go to these kind of camps just to get yelled at and such...
This method works, although shouting and yelling isn't the best method of teaching, it motivates you like hell tho.. Like hitting a dog with a newspaper when he bites your 500$ watch into pieces and giving him a bowl of treats when he finds your lost kid... Same works with everyone, treat them if they do something good, and punish them if they do something bad..

But for the army it's keep calling you worthless so you keep trying your best then they hand you out a small compliment which makes you feel very good seeing as you always get called worthless...