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Assigning to my website a ridiculously enhanced level of importance within your daily lives, it is likely that most of you have noticed that there are two books currently listed in the Reading block of my sidenav. No doubt you also have noticed that while my progress in the first book climbs at a rate of approximately one hundred pages per day, my advancement through the second has stalled entirely. It would be fair to say that it never actually started, my bookmark being set on page five – only two page turns into the book’s introduction. You have probably stared in confusion at the disparity between the two sets of numbers; like dual hands of a clock one moves quickly while the other seemingly not at all. The explanation for this is actually very simple. I have stopped reading The Elegant Universe, and I can’t seem to put Inside Delta Force down.

Moreover, I have gone so far as to put Brian Greene’s work back onto the bookshelf. I suppose it isn’t really his fault though.

I don’t mean to sound any more cocky than is deserved, but the idea of reading an actual book now carries with it a certain sense of dread. By actual book I of course mean physical book. The tangible kind. Inked letters upon bound sheafs of paper. An e-book… without the e. Are you serious? For goodness sake I might as well strike up the horse and buggy and take a ride down to the picture show.

It is possible that in five or ten years hardcopy literature will become cool again – brought out on holdays from some dark and dusty storage area so you can show your friends how trendy and Old School you are – but at the moment it is the Gamecube to my Wii; though my Reader does basically the same thing as the book it has succeeded, it would be absurd to pick up my Wavebird for any reason other than to make room for my Wii-mote.

Moving beyond the novelties of a developing technology, Inside Delta Force is an incredibly engaging piece of work. I am by no accounts a War Junkie or a military enthusiast of any degree. I enjoy reading historical accounts of the world’s various wars, but I do so more for the history than the bloodshed. That said, I am finding the creation of Delta Force to be utterly compelling. Much of the book is interesting, though largely impractical as it relates to my own life (breaching doors with explosive charges, procedures for retaking a hijacked plane, etc). Still, I occasionally find myself learning something about which I had previously wondered – as well as a few things that I hadn’t.

For instance, the very first thing that Delta operators are trained to do is shoot. That makes sense, of course, but what came as a bit of a shock to me is that Delta invented – or at least perfected – a new way of shooting which they coined “Instinctive Shooting”. When other armed units (be they soldiers or police) train with weapons, they learn to shoot by watching the tip of their own gun. The barrel of a pistol has a small sight which the gunman looks at and uses to aim at their target. However, instinctive shooting trains the gunman to look not at his own weapon, but past his gun and at the target itself. This is because in a real firefight the shooter will not be looking at their own guns, but most likely will be watching the other guy who is trying to kill him. Unfortunately, because the shooter has trained by looking at his sight, not at his target, an extraordinarily high percentage of shootouts between rookie police or soldiers result in total misses. Not used to shooting in this way, most of the gunman’s shots will carry above and to the side of the intended target. If you have ever seen a soldier or a policeman shoot at a target and wonder “How could he possibly miss,” that may very well be your answer.

Delta operators train by looking at their targets, learning to shoot instinctively by merit of countless hours of practice. Delta’s don’t aim at their targets, they merely shoot what they are looking at. Given the appropriate amount of respect and claims at humility, I found this particularly interesting. My surprise came about not only because of the way that Deltas shoot, but much more so at the thought that people fire guns any other way. I had not really ever considered the way that other people fire guns, and found it rather stunning that it was not the exception, but the norm to look at a pistol’s sight. I have shot only a small number of real handguns in my life, but the way that I learned to shoot was always instinctive. Granted, when Delta Force was created in the late 70′s the soldiers in the unit did not have the luxury of growing up playing Duck Hunt and Police Trainer. Still, now that I think about it, whenever I try to picture the noobs at the arcade playing Big Buck Hunter or Time Crisis, they are invariably the ones standing rigidly with one eye closed looking down the barrel of their light gun. I would be extremely interested to learn the percentage breakdowns of people, say, 15-25 who shoot either instinctively or by gun sights. I have a feeling that the vast majority of soldiers today naturally shoot like Deltas.

The second and final thing which I want to bring up deals with the selection of Delta snipers. The criteria to be a Delta is ridiculous on its own, but to become a unit sniper is an altogether different animal. The most demanding selection requirement is actually beyond the candidate’s own control. Following the otherwise standard physical tryout, each sniper must negotiate an intense barrage of psychological evaluations. It takes a very specific, very unusual mind and conscience to do the work. There are two very important attributes to avoid. According to author Eric Haney:

“The first characteristic is what we called the ‘Texas Tower Syndrome,’ referencing Charles Whitman’s massacre of fourteen people from the bell tower of the University of Texas in 1966. That characteristic manifests itself when a sniper starts shooting and he can’t stop. It just feels so good – such an overwhelming sense of power – that he can’t turn it off when there are no more legitimate targets left. He’ll continue to shoot anyone in sight. It is a very real compulsion, and I’ve heard its Siren call in my own ear.”

The second characteristic is termed the “Munich Massacre Syndrome.” In a way this is the total opposite of the first: instead of not being able to stop shooting, the sniper is unable to pull the trigger at all. The majority of a sniper’s work involves watching a target from a distance, though via a high-powered scope, from an intimate perspective. When a sniper has watched a target for days on end, the sniper will have come to know his target as a human being, as a close acquaintance or friend. When the order is then given to shoot, the sniper can’t do it. This is a much more understandable psychological obstacle to someone like me, however I was not aware of the reason behind its name. Once again, according to Haney:

“That’s what happened at the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972. When the order was given to shoot the Black September terrorists who had taken eleven Israeli athletes hostage, the German police sharpshooters couldn’t pull the trigger. They had observed the hostage-takers for such a long time, and developed such a sense of empathy for them, they couldn’t bring themselves to kill people they felt they now knew. The terrorists were then able to kill the Israeli Olympic athletes under their control.

“The psychological niche where you’ll find the man who can shoulder aside these two behavioral opposites is very narrow. The ideal is a man who, from the safety of long range, can kill when it is required but is immune to the impulse to continue killing when the situation is resolved.”

Essentially, you need someone whose singular control over their own emotions makes them akin to a robot in times of conflict. Ice for blood is only part of it, you also need to be able to switch it off. I suppose I have always wondered about this; wondered if I am the sort of person who could do that kind of work. I expect that the answer is a qualified no. I qualify my answer because I believe that we have within each of us the capacity to do horrible things. Could you kill someone you know? Probably. Maybe even certainly. But would you? I hope that answer is no. Still, I find it interesting to read about the people who answer ‘yes’.