Emotional Manipulation In The Military

The military uses tactics to indoctrinate children into fighting in the war for them. Some of those tactics used would be emotional manipulation, getting them hooked on drugs, and violent war movies. They use emotional manipulation by blaming the rebels for killing their families and using them as the reason why they are in this situation. The military would get them hooked on drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, and “brown brown”. They would have them watch violent war movies such as Rambo which would manipulate them into implementing those skills. Ishmael and his group of friends were kidnapped and taken to the village. When they first arrived at the village they did normal children activities such as playing soccer but then they were forced …show more content…
When the lieutenant said this it made Ishmael to hate the rebels even more. Ishmael said “I imagined capturing several rebels at once, locking them inside a house, sparkling gasoline on it, and tossing a match. We watch it burn and I laugh” (113). This type of emotional manipulation worked on Ishmael because he justifies killing a rebel by saying that “The prisoner was simply another rebel who was responsible for the death of my family, as I had come to truly believe” (124). He even realizes he has been manipulated but does not care because that is what he believes in now. Even when he had free time to think he still thought about harming the rebels. The lieutenant compared his actions to the rebel’s actions as if they were not accomplishing the same thing. The Lieutenant states that “We are not like the rebels, riff rafts who kill people for no reason. We kill them for the good and betterment of this country” (123). The rebels could be using the same tactics to recruit people to fight for them. Whatever the case is they are still killing people. Ishmael gets shot in the foot and barely survives the injury. The lieutenant claims to have captured the attackers that shot him in the foot but who really knows if they were the ones who did it. He manipulates him by saying “These are the men responsible for the bullet holes in your foot. It’s time to make sure they never shoot at you or your comrades” (159). This causes him to shoot them in their feet as they supposedly did to him. He watched them suffer for the entire day as he did but he got annoyed with their crying so he killed every last one of them. This kind of emotional manipulation affects people for a long period of time. When he arrives at the rehabilitation center he discovers some of the other boys there were fighting for the rebels which causes them to get into a huge fight. To help the emotional