The myth of the super-soldier versus the reality of the child soldier

One of the themes that Angela Power-Disney has been promoting lately is the idea of so-called “super-soldiers”: children who have been subjected to various “trauma-based mind control” techniques to shape them into the perfect tools of…um, whoever it is that is training them. The state, the Illuminati, aliens: all have been named as the abusers and ultimate beneficiaries of the “super-soldiers'” astonishing abilities.

The idea is that various experiences of abuse and trauma, especially if imposed in very early childhood, will shape the developing child’s mind in such a way that he or she can behave like a remote-controlled robot, doing the abusers’ bidding perfectly and seemingly without understanding that they’re obeying an implanted order.

The super-soldier concept is a popular theme in television and film. For example, in the popular American TV series Dark Angel, Jessica Alba played Max Guevara, a genetically enhanced super-soldier who at the age of nine escaped along with 11 others from a secret U.S. government institution where they had been born, raised, and trained to be soldiers and assassins.

It’s a great idea for a television series, but in real life the premise behind super-soldiers—that prolonged or repeated childhood trauma can enhance, rather than diminish, functionality in an individual—is just plain silly. As commenter Justin Sanity posted yesterday,

Such experiences can ONLY contribute to dis-functional/ mal-functional development. If someone really needs to understand why this is – what actually happens to chronically abused children’s brain function development has been thoroughly documented by Dr Bruce Perry and other neuroscience specialists.

Childhood experiences of abuse and trauma cannot turn a child into a prodigy or savant, they cannot “split” a child into multiple selves with exceptional skills, they cannot induce the development of “psychic” abilities.

Childhood experiences of abuse and trauma cannot make a child more disciplined and responsive to external (adult) direction.

Repeatedly abusing and traumatizing a child could not turn them into a “mind-control” slave for adult masters—such experiences could only contribute to the child having LESS self-control and becoming MORE erratic, irrational, unpredictable, withdrawn, or prone to sudden mood swings and violent behaviour.

According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network,

Children with complex trauma histories may develop chronic or recurrent physical complaints, such as headaches or stomachaches. Adults with histories of trauma in childhood have been shown to have more chronic physical conditions and problems. They may engage in risky  behaviors that compound these  conditions (e.g., smoking, substance use, and diet and exercise habits that lead to obesity). …

A child with a complex trauma history may be easily triggered or “set off” and is more likely to react very intensely.  The child may struggle with self-regulation (i.e., knowing how to calm down) and may lack impulse control or the ability to think through consequences before acting.  As a result, complexly traumatized children may behave in ways that appear unpredictable, oppositional, volatile, and extreme. …

Children with complex trauma histories may have problems thinking clearly, reasoning, or problem solving. They may be unable to plan ahead, anticipate the future, and act accordingly. When children grow up under conditions of constant threat, all their internal resources go toward survival. When their bodies and minds have learned to be in chronic stress response mode, they may have trouble thinking a problem through calmly and considering multiple alternatives. They may find it hard to acquire new skills or take in new information. They may struggle with sustaining attention or curiosity or be distracted by reactions to trauma reminders. They may show deficits in language development and abstract reasoning skills.

This hardly sounds like the super-cool, internally disciplined, hyper-trained super-soldier of myth and fantasy.

The fact is that childhood abuse/trauma doesn’t create adults with amazing abilities; it creates adults who must struggle to overcome a multitude of emotional, physical, and cognitive issues.

Not super-soldiers, but…

As commenter YdchyncachuTracey pointed out yesterday, there are some children in the world today who have been forcibly turned into soldiers via traumatisation and abuse:

There are real ex-child soldiers aren’t there? …

Those poor children aren’t particularly effective as soldiers, the AK47 is small enough for a child to operate though, they are tragically sometimes sent to terrorise their own home community or even kill family, they are slaves to the adults, it terrorises the attacked community, I can hardly imagine something more sadistic than sending a village’s own children in with guns, it seems like a very deliberate ripping the heart out of communities and stealing that generation away, the children find it hard to be accepted back home when they have killed, never mind deal with what they saw/did, missing an education, meaning there may be worries that there is no other life for them except as a soldier.

Child soldiers, such as those kidnapped and terrorised by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony, illustrate what can really happen when children are repeatedly traumatised and abused in an effort to turn them into fighting machines. According to “The Psychological Impact of Child Soldiering”, authored by Elisabeth Schauer and Thomas Elbert,

Child soldiers are raised in an environment of severe violence, experience it, and subsequently often commit cruelties and atrocities of the worst kind. This repeated exposure to chronic and traumatic stress during development leaves the children with mental and related physical ill-health, notably PTSD and severe personality changes. …

Hundreds of thousands of children are conscripted, kidnapped, or pressured intojoining armed groups. The proliferation of lightweight weapons has made it possible for children under the age of 10 years to become effective soldiers….The trend in using children in armed conflict as soldiers is not diminishing. An estimated 300,000 child soldiers – boys and girls under the age of 18 – are involved currently in more than 30 conflicts worldwide (Child Soldier, 2001; Jayawardena, 2001). Some 40% or 120,000 child soldiers are girls, whose plight is often unrecognized because international attention has largely focused on boy soldiers. …

Children who are kidnapped and forced to become soldiers are subjected to horrific trauma—as Tracey mentioned, many are forced to murder their own families, both to break the psychological bond between them, and to ensure that they will have nothing to return home to. Children who fail the initiation process are often killed in view of other abducted children, as a way of instilling fear and ensuring obedience. Girls are subjected to extensive sexual violence, and many, still children themselves, will become pregnant and bear their rapists’ children.

Beyond psychological suffering from the symptoms of PTSD, traumatized populations show significantly elevated levels of physical morbidity and mortality. As outlined above, in recent years, evidence has mounted that severe anxiety states – stress at a traumatic level – lead to a functional and structural alteration of the brain (Eckart et al., submitted; Kolassa & Elbert, 2007). …

There are a multitude of further psychological consequences of experiencing traumatic life-threat. In sum, the response to war-related trauma by ex-combatants and former child soldiers in countries directly affected by war and violence is complex and renders the survivors vulnerable to various forms of psychological disorders, whereby stressors may have a different impact during different developmental periods.

Former child soldiers suffer from depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, depersonalization, derealization, numbing, and in extreme cases, catatonia and “tonic immobility”. Rehabilitation of former child soldiers can be a long, difficult, frustrating process, made worse by the social stigma the children and youths experience when they attempt to resume normal lives in the community.

Far from becoming “super-soldiers” with amazing abilities that make them ultra-valuable to their Illuminati/government/alien handlers, real-life child soldiers who manage to escape their captors face a lifetime of physical, emotional, social, and mental challenges, the result of unimaginable trauma inflicted during the most vulnerable years of their lives.