This is just a brainstorming page, I am having trouble finding good research to support some of these claims.

While it may be true that war is a consistent part of society, I disagree that it is natural. I do not feel that men are naturally wired to kill each other. This is a hard point to argue in light of how much killing does occur in society, but I will make some points now and try to support them with research later that will help question the evolutionary theory on war and murder.

The first point is that people are not generally willing to fight in a war.

The obvious explanation for this is that they do not want to be killing in combat. But even when people are already in combat and their lives are at already at stake, people are still reluctant to kill their attackers. Marshall (2000) reported that less than 25% of the individual riflemen on the ground in WWII fired at the enemy.

Marshall, a United States solider and journalist, first reported these findings in Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War. published in 1947. Marshall gathered the reports and statistics for Men Against Fire, through field interviews with American soldiers immediately after seeing combat. He would ask open ended questions such as "'Where were you', 'what did you see' and 'what would you do'." (Chambers) Through these interviews, Marshall reported that only between 15 and 30% of American soldier in combat fired their weapons.

Marshall's report has been controversial over the past decades, and his interviewing techniques, especially, have seen some criticism. In an interview with a solider that accompanied marshal on some of his field reports during the Korean war, it is argued that Marshall neither took accurate notes, nor did he apply appropriate statistical analysis to his findings. (Chambers) Marshall also "claimed to have interviewed more than four hundred units, which would have meant interviewing a company a day, leaving no time for travel," which also raises questions about the legitimacy of his claims. (Baum)

While Marshalls findings have been criticized, the overall message of his work has sunk deeply into the hearts and minds of the American people and into the policies of the American Armed Forces. It became required in some Armed Forces academies to read Men Against Fired (Chambers) and "within months, Army units were receiving a “Revised Program of Instruction,” which instituted many of Marshall’s doctrines." (Baum) One training technique the American Army has adopted is "mass firing", in which soldiers are taught to continually fire at an area, rather than at specific targets. The psychology behind this technique is "dehumanizing" targets because people have difficulty intetionally and knowingly killing another person. Another training tactic, as seen in the documentary Soldiers of Conscience, is teaching chats such as "Kill, kill, kill without mercy" and "Blood, blood, blood makes the green grass grow," to training soldiers. During times of war, the belief that it is morally justified to kill during war is pressed upon soldiers. It is said that this "readies them for combat" and that "without a good grasp of why they are being asked to kill, he says, many soldiers may hesitate in dangerous and ambiguous circumstances." (Baum) Dave Grossman, author of On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and now professor of psychology at West Point argues that such training techniques are needed in order to better protect soldiers. He argues that a soldier not mentally prepared to kill will experience much more stress after combat than a solider who is prepare to kill.

http://www.killology.com/art_onkilling_resistance.htm

Finally, if war is natural, how does one explain post-traumatic stress disorder?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder which is triggered by an especially traumatic event (eg- sexual assault, gruesome car accidents, or war) and which results in a sometimes severe and debilitating impairment in the life of the individual. In order to officially be diagnosed with PTSD a patient must have experienced a life event which made them fear for their life and/or feel extreme fear, helplessness, or horror. This trauma then manifests itself primarily through the most common symptoms of PTSD which include flashbacks to the event that come on suddenly and won't go away, emotional detachment that makes the person unwillingly or unable to engage in emotional interactions with others, and jumpiness in response to loud noises or surprises in their environment. Frequently the severity of the traumatic event is linked to the severity of the symptoms which an individual experiences and can affect their ability to function at work, maintain helathy relationships, and intereact normally with friends and family.

Additionally, according to recent work using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Position Emission Topography (PET) PTSD has also been shown to alter the brain and to change the way in which memories are stored. Thus, it seems as if the events of war are actually such a shock to the brain that they may in fact result in irreversible changes in the way our brains function. This may lend support to the idea that war is not a natural part of our human nature.

Much effort and attention has been placed on PTSD studies, but few studies have been done on the effect killing an "enemy" has on soldiers. Studies have been done "on every other aspect of combat trauma—grief, survivor’s guilt, fear, and so on—the aftereffects of taking an enemy’s life are almost never studied. “The blind spot in the scholarship is glaring,” said MacNair, whose book “Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing” is devoted, in part, to soldiers. “I kept thinking there must be a huge amount of research on this that I’m missing, but I never found it.” (Baum)

Recent news reports, which bring to life the empirical facts that war negatively effects the mental stage of soldiers who have fought in the Iraqi War, give evidence to the view that war is not natural. According to a 2008 CNN article, "Every day, five U.S. soldiers try to kill themselves. Before the Iraq war began, that figure was less than one suicide attempt a day." This fact supports the view that war is not natural. For if the effect of being in war is increase in suicide, we have double to deceased people - victims and perpetrators, and this is clearly against the nature goal of humanity - to thrive and survive.

Depiction of War
If war is a consistent part of society, then it is important to acknowledge that this part of human nature can be depicted in various ways--more specifically, deceptive means can be used to disguise the atrocities of war. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was was glorified and the heroic role of a soldier was often romanticized and shown in the best possible light. For example, Rudyard Kipling ( a person who never stepped on a battlefield) wrote about war in glorifying, favorable terms, thus encouraging many citizens to want to taste this 'glory' of war in World War One (Smith, 2). As technology has advanced, from the beginning of photography to the complex systems of messaging and video we have nowadays, the manipulation of war has also become more prevalent. Photographers of the Spanish American War and Civil War would often stage their photographs to show clean, almost bloodless battles. A more contemporary example is when British journalist Martin Bell reported on the war in Bosnia, and he stated that good taste was given more consideration than delivering accurate accounts of the war (Smith, 2). In demonstrating war to be a certain way, it A. prevents the full extent of the truth from being known and B. acts as a shield for citizens from the potentially upsetting and gruesome images of war.

Besides citizens, soldiers are also vulnerable to deception and manipulation when it comes to war. This can happen through dehumanization, or depicting the enemy as inferior and 'less' than human (Smith, 183). Often times, the government descries enemies as "subhuman" or "animals (Smith, 185)." These images lead soldiers to believe that the enemy actually is inferior to them, and they are then free of any guilt that may arise in killing the enemy. Another method of freeing soldiers from guilt of killing an enemy is to have them perceive the enemy as game animal that are meant to be hunted. The enemy, as a result, is reduced to the status of an animal and no longer humans. Additionally, another method of causing the same effect amongst soldiers is by depicting the enemy as monsters or parasites (Smith, 201). Consequently, the enemy is no longer a human or an animal but instead is an entity that cannot be seen and actually invokes feelings of dread amongst soldiers. This feeling of dread may trigger a heightened response amongst soldiers of wanting to kill what terrifies them. By thinking of the enemy as a parasite, soldiers are reminded of diseases and disgust. Hence, it becomes an obligation in their minds to rid the world of such uncleanliness.

Cheating, lying, and the depiction of war as natural faculties
When factoring in evolutionary advantage in the presentation of war, one finds that even the false depiction of war is a natural and adaptive faculty. The concept stems from cheating behavior. As a preliminary assessment, humans constantly weigh the costs and benefits of cheating in a given situation. Costs may be in the form of an external body levying punishment on cheating individuals, or a loss of trust within one's group when cheating is discovered. The benefits of cheating are the advantages attained by bypassing protocol, undermining competitors, or acquiring privileged information. Humans cheat so that they will enjoy an added benefit and advantage while maintaining relatively low costs, thus maximizing benefits. Deception is a prevalent, natural hedging strategy for effective cheating. Smith says:

References

Baum, D. (2004). The price of valor. The New Yorker. Retrieved September, 29 2008 from http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/07/12/040712fa_fact?currentPage=all

Chambers, J.W.S.L. A Marshall: men against fire new evidence regarding fire ratio. Retrieved October 4, 2008 from
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/parameters/03autumn/chambers.pdf

Concerns mounting over rising troops suicide. (2008). Retrieved October, 10 2008 from http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/01/military.suicides/.

E-Medicine Health: Practical Guide to Health. (2008). Post-traumatic stress disorder. Retrieved October 5, 2008 from http://www.emedicinehealth.com/post-traumatic_stress_disorder_ptsd/article_em.htm.

Marshall, S.L.A. (2000). Men against fire: The problem of battle command. University of Oklahoma Press: OK.

Ryan, C. & Weimberg, G. (2007). Soldiers of conscience. Luna Productions.

Smith, David. The Most Dangerous Animal. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007.